The Rubble Murders of Hamburg after World War 2 | Crime in Post-War Germany | Documentary

During the intervening years between 1945 and 1949, Germany was in a state of chaos and despair following the end of World War II. The postwar period was one of intense violence, and women became victims of increased sexual assault and disturbing violence.

Countless crimes from this period have never been solved and continue to raise questions to this day. Cases such as the unsolved murder of Zenta Hausner, an innkeeper with a dangerous double life in the black market, exemplify the terrible fate of women trying to survive in difficult times. During this time, thousands of sex offenses were committed by Allied occupation soldiers, but only a few were held accountable. The number of victims of black market trafficking and illegal smuggling was also similar to that of concealed sex offenses.

Documentary: Crime in Post-War Germany – The West
Documentary series: Crime in Post-War Germany

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Interesting links and sources:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/
https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/100-voices/ww2/
https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II

Germany 1945 12 years of dictatorship and 6 years of war are over the people who called themselves the master Race Face the ruins of their past an occupied country utterly demoralized the old values have been thrown out a new order has yet to be established spectacular criminal cases

Are testimony to an era in which the world has been turned upside down smuggling and attacks rape robbery and Murder what were people capable of back then what drove them to these brutal acts and how do criminals exploit the chaos of the postwar years Germany after the second world war many cities are reduced to Rubble one in three people are Homeless the years 1945 to 49 are some of the most understudied uh years uh in German history um because there is a in the history books that’s told there is the history until 1945 with the apocalyptic end and then you have the founding of the two competing German states in 49 in these

Four very formative years they are messy they are complicated but they are formative with the war over the four allies are in power they divide the country up the pretty town of Gish Pon kin is in the American occupied Zone at the foot of the Alps and it becomes the scene of a

Grizzly Murder this small place is nestled close to the tuuk shitzer Germany’s highest mountain one December morning in 1947 a housemate makes a horrific Discovery the restaurant owner tender hner lies lifeless on her kitchen floor her skull smashed in it must have been a pretty horrible site Cent her lying on the floor in her dressing gown her red hair in a pool of blood her skull smashed and a knife through her neck pinning her to the

Floorboards when the police arrive curious neighbors hinder their work possible Clues are rendered useless why was she Murdered and who was was this Woman by 1945 she was uh 35 years old um she had red hair and um uh she was actually um referred to by the popular press at the time as the uh um red Princess uh Gish nil the Queen of Hearts she was a bubbly person she was personable she was generous

British writer Ian seya has a private archive where for years he’s been gathering information about the post-war era in Germany including the tenter hner Case during the war she ran a popular restaurant in Munich she was considered an Ardent Nazi sympathizer she’s alleged to have had a relationship with the head of the regional Nazi party the galigher of upper Bavaria In 1944 tender hner moves to garish Parton kishan on the border with Austria this idilic place attracts all kinds of people a lot of Rich German people had actually gone South down to garish and um they’ sort of and there were a lot of adventurers and opportunists and

Criminals and ex soldiers XS officers and so on so there’s a real mix of people all of those things conspired to make it really easy for um smuggling and uh uh illegal black marketeering and trafficking in uh narcotics Platinum uranium gold currency silver you name it they did

It over 5,000 American GIS are stationed in garbage paron K they love the mountains and the luxury of this Alpine Sports Town The Americans requisitioned Villas and hotels for their forces to stay in of course the officers bag the most beautiful villas for themselves but behind the facade looks a shadowy world a lot of the American Military were involved in cigarette smuggling uh drug smuggling and of course all the

Many of the Germans as well so yet totally Lawless um in garish at that time totally everyone meets at the vi Russell Center H’s restaurant an affair with an American officer allows her to take over the popular establishment he makes sure her connections with the Nazis are swept under the Table the vice Russell is a refuge for anyone wanting to escape the harsh World Beyond its stor but also a popular watering hole for the criminal underworld at night and the charismatic land lady knows how to manipulate Smugglers and tricksters GIS and policemen a tabloid newspaper describes her as the Queen of

Hearts of the garish underground The Tavern still exists today it’s now a Greek Restaurant Petra Hab in unu has studied the history of garish paron intensively as well as the tenter hner Case I think the VIIs rle was rebuilt a bit but the basic structure is still intact above all the nooks and crannies which allowed people to be discreet and do their deals on the black market tenter hner is a sharp business woman and has ears and eyes

Everywhere and she knows how to turn sensitive information into [Applause] profit she was working for um different sections of um of the US military I mean absolutely amazing she played one side off against the other she was working for um uh the American Army Counter Intelligence Corp uh detect mment in

