Roger Kusch

Roger Kusch

Roger Kusch (born August 19, 1954 in Stuttgart ) is a German politician and former member of the CDU . From 2001 to 2006 he was Justice Senator of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and chairman and top candidate of the right-wing center HeimatHamburg party in the 2008 state elections .

education and profession

After graduating from high school in Esslingen am Neckar in 1973 , Kusch did his military service and then, from 1974, studied law in Tübingen , Hamburg and Freiburg im Breisgau , which he completed in 1979 with the first state examination and in 1982 with the second state examination . At the University of Hamburg he received his doctorate as Dr. jur. with Eberhard Schmidhäuser with a dissertation on the subject of full intoxication .

In 1983 he joined the judicial service of the state of Baden-Württemberg , initially as a government assessor at the Bruchsal correctional facility . From 1984 to 1985 he was a member of the government in the Adelsheim juvenile prison . Then he was a criminal and juvenile judge at the Karlsruhe District Court until 1986 . From 1986 to 1988, Kusch worked at the Federal Ministry of Justice in the department for criminal procedure law before he became a public prosecutor in Stuttgart in 1988 , responsible for economic and environmental offenses. From 1990 to 1994 Kusch worked in the department for criminal law and public law at the CDU / CSU parliamentary group before he was ministerial advisor and head of the internal security department in the Federal Chancellery from 1995 to 2000 . For a while, Kusch was also listed as a judge at the Federal Patent Court . In September 2000 he was appointed senior public prosecutor at the Federal Court of Justice.

Political career

Justice Senator in Hamburg

On October 31, 2001, Kusch was appointed to the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg , headed by Ole von Beust , as Senator of Justice and President of the Senate Office for District Affairs , which was finally dissolved on January 1, 2004 . Because of his personnel policy, he soon acquired the internal reputation of a smiling guillotine. There were repeated serious conflicts with the Hamburg judges and the public prosecutor's office. In the summer of 2002, Kusch visited Sheriff Joe Arpaio's desert prison in the US state of Arizona and described this particularly harsh form of penal system as “bloom of style”. The closure of the social therapeutic institution Altengamme and the transition institution Moritz-Liepmann-Haus were among his most controversial judicial policy decisions .

In August 2003, Kusch publicly commented on his homosexuality. The trigger was a dispute between the First Mayor of Beust and Interior Senator Ronald Schill , who suspected the two had a relationship and therefore suspected von Beust of favoring Kusch for private reasons. Kusch and Beust declared that they were college friends and that Kusch was the tenant of an apartment belonging to Beust, but that there was no relationship beyond that. These events ultimately led to Schill's dismissal, the rupture of the Hamburg government coalition and early elections.

On February 12, 2004, during an election campaign appearance in a pedestrian zone in the Harburg district, a mentally confused woman attacked Kusch with a knife. The election campaign workers present were able to intervene in good time, so that Kusch was only slightly injured. In the election on February 29, 2004, the CDU achieved an absolute majority , and Kusch was reappointed Justice Senator. In December 2004, Kusch announced a joint initiative by the federal states of Hamburg and Berlin to change procedural law. After that, the right to refuse to testify for fiancés in court is to be abolished. In December 2005 / January 2006, Kusch made further public advances, including legalizing active euthanasia and abolishing youth criminal law. Since he had not coordinated these - quite unusual - initiatives with the CDU parliamentary group, he was publicly criticized for the first time from among the ranks of the CDU.

Discharge

On March 27, 2006 he was dismissed by Mayor von Beust. The ultimate trigger was the unauthorized receipt and unauthorized disclosure of confidential documents from a parliamentary committee of inquiry by the authority it heads. Kusch later took the view that the illegal receipt of confidential documents was merely a “friendly gesture” and “small compensation for the completely unacceptable treatment” when he was questioned before the committee.

The investigative committee had been set up to clarify the conditions in the closed home for offenders in the Feuerbergstrasse. In the course of the committee's work, the opposition against Kusch applied for detention because Kusch refused to answer some of the questions. The application was declared settled by the local court after Kusch had testified in full in a further interrogation. The documents had been forwarded to Kusch's lawyer and an employee of the CDU in the Bundestag who was competent in questions of parliamentary investigative committees .

Founding a party

Five hours after his release, Kusch left the CDU, to which he had been a member for 34 years. In a newspaper interview he stated weeks later that the CDU was moving “in vigorous steps to the left” and that the grand coalition under Chancellor Angela Merkel was “noticeably leading Germany into a socialist society”, which was the reason for his departure from the party. On May 1, 2006, Kusch announced the founding of a ten-member party under the name HeimatHamburg . Kusch wanted to create an alternative to the CDU, which in his opinion differs too little from the SPD. The goals were the abolition of juvenile criminal law , a liberalization of euthanasia , intensification of the fight against drugs , the abandonment of the anti-discrimination law and the abolition of the general obligation to leash dogs.

This combined the attempt to build on the successes of the STATT party and the Rule of Law Offensive party by Ronald Schill . According to Kusch, the party should have acted purely locally based on Hamburg, even if successful. However, cooperation with political forces outside Hamburg was not ruled out. In an interview with the right-wing weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit on December 1, 2006, Kusch announced the intention of HeimatHamburg to support the new electoral initiative Bremen must live by the politician Joachim Siegerist in the 2007 state election in Bremen . In the Frankfurter Rundschau of December 21, 2006, Siegerist speaks of an "unwritten aid agreement" that exists between the two groups. In Bremen has to live is a national association of the club the German conservatives . At the beginning of February 2007, Roger Kusch and Joachim Siegerist met the Governor of Carinthia, Jörg Haider . Jörg Haider also supported HeimatHamburg in the Hamburg state elections in the spring of 2008, but a little later Kusch declared that there were “more divisions than common” between him and the Freedom Party .

