Johann Burianek

Johann Burianek

Johann Burianek in the dock at the High Court in Berlin (23 May 1952)
Born 16 November 1913
Düsseldorf, Rhine Province, Prussia, Germany
Died 2 October 1952
Dresden, East Germany
Nationality German
Occupation Civil rights militant
Show trial victim

Johann Burianek (born Düsseldorf 16 November 1913: executed Dresden 2 October 1952) was a militant campaigner against the one party dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic[1] and a member of the "Struggle against Inhumanty" group (KgU / Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit).

In a 1952 show trial he was condemned to death in the country's Supreme Court[2] for preparing attacks on railway bridges. He was the first person to receive a death sentence from the new country's justice system.

Life

Early years

Johann Burianek was born in the Rheinland at Düsseldorf, the son of a master shoe maker.[3] He underwent an apprenticeship as a machinist and in 1932 relocated to Czechoslovakia, taking Czechoslovak nationality in 1932/33.[3] He served in the German airforce during the 1930s and in 1939 took back his German nationality.[3]

The good soldier?

During the Second World War Burianek served in the German army. In the final days of the war he arrested a deserting soldier whom he then delivered to his military headquarters. Because of this, in November 1949 Burianek was sentenced, by a court in what was by now becoming the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), to a year in prison for crimes against humanity.

A civilian dissident in the Democratic Republic

He was released on probation in April 1950 having served barely half of the sentence. He found work as a truck driver with the Volkseigener Betrieb (publicly owned business) Secura-Mechanik.[4] Between July 1950 and March 1951 he smuggled several thousand copies of the western newsheets Kleiner Telegraf and Tarantel into the Soviet sector of Berlin. In March 1951 he joined a militant opposition group called "Struggle against Inhumanty" group (KgU / Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit) which was then being established by Rainer Hildebrandt with backing from the Americans.[5] His contributions to the work of the KgU included numerous acts of sabotage and unsuccessful arson attacks[6] on the 1951 World Festival of Youth and Students.

His most ambitious project, planned for 21 February 1952, would have involved blowing up a railway bridge at Erkner, on the south-eastern edge of Berlin, which would have de-railed the "Blue Express", the long-distance train running between Berlin and Moscow via Warsaw. He knew that this might cause fatalities. The necessary explosives would be provided by the KgU. However, the project failed to progress beyond the planning stage, probably because it proved impossible to get hold of a suitable truck to carry the explosives.[7]

On 5 March 1952 East German state officials arrested Johann Burianek.

Trial and execution

Some ten weeks later, on 15 May 1952, Burianek found himself at the centre of a large show trial in the Supreme Court.[8] The presiding judge was Hilde Benjamin, the court's vice-president. The accusation against Burianek was that he was an agent of the KgU.

The court delivered its verdict on 25 May 1952, and Johann Burianek became the first defendant in the German Democratic Republic to receive a death sentence. The country had inherited, in Dresden, a Central Execution Facility from the previous regime, and it was here, slightly more than two months after receiving his sentence, that Burianek was executed, with a guillotine that was another legacy of Hitler's justice system.[9]

Rehabilitation by the Berlin regional court

In 2005 Johann Burianek's conviction was found to have been unconstitutional, because of "serious disregard for basic rules [of justice]"[9][10] in the original trial. The 1952 verdict was reversed. This reversal arose from an initiative by the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August" organisation[11] which had been established, like the KgU before it, by Rainer Hildebrandt, and which now successfully applied to the Berlin District Court to have the 1992 Criminal Rehabilitation Act invoked for the Burianek case. In a judgement delivered on 2 September 2005, the court also held that between his arrest on 5 March 1952 and his execution on 2 August 1952 Johann Burianek had been unlawfully deprived of his freedom.[12][13]

Defamation of Burianek's memory

In Germany, under §189 of the Criminal code, defamation of the memory of a deceased person is a criminal offence which upon conviction may attract a fine or a prison term of up to two years.[14] The Burianek case hit the headlines again in 2012 and 2013 on account of a former Stasi officer, Colonel Wolfgang Schmidt,[9] who used his internet site to describe Burianek as a "bandit" and as the "leader of a terrorist organisation".[9][15] On 27 September 2012 Schmidt was convicted under §189 in respect of the matter by a court which evidently accepted that Schmidt's characterizations of Burianek had been false and defamatory. The court ordered Schmidt to pay a fine of €1,200.[9]

The action against Schmidt had been triggered by Hubertus Knabe, the director of the Hohenschönhausen Memorial Museum on the northern edge of Berlin.[16][17] It was not the first time Knabe and Schmidt had come across one another, Schmidt already having been fined €2,100 in 2009 for calling Knabe himself a "publicly unrestrained rabble rouser" ("öffentlich und ungestraft als Volksverhetzer") in connection with Knabe's earlier work on the Stasi.[16][18]

Schmidt appealed against the €1,200 fine, imposed under §189 for defaming the memory of Johann Burianek, but on 18 March 2013 the District Court rejected his appeal.[19][20] Knabe welcomed the court's verdict: "I am pleased that the Justice System stands up against historical revisionism from former Stasi operatives. Even today, we must not allow the perpetrators to denigrate their victims in public."[9][21] He also stressed the fundamental significance of a court decision which, for the first time, extended §189 of the Criminal code to include defamation of the memory of a victim of the old German Democratic Republic's One party dictatorship.

