Rolf Helm

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Rudolf "Rolf" Helm (born March 30, 1896 in Dresden , † April 9, 1979 in East Berlin ) was a German lawyer and politician . He was the Attorney General of Saxony and East Berlin, a member of the People's Chamber and State Secretary in the GDR .

Life

Helm came from a wealthy middle-class family. His father was a lawyer. His baptismal name was Rudolf, who was consciously chosen by his parents, because his mother was born Rudolph, the only daughter of a multi-million dollar secret judiciary who was a member or chairman of numerous supervisory boards of corporations and banks. Helm later used the shorter nickname Rolf. He attended the Vitzthum-Gymnasium Dresden until 1914 and passed the Abitur. During the First World War he did military service from 1914 to 1918, initially as a non-commissioned officer and from 1916 as a lieutenant .

After the war he studied law in Munich, Jena and Leipzig from 1919 to 1922. In January 1921 he declared his accession to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In February 1922, he laid the first state examination at the University of Leipzig and was on "The legal nature of the works" to Dr. Doctorate in law. In June 1922 he married Maria von Zahn (1901–1973), a sister of Peter von Zahn . From 1922 to 1925 he completed the then prescribed three-year legal traineeship at Dresden courts. In 1923 he was personal assistant and legal advisor to the chairman of the KPD parliamentary group in the Saxon state parliament and temporarily finance minister Paul Böttcher . After the 2nd state examination in 1925, he was admitted to the bar at the Dresden District and Regional Court . He worked as a permanent legal employee of the "Workers' Voice". In January 1924 he became a KPD city councilor in Dresden. From 1925 he worked as a lawyer for the Red Aid of Germany (RHD) and as chairman of the "Friends of the New Russia".

After the Nazis came to power , he was taken into " protective custody " by the police on March 1, 1933 . He spent the first three months in solitary confinement in the Dresden police prison. After the transfer to the court prison "Mathilde" (popularly named because it was in Mathildenstrasse), he was merged with Heinrich Fleißner . After eight months, Helm was released from “protective custody” on November 3, 1933 and taken to the Colditz concentration camp. However, on November 17, 1933, he was unexpectedly released. In the following period he remained under indirect Gestapo supervision. He was expelled from the bar and was unemployed until 1937. From 1937 to 1939 he found a job as a sales representative. He moved to Berlin in September 1939 and found work for an advertising company. In August 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in the Bautzen Regional Court Prison until October 1944. As a result of bombings, he landed with his wife in Kleinmachnow in February 1945 , where they saw the end of the war in April 1945. She lost her two sons during World War II .

In June 1945 he was one of the founders of a local KPD group in Kleinmachnow. In the same month he became head of the legal department of the Social Insurance Institution of Greater Berlin. From January 1946 to 1947 he worked as head of the legal department in the German Central Administration for Labor and Social Welfare. In 1946 he became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and in 1947 of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN). As the successor to the late John Ulrich Schroeder , he acted from November 1947 to February 1949 as Attorney General for the State of Saxony and was the main prosecutor in the Görlitz show trial of Hans Meinshausen and Bruno Malitz , in the Glauchau-Meerane trial of textile entrepreneurs, in the Kamienna trial of 1948 Nazi and war criminals of the former Hasag group in Leipzig and in the Bautzen trial for persecuting and suppressing the Sorbian population. Afterwards he was appointed as Attorney General of Greater Berlin (successor to Wilhelm Kühnast, who fled to West Berlin ). On December 30, 1948 he was a member of the initiative committee for the establishment of the Association of Democratic Jurists in Germany (VDJD) and later a member of the secretariat of the VDJD.

He experienced the founding of the GDR as an elected member of the German People's Council and thus as a member of the constituent Provisional People's Chamber. On November 10, 1949, he was elected a member of the Legal Committee at the 5th Volkskammer meeting.

In autumn 1950 he was elected to the SED regional leadership in Berlin, of which he was a member until July 1951. From April to May 1951 he was briefly head of the presidential chancellery of the President of the GDR Wilhelm Pieck with the rank of State Secretary (successor to Leo Zuckermann ). As early as May 2, 1951, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED decided to immediately recall him as State Secretary because of his family's ties to the West. Then he was director of the Central Judge School in Potsdam-Babelsberg until March 1953 . From March 1953 to December 31, 1958 he was head of department in the Ministry of Justice, responsible for lawyers and notaries. From January 1, 1959 to 1963, he worked as legal advisor at the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (DAW). At the end of 1963 he retired. He was a member of the central board of the VVN, the Peace Council and from 1960 a member of the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and from 1961 deputy chairman of the committee.

Awards

Fonts

  • 1948 (together with P. Merker): Basic questions of labor law .
  • 1952 (together with K. Raddatz): Gravedigger .
  • 1978 Advocate of the People - Memories .

literature

Web links

  • Little fish - head off because of the blond Inge . In: Der Spiegel . No. 33 , 1949, pp. 10 ( online ).
  • Rolf Helm's estate at www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de (accessed on January 4, 2018).
  • Arrest in Dresden at www.bommi2000.de (accessed on January 5, 2018).

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The committees of the People's Chamber . In: Neues Deutschland , November 11, 1949, p. 2.
  2. ↑ Minutes No. 46 of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED on May 2, 1951 - BArch DY 30 / IV 2/2/146.
personal data
SURNAME Helm, Rolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Helm, Rudolf (baptismal name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and politician (SED)
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1979
Place of death East Berlin