The party had an exceptionally high budget considering its membership and ran a very intensive election campaign with posters, almost every week speeches with Kush, sometimes accompanied by other politicians of the party, as well as direct mail. In addition to euthanasia and classic law and order demands such as the use of emetics , warnings about the “danger of Islam” and immigration to Germany, which the party rejects with the slogan “the boat is full”, were increasingly among the election campaign topics. In a press release on the foreigner crime debate on January 10, 2008, the party announced a campaign under the slogan “Criminal foreigners out!”. In the same press release, Kusch is personally quoted as saying "Ole von Beust leaves the righteous Hamburgers to the foreign mob".

In the 2008 general election, his party won 0.5% with 3,520 votes. Due to this election result, the party was dissolved on April 7, 2008.

Assisted suicide

Roger Kusch is a founding member of the Dr. Roger Kusch euthanasia V. In connection with the discussion of the German legislation on euthanasia in terms of assisted suicide , Roger Kusch presented a commercially available perfusor pump as a self-killing machine. After pressing a button, which releases the electric current for the pump, the automatic injection device presses 20 milliliters of narcotic and potassium chloride into the vein from two syringes in parallel . A cannula must have been placed intravenously beforehand. At the event, R. Kusch announced that he would like to offer the devices and medicines and their instructions for use for sale. The American pathologist Jack Kevorkian had already presented this device before 1991 .

On June 29, 2008, Roger Kusch informed the public on his website that he had assisted in the suicide of a 79-year-old woman for the first time . He said he had helped her take a lethal dose of medication orally. In doing so, however, he did not use the apparatus he had developed. In a video message, the suicide declared that she should be transferred to a nursing home but that she was not suffering from an incurable disease or unbearable pain; Kusch said that it was “not at all in my horizon” to dissuade the woman from her plan, and that he felt it was “a disregard and disrespect”. He emphasized his view that human self-determination applies “to the last breath” and that one's own decision to die is “a matter of everyday life”. The Hamburg public prosecutor then initiated preliminary investigations against Kusch. It is unclear whether the criminal offenses of killing on request or failure to provide assistance are fulfilled, or whether it is a non-criminal aiding and abetting suicide . The CDU Hamburg distanced itself through a press release by the church political spokesman Wolfgang Beuss von Kusch and welcomed the investigation by the public prosecutor. The Hamburg Senate examined a partial or complete withdrawal of pension entitlements. The basis for this is Section 17 of the Hamburg Senate Act, which requires acting and former members of the Senate to behave in a manner that is worthy of the office.

Since August 31, 2008, Roger Kusch has offered his services on the website of his Dr. Roger Kusch euthanasia V., which was recognized as non-profit and particularly worthy of support by the Hamburg-Nord tax office when it was founded. The costs for what he called “terminal care” were estimated at up to € 8,000. A police ban issued by the Hamburg interior authorities in November 2008 was confirmed in February 2009 by means of an urgent procedure before the Hamburg Administrative Court. In its judgment, the court did not regard assisted suicide as a criminal offense, but banned "the socially unworthy commercialization of dying through assisted suicide for remuneration" as an illegal trade. Proceedings on suspicion of violation of the Medicines Act are still pending.

Kusch thereupon announced that he would forego further euthanasia and removed this commercial offer from the association's website. In an interview, he explained that this was happening because of the difficulties in Germany in legally obtaining appropriate drugs. He wanted to save “such pressure from the authorities” on those willing to die and himself in the future, respect the judge's decision and no longer use any further legal means. He feels "the end of his career as a death helper is not a failure, but a turning point".

In October 2009, Roger Kusch founded the SterbeHilfeDeutschland e. V. in Oststeinbek in Schleswig-Holstein , whose entry the Hamburg District Court had refused to register because of the "suspicion of promoting suicide". The new association differs from the old one in that instead of commercial suicide offers, those interested in suicide pay membership fees. Kusch's original association still exists and in any case had advertised its tax privilege at the end of January 2010 by the Hamburg-Nord tax office, but has since removed this notice. The association has since been deleted.

In August 2012, Kusch founded the Swiss association StHD (Euthanasia Germany).

See also

• Senate von Beust I - Senate von Beust II

Web links

Commons : Roger Kusch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Achim Bender / Klaus Schülke / Volker Winterfeldt (eds.): Festschrift 50 Jahre Bundespatentgericht, Carl Heymanns Verlag 2011, ISBN 978-3-452-27526-4 , page 1136
2. ^ The pink town hall DER SPIEGEL August 25, 2003
3. ^ Netzeitung.de : "Life is exhausting and unsatisfactory" ( Memento from November 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) from June 30, 2008
4. ^ Die Welt : "Ex-Senator Kusch performed euthanasia" from June 30, 2008
5. ↑ "Death on order, service included" from June 30, 2008
6. ↑ CDU Hamburg press release of June 30, 2008  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )
7. ↑ Death helper Kusch threatens to withdraw his pension (Spiegel Online) from July 2, 2008
8. ^ Suizidbegleitung.de: Suizidbegleitung by Mr Kusch ( Memento from September 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) September 2, 2008
9. ↑ Kusch is no longer allowed to assist in dying. In: Zeit Online. (July 2009).
10. ↑ Netzeitung.de : "Kusch fails with euthanasia in court" ( Memento from April 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) from February 6, 2009
11. ↑ "Ex-Justice Senator Kusch gives euthanasia" on Spiegel Online from February 20, 2009
12. ↑ Euthanasia Germany e. V. .
13. ↑ http://www.rp-online.de/politik/deutschland/roesler- geht-juristische-gegen-roger-kusch-vor- 1.2126846
14. ↑ Handelsamtsblatt dated August 27, 2012