Wolfgang Kaiser (KgU)
Wolfgang Kaiser (born February 16, 1924 in Leipzig , † September 6, 1952 in Dresden ) was a member of the Combat Group against Inhumanity (KgU). The Supreme Court of the GDR (OG) sentenced him to death in August 1952 in a show trial as chief chemist of the KgU . Immediately preceded was the trial against KgU member Johann Burianek , in which the OG first imposed a death sentence for inciting war and boycotting . From then on, the propaganda of the GDR relied on the findings of the court in its representations of the KgU and West Berlin .
Life
Wolfgang Kaiser was a chemistry student at the Humboldt University in East Berlin , but lived in West Berlin. In view of the split in Berlin, he was faced with a difficult life situation. A change of study place to the newly founded West Berlin Free University failed, whereby Kaiser lost his study place. In October 1950 the emperor, who was unemployed, offered the KgU to work as a chemist out of political sympathy. From the beginning of 1951, Kaiser provided a former rabbit hutch in the garden at the headquarters of the KgU in Berlin-Nikolassee , and later three basement rooms that belonged to an apartment rented by the KgU on Kurfürstendamm No. 106 in Berlin-Halensee . Kaiser, who continued to receive unemployment benefits , was not an employee of the KgU, but received a monthly fee of initially 50, from May 1, 1951 100 DM .
Kaiser made fuses for leaflet balloons , from which the KgU had leaflets, newspapers and other publications rain down over the GDR in large quantities. In addition, he produced smoke and stink bombs and incendiary devices for setting propaganda boards on fire. The latter was the "resistance department" of kgU in the form of two cubic centimeters large glass ampoules from their contractors in the GDR. In his rooms Kaiser had a large number of ampoules and apparently experimented with many substances purchased in small quantities.
Relations with the Ministry of State Security
Kaiser’s activities and his identity became known to the Ministry for State Security of the GDR (MfS) through the secret employee (GM) Gustav Buciek (1902 – after 1961). Since 1951 the KgU employed him as a messenger. As an employee of the small telegraph , Buciek had been blackmailed into secret cooperation by the Stasi in March 1951 because of his criminal past. According to Buciek's report, there were neither laboratory equipment nor chemotechnical systems in Kaiser's “laboratory” .
Kaiser bought the chemicals for his experiments and products in the glasses drugstore . The MfS had recruited its owner as a GM. Occasionally, while shopping, Kaiser made comments about upcoming "major campaigns" that GM glasses reported to the MfS. From Buciek's and Glaser's information about the laboratory and the amount and type of purchases, the MfS reconstructed that Kaiser could produce "invisible" ink, explosives , acids to erode metal and other means suitable for acts of sabotage .
As the third GM, the MfS put his East Berlin student friend Wolfgang Baumbach on Kaiser, who initially tried to persuade him to stop working for the KgU with political arguments. Ultimately, GM Baumbach presented himself to Kaiser as a “ full-time MfS employee” and paid him, “who liked to talk to alcohol” and was in constant financial need, for information about the KgU amounts of 20 to 30 DM known to the MfS Baumbach's private deconspiracy and also that he discussed his reports to the commanding officer with Kaiser. After Kaiser had betrayed a KgU leaflet campaign planned for May 1, 1952, Baumbach offered him a resumption of studies at Humboldt University while at the same time "working with the MfS".
Arrest and prosecution
On May 8, 1952, Kaiser, probably under the influence of alcohol, accepted the alleged offer of the MfS and reported, armed with a pistol , a manslaughter and a cigarette soaked with a narcotic, accompanied by GM Baumbach, who was also armed, at 3 a.m. on an Ost -Berlin police station . Both were arrested .
The following day the Berlin-Mitte District Court accused Kaiser of "endangering world peace and carrying out sabotage and diversionary acts by performing espionage assignments as an agent of the Ildebrandt's [sic!] Terror and espionage organization and actively producing explosives, Phosphorus ampoules, incendiary devices [sic!] Etc. was involved in the conduct of acts of sabotage ”and issued an arrest warrant . Both were handed over to the MfS. After the MfS investigators had established that Kaiser was not known to any of the prisoners with KgU contacts in the prisons of the GDR and the Soviet occupation forces, they assigned him to a trial before the Supreme Court against three members of the KgU from the GDR, the couple Müller from Zerpenschleuse and the financial clerk Kurt Hoppe from Potsdam .
The incendiary devices and sabotage implements intended for Müller and other unknown saboteurs were manufactured by Kaiser, according to his own admission. Hoppe had made it possible for the KgU to pass on messages as well as original forms and circulars from the financial sector "administrative disruptions" to the GDR economy. Except for the spouses, the accused were not known to each other.