Garish um which is counter Espionage um she worked for um the US um army criminal investigation department a secret document from the American military police shows they are handling FRA hner the narcotics dealer and that information from this Source has proved invaluable tenta hner is leading a risky

Double life and she knows it she confesses to a friend how scared she is that fear is not unfounded the American occupying forces are planning to take action the US Army already has a detailed report about the Shady things going on in the town mention is also made of tenter

Hner even General Lucius d clay military governor of the US Zone in Germany is informed senta hner knows none of this on the 22nd of December she has a get together with friends in her flat above the vice Russell her lover and an American officer are also

Present they left at 3:30 in the morning her guests testify Later did tenter hner have another visitor that night Caren barbian is a pathologist at the University clinic in Leish he has analyzed the police report and put together his own theory about that mysterious night I think she met someone she knew otherwise she wouldn’t have let him in at this hour and certainly wouldn’t have received this person in a dressing gown I think it was an acquaintance with whom

She ate and drank this wasn’t a carefully planned murder there was an argument a fight emotions ran high the weapons used in the attack were from the kitchen suggesting a spontaneous Act monana T tenter hner is brutally stabbed with her own kitchen knife her severe head wounds were

Probably made by an axe it was never Found the police initially believe they’re dealing with a robbery and murder expensive items of jewelry are missing but 15,000 rice marks left in the living room were not taken the investigators are mystified neighbors and acquaintances are questioned unsuccessfully nobody knows anything but there is one clue the

Evening before the murder a man was seen standing in front of her house who is this stranger there’s lots of speculation about the dubious business dealings of the murdered woman and her many lovers 10,000 centner had several Affairs one after the other they generally ended quickly and there was probably some jealousy

Involved I think it must have been a crime of passion involving someone’s hurt feelings like revenge or rejection or something like that wasan one of her lovers is briefly detained but there’s not enough evidence against him the US military also investigate the Case Files disappeared and have never

Been found were Americans also involved in the case did somebody want to silence tenter housner a lot of Americans thought that it was uh a German uh murderer and most of the Germans um uh thought it was an American murderer I suppose I’m sort of uh more inclined to think it

Might have been an American than a German because uh although it’s circumstantial um sending Zen house’s name to um the military governor of Germany not Bavaria but to Germany um a week before she was murdered I mean to coincidental if you like Ian sa is still hunting for the

Missing piece of jewelry it could yet help solve this mysterious case well perhaps because of this distinctive uh bracelet because even um you know 70 odd years later this a very distinctive piece of jewelry and if it’s still intact it’s worth a lot of lot of money

There may be somebody who’s seen it in um in a jewelry case somewhere somebody may have actually had it to sort of to alter to change it’s so distinctive that somebody just somebody might recognize it or recognize having done something with it and that could lead to solving the crime of

Course the case of tenter hner is the story of a morally ambivalent woman looking to profit in difficult times maybe that sealed her fate the post-war years posed major challenges for women until 1945 many have to look after themselves and provide for their children alone if their husbands do ever come back from

The front they often don’t get on anymore many couples divorce three times as many as before the war about 1 million women in the western occupied zones live as War widows if they marry again they face losing their widow’s pension these are hard times people’s experience of violence in

The Nazi era and in the war didn’t just remain in their heads the years right after the war were also an era of violence women in particular were at risk they were frequently victims of sex Crimes actress OA hacking has a terrible experience in the dying days of the war the 33-year-old has been working in a theater in Prague she has to walk the 200 km back to her family in Bavaria there are no trains she recalls what happened in her autobiography I was walking along a

Country road no vehicles nobody around after 2 hours I felt very tired I sat down on the edge of the woods to rest I took a piece of bread out of my rck sack but I didn’t manage to eat it American soldiers put up in a Jeep in front of

Her the first one took me a bit away from the others there he looked on it took 4 minutes I looked at my watch OA hacking is raped by two other American soldiers then they let her go the young woman has to continue walking and drag herself home the journey takes

Her over a week rapes are part of the cruelty of the second World War soldiers of the German Army alone rape hundreds of thousands of women in the occupied territories now the Allies rape German women rape especially in the last days of the War uh was a mass phenomenon in

Germany 2015 there was a study they came to the number of uh 860,000 uh German women that were raped by uh Allied occupation soldiers um of which roughly uh a quarter of them must have been uh American according to other estimates there were more than a million victims of rape

