Investigative Committee of Freedom Lawyers

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The Investigative Committee of Freedom Jurists (UFJ) was a German human rights organization founded in West Berlin in October 1949 and financed and controlled by the CIA , which was dedicated to uncovering the rule of law in the GDR . The UFJ was integrated into the All-German Institute on June 25, 1969 .

history

The UFJ was formally established as part of the Association of Freedom Jurists of the Soviet Zone e. V. founded in Berlin-Lichterfelde . This association was created specifically because the US military administration (OMGUS) did not want to license a "committee of inquiry".

Opposing views exist about the original initiative to form the UFJ. David Murphy , then head of the CIA's Berlin operations base, attributes the idea of ​​founding the UFJ to CIA officer Henry Hecksher. Thus Henry Hecksher has to build up the organization to the bar in Belzig working Horst Erdmann recruited under the pseudonym Dr. Theo Friedenau published articles on the Soviet occupation zone in a West Berlin magazine . In contrast, the later deputy head of the UFJ, Siegfried Mampel , is of the opinion that Horst Erdmann must be seen as the initiator of the founding of the UFJ.

On the other hand, it is undisputed that the head of the UFJ, Horst Erdmann, was in close contact with the CIA and that the funding came exclusively from the CIA in the early years. Such a connection was always denied by Horst Erdmann. At the time the UFJ was founded, the Nazi past and Erdmann's imposture were still unknown to the public.

The UFJ systematically collected testimony and evidence of injustice in the GDR and gave general legal advice to visitors to West Berlin who came to the UFJ headquarters at 29 Limastraße from 1951. The reports of visitors about other people as well as about events and the situation in their environment were carefully compiled. The UFJ was also interested in large construction sites, airfields and military training areas and related details, such as the type and quality of the building materials used, the location and length of runways. There was also interest in the production results of industrial companies and information on well-known people. Many visitors could also be recruited to work regularly.

The UFJ operated a registration point in the Marienfelde emergency reception center , where refugees from the GDR were routinely questioned about reasons for fleeing and escape routes. He had a branch in Frankfurt am Main . The UFJ also worked with the radio station RIAS . Lists of alleged Stasi informers compiled by the UFJ were read out on the radio station at regular intervals.

From 1950 the UFJ published information letters, from 1952 documentaries and from 1953 regular reports on human rights violations. Since 1961 he published the lexicon SBZ biography . The UFJ, and especially the Aid Committee for Political Prisoners in the Soviet Zone , a sub-organization of the UFJ, had been in contact with the human rights organization Amnesty International since 1960 . The first human rights report from ai 1966 on political prisoners in the GDR was made with the support of the UFJ.

The UFJ kept a file of charges and an assessment file on GDR officials. After ten years of UFJ activity, these files comprised around 100,000 people in 1959. Based on the information gathered, the UFJ issued leaflet indictments about the government and senior state officials. A total of 26 to 30 such indictments were published with a circulation of 10,000 copies. In addition, warning lists with warnings against people from all professional groups were distributed. Threat letters were sent to people who were considered close to the system by the UFJ. When there was little information available, these letters were formulated very unspecifically.

For GDR citizens, legal advice, GDR lawyer and legal aid directories and newspapers were published that were secretly smuggled into the GDR. The UFJ also drew attention to itself in the GDR through balloon campaigns, posters and graffiti . The SED should feel "watched every step of the way and know that the law is not dead," said a UfJ employee. In the 1950s, child abductions from the GDR were also organized by the UfJ.

The GDR Ministry for State Security viewed the UFJ as a diversion and espionage organization and tried to infiltrate it, in some cases with success . Several people were arrested and tried in show trials. The case of UFJ employee Walter Linse from Berlin-Lichterfelde caused a stir . He was busy preparing an international congress of lawyers in Berlin, from which the International Commission of Jurists emerged . Linse was deported to East Berlin in July 1952 and executed in Moscow's Butyrka prison in December 1953 .

The UFJ endeavored to influence official decisions. Although it was a private organization and some of its information was based on denunciations, authorities began to request personal reports on GDR refugees from the UFJ. Some companies also asked the UFJ for expert opinions before hiring refugees. In 1955 alone, the UFJ prepared 8,900 such reports according to its own information.

