The trial of Erich
GERMANY lar against fascist violence and police attacks. These groups consisted of three or four men, one of whom had a firearm, often without the other members of the group knowing who this was.
Thirdly, under the direction of Hans Kippenberger, there was the Anti-Military Apparatus (AM-Apparat). In case of a real
GERMANY is currently seeing a wave of administrative measures against former leading officials of the nowdefunct German Democratic Republic (East Germany), among them the trial of Erich Milke, former head of the
GDR secret police. While Mielke is evidently guilty of the innumerable crimes attendant on his former office, he is not standing trial for these; brutality in defence of the state is no more recognized as a crime in the countries of really existing capitalism as it was under the Stalinist dictatorships.
Instead he is charged with being involved in the murder of two notoriously brutal policemen over 60 years ago. That is to say, not with defending the state against the people, but with alleged involvement in an act of revenge against state brutality.
The following article gives the historical background to the trial. It first appeared in the February 27, 1992 issue of
Sozialistische Zeitung, paper of the German United
Socialist Party.
GEORG FÜLBERTH
N February 10, 1992 the trial began of the former Minister of State Security of the GDR,
Erich Mielke. He has been accused of taking part in the shooting of two policemen on August 9, 1931 in Berlin's Bülowplatz.
The trial itself is a farce. It is disputable whether the defendant is able to stand trial.
The crime itself took place almost 61 years ago and would have been covered by a statute of limitations if it really is a case of murder, which remains to be established.
The court has already stated that the criminal proceedings have been brought repeatedly, so that the customary period has never elapsed. But this is a dubious notion.
If it were a matter of manslaughter, then the case would certainly have expired.
There are no witnesses to the deed, no proof and no confession from Mielke. Thus it is a pure and simple question of looking at the records. Insofar as there is incriminating material, it originates in a case brought during the Nazi period which names Mielke. The statements were obtained under torture, and besides it is normal for political prisoners to incriminate comrades who they know to be safe, independently of whether they had anything to do with the act in question. If Mielke were to be found guilty this would be a perversion of justice.
It is quite obvious that the aim is to punish Mielke for his activity as head of the ministry of state security, but it has proved impossible to find the right legal grounds. In order to offer something to the - real or alleged - popular anger, the old case of the Bülowplatz has been dug up.
The background to the case is as follows.
It is well known that from 1929 onwards the German Communist Party (KPD) pursued an ultra-left course. It claimed - as did the whole of the Communist International after the 6th World Congress of 1928 — that there was an immediate revolutionary situation. The only way out for the bourgeoisie was fascism. In such a situation parliamentary democracy was finished and the social democracy, which still supported it, thus objectively aided fascism. From this developed the thesis of "social fascism".
The prediction of an immediate decisive clash put the question of armed struggle on the agenda. Since the mid-1920s there had existed the Red Front fighting organization, which was an organization of former combattants that had the job of guarding party meetings.
At the start of the 1930s the KPD founded self-defence groups. These also had first of all a protective function in particurevolutionary crisis it would undertake operations. At periods of relative calm it would be on stand-by. At the same time it provided a kind of secret service in opposition to the subversion and violence of the state and the fascists. It is highly probable that it was closely connected with the corresponding Soviet agencies.
The preparation for violent events was not only a product of strategic misestimates or pure paranoia. In fact, in the final years of the Weimar republic, there were many instances of armed clashes not only with Nazi units but also with the police.
On May, 1929, the latter fired on demonstrating workers in Berlin, killing 31. When you read press reports of the time you are amazed at how easily the police resorted to shooting. Two out of many examples: in 1931, police in Leipzig fired on a demonstration of the unemployed, killing four. In Langenselbold bei Hanau in July 1932 a police officer fired on a meeting of the unemployed killing two women and a man. At the burial a police guard and a worker also died. Such reports could be multiplied.
In Prussia the responsible interior minister was a social democrat and for the Bloody May Day of 1929, a social democratic police chief (Zörgiebel). In these circumstances the KPD's ultra-leftism could be justified in the eyes of the party membership, even if the policy was not the result of such attacks.
### Ultra-left adventures
In this case any party central committee, which, in the face of these attacks and daily growing unemployment, wanted to implement a carefully thought out policy, would have had to use all its skill not to lose contact with rank-and-file anger. The KPD leadership instead preferred to engage in adventurist manoeuvres. The worst was the the support for a referendum on the dissolution of the Prussian parliament which had been proposed by the German National People's Party and the Nazis in April 1931. On August 9 the vote took place. The motion fell, revealing the great isolation of the KPD from the working class, and above all from the base of the social democracy on this question.
Immediately after the the news of this event became known, two police officers, Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenk, were shot on Berlin's Bülowplatz, in the vicinity of Karl 5 Liebknecht house where the KPD Central
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
Mielke
International Viewpoint # 225• March 30, 1992