Show trial
In the submarine imprisoned in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, the defendants were prepared by the Stasi for hearing before the Supreme Court. There, in the presence of a Soviet officer, Melsheimer threatened Müller that he would “plead for the death penalty” if the latter did not state “what is in the indictment”. Hilde Benjamin , the “Vice-President of the OG”, had announced to the defense lawyers in a preliminary meeting that no death penalty was to be expected.
The trial before the Supreme Court began under Benjamin's chairmanship on August 8, 1952, in the presence of numerous journalists from East and West. The Berlin radio broadcast excerpts. According to the impression of Kaiser's defense attorney Büsing, the Stasi had "treated" the accused. During the trial, they had "burdened themselves with things that were neither known to the defense nor to be found in the files." Attorney General Ernst Melsheimer presented Emperor is as "head of the chemical engineering laboratories of kgU." During the interrogation of an expert came out that the Emperor with potassium chlorate and ammonium nitrate stocked and got to Burianek not "explosive case" for blasting the railway bridge at Erkner suitable was, but at most to melt the rails. Melsheimer covered this up by describing the possible setting on fire of the bridge as "going up", which the expert did not contradict.
Melsheimer was particularly interested in the 25 grams of the neurotoxin cantharidin purchased by Kaiser . Although the resistance department of the KgU had distributed the poison in doses to some contact people in the GDR, no use by them has become known. The use of the poison was therefore only mentioned as a possibility in the process. Melsheimer stated that under the prerequisite "the best possible intravenous use", 25,000 people could be killed with this amount.
Death sentence and execution
According to Büsing, on the second day of the trial, Benjamin said in the break before the pleading by the attorney general that "on the instructions of their friends ", that is, the Soviet advisors , Kaiser had to be sentenced to death. In the grounds for the verdict, Benjamin summarized the plans and projects of the KgU, which had been described in abundance by the defendants during the trial. According to the judgment of the OG, the fact that none of the “devious plans” was carried out was due to the “vigilance of the security organs”. The death sentence against Kaiser, the "incorrigible enemy of the working people", was passed on that day, August 9, 1952. Müller received life imprisonment , his wife ten and Hoppe twelve years in prison .
According to Müller, because of a promise made by the MfS, Kaiser believed that he would only be sentenced to death on a pretext. Kaiser told him during the trial that he had a "luxury cell" and that he had been assured of impunity if he would present himself and be willing to incriminate the KgU in the process.
The Kaiser's father, who lives in West Berlin, sent a petition for clemency to GDR President Wilhelm Pieck on August 15 . Two attached medical certificates indicated "nervous illnesses and treatments" of his son. Benjamin wrote to Pieck on August 18 that Kaiser had neither raised doubts about his mental health nor referred to illnesses. On September 1, Melsheimer received a letter of appeal from Heinrich Grüber , the General Plenipotentiary of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) with the government of the GDR . Grüber hoped that the death sentence would be commuted to life imprisonment and asked for spiritual assistance for Kaiser in the event of an execution . As early as September 2, the public prosecutor's office in the GDR asked his father to consult. However, Kaiser died on September 5th without spiritual assistance under the guillotine in the central execution site on Münchener Platz in Dresden, before the letter had reached his father.
An attempt by Walter Friedeberger , the director of the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden , to obtain the " human organs " of the Emperor and Burianeks in August 1952 failed.
Afterlife
The background to a series of show trials in 1952 against members of the KgU was the announcement of the “planned construction of socialism” by Walter Ulbricht at the 2nd party conference of the SED from July 9 to 12, 1952, in a climate of “increasing revolutionary vigilance "And the" intensification of the class struggle "took place.
The KgU appeared as a murder and terrorist organization led by the American secret service, the accused had planned acts of sabotage, murder and terrorist attacks. To Kaiser and the other convicts it was said, "their brutality and sadism know no bounds ... even the life and health of women and children are threatened by them". In later negotiations against the KgU, the "poisonous emperor" was mentioned in the same breath as the "railway bomber Burianek". Although there was no evidence of the demolition of any objects or poison attacks by the KgU and no names of the GDR functionaries intended to be murdered were found, the process made an impression on the western public. At the end of 1952, for example, as a result of the show trials, “it was evidently by no means completely convinced of the total lack of grounding of the communist accusations”. It was not noticed that the accounts of the KgU in the news magazine Der Spiegel from the 1950s did not contain any statements that were not already known from GDR propaganda.
