Central registration office of the state justice administrations

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Former headquarters in Salzgitter-Bad (2012)

The Central Evidence and Documentation Office of the State Judicial Administrations in Salzgitter existed from 1961 to 1992 and began work on November 24, 1961 in Salzgitter-Bad . Its task was to investigate evidence of completed or attempted killing (for example on the inner-German border ), unjust judgments for political reasons, mistreatment in prison and kidnapping or political persecution in the GDR and to collect evidence about them. This should serve to deter potential perpetrators and thus lead to a relief of living conditions in the GDR. In the long term, the information should serve to open criminal proceedings in the event of German reunification . According to the Salzgitter city administration, it was also a matter of "naming those responsible at a time when criminal prosecution was not possible, giving names to the perpetrators and giving the victims the hope of reparation for the injustice they suffered."

The central registration office (ZESt) was set up at the request of the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt . Brandt wanted to create an "organizational basis for a nationwide and comprehensive prosecution of the crimes committed by the perpetrators of the SED ".

Brandt named the " Central Office of the State Judicial Administrations for Solving National Socialist Crimes " in Ludwigsburg , founded in 1958 and highly regarded at the time, as a model.

method

The ZESt mainly collected and documented testimony from GDR citizens who had fled to the Federal Republic . The ZESt also recorded statements from West German eyewitnesses and took photos of crime scenes, particularly in the matter of the persecution of refugees at the inner-German border (e.g. in the event of unsuccessful attempts to escape).

The ZESt did not have an archive function. The public prosecutors deployed there all belonged to the public prosecutor's office at the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court . Their task was to initiate preliminary investigations if there was “suspicion of criminal activity”. A catalog of the Justice Ministers' Conference was defined for this purpose ; The justice ministers later rejected any additions to this catalog. For example, there has been a discussion since 1975 about including forced adoptions in this catalog. Since this proposal could not be implemented, Salzgitter has no knowledge of any kind in this area of ​​family law.

Position of the GDR

In official statements from the GDR, the ZESt was repeatedly referred to as an institution of revanchism and its activities as gross interference in the internal affairs of the GDR .

The resolution of the Central Registration Office was one of four in 1980 by the East German leadership under Erich Honecker raised Gera demands .

financing

For decades there was joint funding from all federal states .

A few years later, the SPD supported the GDR's call for the registration office to be closed. The SPD parliamentary group decided in 1984 in a unanimous decision: “The central registration office in Salzgitter is ineffective and superfluous.” Hans-Jochen Vogel spoke out in front of the Bundestag in March 1986 for its abolition, and from January 1988 the SPD-ruled Saarland federal states ended under the SPD chancellor candidate Oskar Lafontaine and North Rhine-Westphalia under Johannes Rau the grants for the registration office. This led to heated discussions about the German question .

The cancellation plans were justified with doubts about the meaning and timeliness of the ZESt. Representatives of the CDU / CSU rated this procedure as a “lack of human solidarity with the residents of the GDR” and as a buckling in front of the Gera demands of Erich Honecker and the GDR leadership.

In December 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Der Spiegel wrote :

“Above all, the SPD saw change through rapprochement that made less and less sense in continually accusing the Eastern rulers of atrocities. All SPD-governed federal states gradually stopped their payments for the authorities' budget of currently 250,000 marks annually. Republicans, regional associations of the Junge Union and the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP then began to collect money to maintain the office. As a precaution, the federal government had already provided 100,000 marks to prevent the collapse of the ministry. "

After reunification, some politicians, e. B. Hans-Jochen Vogel suggested that it was a mistake to have called for the registration office to be abolished.

Use of the information collected

In the case of applicants from East Germany for the public service , the ZESt provided information about the personal data for establishing a possible criminal offense in the territory of the former GDR, the type of offense and the duration of a conviction .

For some, the ZESt also meant being able to make one's inner peace. For example, Hans-Jürgen Grasemann, deputy director in Salzgitter from 1988 to 1994, said in a radio interview in November 1989 that it will soon be possible to rehabilitate former prisoners who were imprisoned because of illegal political judgments.

Grasemann reported from an 85-year-old:

“He didn't want any money, just this rehabilitation certificate. [...] His children should know that although he sat in Bautzen for five years , he was not a criminal. "

In the months after the fall of the Wall, many voices were raised in the GDR calling for the past and the injustice that had happened to be dealt with. (see also the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records ; this authority was created for similar reasons).

The ZESt documents were important documents in the wall rifle trials .

After reunification

Memorial for the central registration point in Salzgitter-Bad in front of the former headquarters of the ZESt

With the German reunification in 1990 the task of the ZESt was fulfilled, the prosecution of criminal offenses was now taken over by the local law enforcement authorities in the new federal states. In 1990, preliminary investigation files on a total of around 40,000 cases were handed over to the local public prosecutor's offices, where they supplemented the (mostly more detailed) files of the GDR authorities on these cases. The ZESt was therefore closed in 1992. From 1961 to 1992 the ZESt registered over 42,000 acts of violence in the GDR.

The CDU / CSU occasionally held against the SPD their discontinuation of ZESt funding as an indication that they had no longer strived for or wanted reunification at that time. In 1993/94 the SPD launched a position paper (title: "Who sits in a glass house ...") with a list of confidential meetings between top Union politicians and GDR officials (e.g. Franz Josef Strauss (1915–1988), who met for more than 20 years -times met with Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski).

The authority's files were stored at the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court until 2007 and in the Federal Archives in Koblenz since 2007 .

To ensure that the ZESt and its activities are not forgotten, the city's administrative committee unanimously commissioned the Salzgitter city administration in November 2007 to develop a proposal for a “visible sign” in the form of a memorial , memorial stone or plaque . On November 9, 2009 (20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall), a section of the former Berlin Wall, labeled with a bronze plate, was unveiled as a memorial. It stands in front of the former building of the ZESt in Salzgitter-Bad .

See also

literature

  • Sauer, Heiner / Plumeyer, Hans O: The Salzgitter Report - The central registration office reports on crimes in the SED state, 1991, ISBN 3762804974

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ^ City of Salzgitter: Central registration office
  2. ↑ uni-hildesheim.de, lecture winter semester 2008/09: An injustice border in Europe - the central registration point in Salzgitter
  3. ↑ Friedrich Ebert Foundation (PDF file; 258 kB)
  4. ↑ Uwe Müller: Oskar Lafontäine, the grandson of Erich Honecker, in: WeltOnline
  5. ↑ Michael Richter : The Peaceful Revolution. Departure to democracy in Saxony 1989/90. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, ISBN 978-3-525-36914-2 , p. 50
  6. ↑ a b Flood in the files - East Berlin scouts now want the documents from the West German collection point for GDR crimes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1989, pp. 66-69 ( Online - Dec. 18, 1989 ).
  7. ↑ kas.de CV (PDF file; 41 kB)
  8. ↑ Interview with Grasemann, 2009
  9. ↑ Eberhard Vogt: Germany: The fairy tale of the "Siegerjustiz". In: Focus Online . October 7, 1996, accessed October 14, 2018 .
  10. ↑ spiegel.de
  11. ↑ Federal Archives - Activity Report 2007/2008, page 37 (PDF, 5.8 MB)
  12. ↑ Press release from the City of Salzgitter on the inauguration of the memorial on November 9, 2009

Coordinates: 52 ° 2 ′ 57.6 ″  N , 10 ° 22 ′ 33.6 ″  E