Ministry of Justice (East Germany)

Last updated November 19, 2019

The Ministry of Justice of the German Democratic Republic (German: Justizministerium der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik) was established in 1949 in East Germany and dissolved in 1990. Its duties were subsequently taken up by the federal Ministry of Justice of the united Germany, and the justice ministries of the six new federal states. The Ministry was housed at 93 Dorothea Street (Dorotheenstraße 93), the former offices of the Weimar and Nazi Interior Ministry. It published the journal Neue Justiz .

German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol in Italy, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and Liechtenstein. It is one of the three official languages of Luxembourg and a co-official language in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland. The languages that are most similar to German are the other members of the West Germanic language branch, including Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German/Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish. There are strong similarities in vocabulary with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although those belong to the North Germanic group. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English.

East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic, was a state that existed from 1949 to 1990, when the eastern portion of Germany was part of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Commonly described as a communist state in English usage, it described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state." It consisted of territory that was administered and occupied by Soviet forces at the end of World War II — the Soviet occupation zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin but did not include it; as a result, West Berlin remained outside the jurisdiction of the GDR.

History

After the Second World War and the collapse of Nazism in May 1945, Germany was divided into four zones of occupation, with the area that would become East Germany occupied by the Soviet Union. It was governed by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, (German: Sowjetische Militäradministration in Deutschland (SMA)). On 17 July 1945, the SMAD issued Order No. 17, which established a judicial system in the Soviet occupation zone. The German Central Administration for Justice (German: Deutsche Zentralverwaltung für Justiz (DJV)) was subsequently founded in November 1945, with the SMAD appointing Eugen Schiffer as their first DJV president, though he was dismissed and replaced in 1948 with Max Fechner. In 1949, with the founding of the German Democratic Republic as a nominally independent state, the DJV was transformed into the Ministry of Justice.

National Socialism, more commonly known as Nazism, is the ideology and practices associated with the Nazi Party—officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party —in Nazi Germany, and of other far-right groups with similar ideas and aims.

Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central and Western Europe, lying between the Baltic and North Seas to the north and the Alps, Lake Constance, and the High Rhine to the south. It borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, France to the southwest, and Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands to the west.

Upon defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the victorious Allies asserted joint authority and sovereignty over 'Germany as a whole', defined as all territories of the former German Reich west of the Oder–Neisse line, having declared the destruction of Nazi Germany at the death of Adolf Hitler. The four powers divided 'Germany as a whole' into four occupation zones for administrative purposes, under the United States, United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union respectively; creating what became collectively known as Allied-occupied Germany. This division was ratified at the Potsdam Conference. The four zones were as agreed in February 1945 by the United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Union meeting at the Yalta Conference; setting aside an earlier division into three zones proposed by the London Protocol.

Max Fechner was appointed the first Minister of Justice. By this time, the judiciary had already been brought into line with communist policy. Though mentioned in the Constitution of East Germany, there was no guarantee of judicial independence. The use of Volksrichter (English People's Judges) also helped to bring the courts closer to the SED. In 1953, the Länder of the Eastern Zone were abolished, and their Justice Ministries became part of the central ministry. After speaking critically of the prosecution of strikers in the protests of June 1953 in an interview with Neues Deutschland, Fechner was removed from office, denounced as an "enemy of the state and the party" and spent three years in prison and Stasi internment. He was replaced by Hilde Benjamin, who had presided over the show trials of the 1950s.

The German Democratic Republic was founded in 1949 and was absorbed into the Federal Republic of Germany on 3 October 1990. Its original constitution was promulgated on 7 October 1949. It was heavily based on the "Weimarer Reichsverfassung", such that the GDR would be a federal and democratic republic. Because the original version did not accurately reflect the actual political climate of the GDR, it was decided in 1968 to replace the old constitution with a new version.

Judicial independence is the concept that the judiciary should be independent from the other branches of government. That is, courts should not be subject to improper influence from the other branches of government or from private or partisan interests. Judicial independence is important to the idea of separation of powers.

English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and eventually became a global lingua franca. It is named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to the area of Great Britain that later took their name, as England. Both names derive from Anglia, a peninsula in the Baltic Sea. The language is closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon, and its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages, particularly Norse, and to a greater extent by Latin and French.

In 1963, the power of the ministry was weakened by a decree which transferred responsibility for control of the courts to the Supreme Court of East Germany, which reported directly to the State Council.

The Supreme Court of the German Democratic Republic was the highest judicial organ of the GDR. It was set up in 1949 and was housed on Scharnhorststraße 6 in Berlin. The building now houses the district court in Berlin, Germany 2 Instance and the District Court Berlin-Mitte. In the early days, 14 judges made up the court.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, the Ministry of Justice oversaw the transfer of its powers back to the states and the drafting of the Unification treaty under the supervision of Kurt Wünsche.

List of Justice Ministers (1949–1990)

Name	In office	Council of Ministers (Cabinet)	Party
Max Fechner	11 October 1949 – 15 July 1953	Provisional government 1950-1954	SED
Hilde Benjamin	15 July 1953 – 14 July 1967	1954-1958 1958–1963 1963–1967	SED
Kurt Wünsche	14 July 1967 – 16 October 1972	1967–1971 1971–1976	LDPD
Hans-Joachim Heusinger	16 October 1972 – 12 January 1990	1971–1976 1976–1981 1981–1986 1986–1989 Modrow	LDPD
Kurt Wünsche	12 January 1990 – 16 August 1990	Modrow de Maizière	LDPD → BFD → non-partisan
Manfred Walther	16 August 1990 – 2 October 1990	de Maizière	non-partisan

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The State of Brandenburg was a subdivision of the Soviet occupation zone and state of East Germany which corresponds widely to the present-day German state Brandenburg. The state was originally formed as administrative division Province of March Brandenburg by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) in July 1945, a re-establishment of the Prussian Province of Brandenburg, excluding the Eastern parts behind the Oder–Neisse line to Poland. With the abolition of Prussia in February 1947, it was named State of March Brandenburg but in June 1947 the SMAD forced to change the name to State of Brandenburg. In August 1945, a transfer of territory was ruled out between Allied-occupied Berlin. Compared to the administrative divisions of Nazi Germany, it comprised the Western part of the Gau March Brandenburg and small parts of Berlin.

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Ministry of Justice (East Germany)

Contents

History

List of Justice Ministers (1949–1990)

See also

Related Research Articles

References