Through the "stupid process" of wanting to use poison as a weapon, the KgU had charged itself with a "poison problem" that it could no longer get rid of. The use of incendiary devices and "explosive suitcases" in the GDR, which had come up in the trials against Burianek and Kaiser, resulted in the KgU's initial loss of confidence and reputation in terms of its resistance methods. The GDR propaganda used the processes to criminalize any opposition, behind which it has been proven that the "American secret service" always stands. The SED functionary Albert Norden described West Berlin as a “viper's nest”, where the gangsters “who are supposed to make the life of Germans a hell” come from. The scapegoat theory developed by the SED , which explained economic difficulties, failures, and the June 17 uprising , dates back to the trials of 1952. In 1959, the prosecution also referred to the results of the Kaiser trial when characterizing the KgU as a “sabotage and murder organization” in show trials surrounding the Berlin crisis .
It was not until June 3, 1954 that a spokesman for the Stasi reported the execution of the emperor during preparations for the first anniversary of June 17 . He did not give the exact date.
classification
The historian Hubertus Knabe regards the judgment as one of the darkest chapters of the SED justice, because it was not deeds that were prosecuted, but plans that were punished in a drastic manner.
literature
- Gerhard Finn: doing nothing is murder. The fighting group against inhumanity - KgU , Westkreuz-Verlag, Bad Münstereifel 2000, ISBN 3-929592-54-1 , especially pp. 124-136
- Kai-Uwe Merz: Cold War as anti-communist resistance. The Combat Group against Inhumanity 1948–1959 (= Studies on Contemporary History, Volume 34), Oldenbourg, Munich 1987
Web links
- Recording of the GDR radio report on the show trial against Wolfgang Kaiser, RIAS, August 12, 1952 (MP3 file; 2.57 MB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ On this and on the following Finn (see list of references) p. 124ff., Always with evidence, on the status p. 126
- ↑ Since the Whitsun meeting of the FDJ in May 1950, see Finn (Lit.), p. 43, Merz (Lit.) p. 131.
- ↑ Finn, pp. 73-77
- ↑ Buciek's report is printed in Finn, pp. 124f.
- ↑ Finn quotes from an interrogation of Baumbach on May 10, 1952, p. 126, there also his invented MfS offer to Kaiser
- ↑ Finn's arrest warrant, p. 127
- ↑ In January 1952, the Public Prosecutor General and Justice Minister of the GDR announced special guidelines for the preparation of show trials in a “joint circular” to the public prosecutor's offices and courts, partly in full from Karl Wilhelm Fricke: Politics and Justice in the GDR. On the history of political persecution 1945–1968. Report and documentation . Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-8046-8568-4 , pp. 273f.
- ↑ Finn, p. 130, there also the following
- ^ Information from the defender of Kaiser, "Dr. Büsing ". See Finn on p. 130. Büsing fled from East to West Berlin after the trial and made several statements there to the KgU.
- ↑ Finn refers to the MfS report on the contents of the suitcase, p. 131, and cites Melsheimer's exchange with the expert from the trial protocol, p. 132
- ↑ Karl Wilhelm Fricke , Roger Engelmann : "Concentrated Beats": State Security Actions and Political Processes, BStU series of publications , 11, p. 87, online
- ↑ Rudi Beckert: The first and last instance. Show and secret trials before the Supreme Court of the GDR . Keip Verlag, Goldbach 1995, ISBN 3-8051-0243-7 , p. 249f.
- ^ Finn, p. 134
- ↑ Joachim Müller has published his memoirs: For the freedom of Berlin. Memories of a resistance fighter against the SED regime from the very beginning. Haag and Herchen, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-89228-627-2 , on Kaiser's mistake and on the luxury cell, pp. 62f.
- ↑ For this and the following see Finn, p. 135
- ↑ In his answer "for health reasons", the father asked for written completion; more is not known, Finn, p. 135f.
- ↑ Finn, pp. 134f.
- ↑ On the Merz show trials series, pp. 164–169
- ↑ Merz, p. 159 quoted from the GDR publication Inhenschlichkeit. Facts about criminals of the "Combat Group Against Inhumanity". Congress publishing house, Berlin 1955.
- ↑ Beckert, p. 258
- ↑ Finn, p. 50, also Beckert, p. 250
- ↑ Merz, p. 183
- ↑ Merz points out, p. 163. He considers the uncritical adoption of information on the activity of “KgU agents” from the show trials by Western reporting to be “typical”.
- ^ Finn, p. 133
- ↑ Summary of the consequences in Merz, pp. 171–174, quotation from Norden and scapegoat theory, p. 172
- ↑ Beckert, p. 307
- ↑ Merz, p. 202
- ↑ With particular hardship , MDR Zeitreise dated August 4, 2013, queried on January 21, 2017
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kaiser, Wolfgang |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German member of the combat group against inhumanity, executed in the GDR |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 16, 1924 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Leipzig |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 6, 1952 |
| Place of death | Dresden |