In a subsequent television interview Knabe, who is also known for his work as an historian, took the opportunity to highlight the way in which the Burianek show trial represented one of the darkest chapters in the history of East German justice because the Berlin Supreme Court had condemned a man to death not for anything he had done, but purely on account of something they believed he had planned to do.[22]

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Hubertus Knabe: Die Täter sind unter uns: über das Schönreden der SED-Diktatur, S.277
  2. ↑ Editor in chief: Rudolf Augstein (19 November 1952). "WIDERSTAND ....verurteilt worden: Werner Tocha, 20, zu 9 Jahren Gefängnis, Gerhard Blume, 20, zu 8 Jahren Gefängnis, Gerhard Schultz, 20, zu 5 Jahren, Johann Burianek, Todesstrafe, Wolfgang Kaiser, Todesstrafe.". Der Spiegel (online). Retrieved 27 October 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk. "Burianek, Johann * 16.11.1913, † 2.8.1952 Widerstandskämpfer, Schauprozeßopfer". Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
  4. ↑ Urteil des Obersten Gerichtes der DDR vom 25. Mai 1952 gegen Burianek (1 Zst (I) 6/52 ) made public in Entscheidungen des obersten Gerichts der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Vol. 1 (1952), Deutscher Zentralverlag, Pages 230 – 280
  5. ↑ Editor in chief: Rudolf Augstein (2 July 1958). "GEHEIMDIENSTE / TILLICH: ... "Der erste in einer langen Reihe von gutgläubigen Widerstandskämpfern, die ihre Verbindung zur KgU mit dem Tode büßen mußten,war der Kraftfahrer Ernst Burianek. Sein Schicksal ist typisch für viele ähnliche....". Der Spiegel (online). Retrieved 27 October 2014.
  6. ↑ Siegfried Lokatis: Heimliche Leser in der DDR: Kontrolle und Verbreitung unerlaubter Literatur, Ch. Links Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86153-494-5. S. 147 auf Google Books
  7. ↑ Karl Wilhelm Fricke, Roger Engelmann: Konzentrierte Schläge Staatssicherheitsaktionen u. polit. Prozesse in der DDR 1953 – 1956, Berlin 1998
  8. ↑ Falco Werkentin: Politische Strafjustiz in der Ära Ulbricht: Vom bekennenden Terror zur verdeckten Repression, Ch. Links Verlag, 1997, ISBN 978-3-86153-150-0.auf Google Books
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 sfk (26 March 2013). "Stasi-Oberst wegen Geschichtsfälschung verurteilt: Nach Überzeugung des Berliner Landgerichts hat der frühere MfS-Offizier Wolfgang Schmidt einen DDR-Widerstandskämpfer verunglimpft, der 1952 per Fallbeil hingerichtet worden war.". Die Welt (online). Retrieved 27 October 2014.
  10. ↑ ..."gravierender Missachtung elementarer materieller Vorschriften"
  11. ↑ The significance of the date was that on 13 August 1961 the East German authorities had started to build the Berlin Wall.
  12. ↑ Werner van Bebber: Tod an der Front des Kalten Krieges. In: Der Tagesspiegel vom 9. Oktober 2005.
  13. ↑ Landgericht Berlin: Beschluss vom 2. September 2005 – (551 Rh) 3 Js 28.9/05 (361/05).
  14. ↑ "§ 189 Verunglimpfung des Andenkens Verstorbener". Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, Berlin. Retrieved 27 October 2014.
  15. ↑ „Anführer einer terroristischen Vereinigung“
  16. 1 2 "Ex-Stasi-Oberst wegen Verunglimpfung verurteilt: Stasi-Verein hatte hingerichtetes SED-Opfer als "Banditen" bezeichnet". Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen,Genslerstraße 66, 13055 Berlin. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
  17. ↑ The Hohenschönhausen Memorial Museum was opened in 1994 on the site of what had previously been run by the Stasi as a (still well-remembered) political prison.
  18. ↑ Peter Kirschey: Persilschein für Bombenleger. neues deutschland vom 3. Dezember 2012.
  19. ↑ Geldstrafe wegen Verunglimpfung. neues deutschland vom 19. März 2013, S. 6.
  20. ↑ http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/wegen-verunglimpfung-frueherer-stasi-oberst-wird-zu-geldstrafe-verurteilt/7988976.html
  21. ↑ "Ich freue mich, dass die Justiz dem Geschichtsrevisionismus ehemaliger Stasi-Mitarbeiter entgegentritt. Es kann nicht sein, dass die Täter ihre Opfer auch heute noch öffentlich herabwürdigen."
  22. ↑ "Interview mit Hubertus Knabe - Die Justiz als Schwert im Klassenkampf ".... Diese beiden Todesurteile gehören mit zu den dunkelsten Kapiteln der SED-Justiz, weil es sich nicht um die Verfolgung von Taten handelte, sondern um Planungen, die dann aus politischen Gründen in dieser drastischen Art und Weise geahndet wurden."". Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (television interview transcript). 4 August 2013. Retrieved 28 October 2014.
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