The UFJ was largely unsuccessful in its efforts to have its investigation results recognized by law enforcement agencies as official investigation results. The Berlin public prosecutor's office did not want to use the services offered by the UFJ. The UFJ had not succeeded in creating sufficient trust in its material on criminal offenses in the GDR. After the Wall was built in 1961, the state central registration office for the state justice administrations was founded in Salzgitter . The UFJ had claimed the status of this authority for itself in vain.

The UFJ was initially financed by the American intelligence service CIA , but then increasingly and from 1960 exclusively from funds from the Federal Ministry for All-German Issues . In 1969 the independence of the UFJ was ended and the organization was transferred to the All-German Institute of the Federal Ministry for Internal German Relations .

From 1949 onwards, it was headed by the lawyer Horst Erdmann , who had the code name “Dr. Theo Friedenau ”. He had to resign in July 1958 because of unjustified title leadership and concealed HJ entanglements. His successor was Walther Rosenthal (1917–1987).

Publications of the UFJ

The UFJ published a press service and from 1957 two periodicals:

  • the monthly magazine German Questions (which was previously called Out of the Zone of Injustice ).
  • the legal journal Recht in Ost und West, a journal for comparative law and interzonal legal problems (later for legal problems within Germany ); it was published by Götz Schlicht .

Further publications:

  • Former National Socialists in Pankow's service , Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1965, 101 pages
  • Who is who in the SBZ? A biographical manual . Compiled by the Investigation Committee of Freedom Lawyers Berlin. Publishing house for international cultural exchange, Berlin-Zehlendorf 1958 (307 pages)
  • SBZ biography. A reference book on the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany . Compiled by the Investigation Committee of Freedom Lawyers Berlin. Edited by the Federal Ministry for All-German Issues . Bonn, Berlin 1961 (396 pages); 3rd edition 1964 (406 pages); Reprint of the 3rd edition 1965 (407 pages).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nollau Affair: Ambushed attack . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1974 ( online ).
  2. ^ Hohenschönhausen Memorial Foundation
  3. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke , Roger Engelmann ; Concentrated Beats , 1998, pp. 89-97, online
  4. ^ Frank Hagemann: The investigation committee of freedom lawyers 1949-1969 . Dissertation, University of Kiel, 1994, p. 24
  5. ↑ a b G. Bailey, S. Kondraschow , D. Murphy: Die Insichtbare Front , 1997, ISBN 3-549-05603-6 , p. 159
  6. ^ Siegfried Mampel : The underground struggle of the Ministry for State Security against the investigative committee of freedom lawyers in Berlin (West) . 1999, p. 9, berlin.de ( Memento from June 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 4.9 MB)
  7. ^ Frank Hagemann: The investigation committee of freedom lawyers 1949-1969 . Dissertation, University of Kiel, 1994, p. 36
  8. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke , Roger Engelmann : Concentrated Strikes , 1998, p. 90, books.google.de
  9. ^ Threat rightly . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 1952 ( online ).
  10. ^ Frank Hagemann: The investigation committee of freedom lawyers 1949-1969 . Dissertation, University of Kiel, 1994, p. 59 f
  11. ^ Frank Hagemann: The investigation committee of freedom lawyers 1949-1969 . Dissertation, University of Kiel, 1994, p. 47
  12. ^ Anja Mihr: Amnesty International in the GDR; The work for human rights in the sights of the Stasi . Ch Links, Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-86153-263-7 , p. 47ff.
  13. ^ Frank Hagemann: The investigation committee of freedom lawyers 1949-1969 . Dissertation, University of Kiel, 1994, p. 57
  14. ^ Frank Hagemann: The investigation committee of freedom lawyers 1949-1969 . Dissertation, University of Kiel, 1994, p. 53
  15. ↑ Klaus Bästlein: The Mielke case. The investigation against the Minister for State Security of the GDR , Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2002, ISBN 3-7890-7775-5 (= Redaktion Neue Justiz (Ed.): Series of Laws and Justice of the GDR, Volume 3), p. 147
  16. ^ Frank Hagemann: The investigation committee of freedom lawyers 1949-1969 . Dissertation, University of Kiel, 1994, p. 109 ff.
  17. ^ Frank Hagemann: The investigation committee of freedom lawyers 1949-1969 . Dissertation, University of Kiel, 1994, p. 116 ff.
  18. ^ Frank Hagemann: The investigation committee of freedom lawyers 1949-1969 . Dissertation, University of Kiel, 1994, p. 121
  19. ↑ https://buchfindr.de/buecher/operation-falsche-flagge/