The crimes were often carried out as a group so comrades became accomplices and they hushed up their crimes together it’s an expression of a deep disgust towards the Germans part of the rage and aggression that has become pent up during the war this humiliation and shaming of the

Enemy is part of a military strategy which isn’t just aimed at individ women but against all male enemies as well and ultimately the nation because in a patriarchal culture anything you do to women you’re also doing to men ludia benica explains why very few women actually report being

Raped back then the only way of dealing with it was not to talk about about it and to just forget it just as all other War traumas were typically dealt with by suppressing them and remaining Silent People also saw War rapes as part of war and something that

Had to be left behind in some way after the war families didn’t talk about it even if they had seen their daughters or sisters being raped they continued to live as if nothing had happened for many women the shame is too great but also the fear of being seen as collaborators with the

Occupiers in the in that situation women just hoped that they wouldn’t become pregnant and that as a result nobody would find out they were also faced with the threat of being labeled an Amy lover or a Veronica Dan the pejorative terms people used for women who became intimate with US

Soldiers the widely accepted Prejudice was that these women had thrown themselves at the Americans in their desperation that’s why rape victims like o hacking ready report these crimes and when they do not much happens a going to the police was basically impossible the police could do anything about the occupying soldiers or more

Precisely in this case against US soldiers they were absolutely immune to the German authorities but sometimes and I think this is very brave and impressive rap victims would go to the barracks and try and confront those who raped them and even accuse them in front of their commanding

Officers the military police of the Allied occupying power in that region are responsible for dealing with rapes by anied Soldiers the cas is if they come to court at all are dealt with by military courts the chances to find some kind of judicial remedy for rape were not good

If it’s not only that he said she said scenario which is not good in the first place but also she former Nazi said he Liberator said scenario uh and that a lot depended on uh what on on on the the um assessment of um of the uh um superiors of of of

The soldier in question a rape is only recognized by an American Military court if the woman put up significant resistance if she didn’t because she was raped to gunpoint for example then she had little chance of success it’s a logic that öa haing appears to understand she

Writes I wasn’t raped because I didn’t Resist that is also a defense strategy to try and persuade herself that not a victim I survived and now I can put that aside she might also tragically have blamed herself which is something that rap victims often do possibly because she decided not to resist as a result of a survival

Instinct it’s a huge problem because many victims of sexual violence experience feelings of guilt afterwards and ask themselves if they should have done something differently the tragic answer is that there is no generally valid strategy and a victim is never guilty whatever they do even if a case does come to trial the

Soldiers often provide each other with aliis and their superiors don’t want to know about such crimes but things are very different when it comes to afroamerican soldiers the prosecution rates among the American Military Judiciary defer African-American soldiers uh had to contend often times with the racism of their superiors African-American

Servicemen bitterly complain that they did not experience the same kind of loyalty from their superiors as white comrades in arms they only account for 10% of American occupying forces but afroamerican soldiers are punished more frequently and harsher than white soldiers many women and girls could never forget the violence they

Experienced in the postwar years and just like OA hacking they never receive Justice war and Nazi dictatorship left their marks more than 8 million German prisoners of War return home well into the 1950 s many men are physically scarred and traumatized and have committed and witnessed Atrocities but violence and death are not over yet a mysterious series of murders is committed in Northern Germany after the end of the war like everywhere in Germany there’s a lack of housing in Hamburg hundreds of thousands of people are squeezed into the ruins of the bombed

Outport City the winter is going to be Hard what’s referred to is the winter of starvation of 1946 to 47 is considered the worst winter in the North Sea region in the 20th century temperatures fell below minus 20° C the ELA River froze over so people were basically trapped in the cities it was cold there was no

Heating and nothing to eat the misery was particularly harsh in the center of Hamburg hendricken starer the former baser behind this gate there used to be the remains of a bombed out Factory for many children in Hamburg the ruins are an Adventure Playground this is where they seek escape from the

Harshness of daily life on the 20th of January 1947 they make a horrible Discovery the corpse of a woman lying among the rubble she’s naked and has no personal effects the police can’t identify her just noting her blonde hair and blue eyes they think the young woman is about 20 the police hand the body over to forensics cast and barbian has analyzed their report they found strangulation marks around the neck so it’s clear she was strangled to death the pathologist estimates that the young woman’s body had been lying in the rubble for about 24 hours he has various

Theories about why her clothing has gone maybe the perpetrator stripped her to make it more difficult to identify her maybe her clothes were stolen because they were expensive and the person wanted to sell them in the postwar era most items of clothing were valuable The Killing took place somewhere where the perpetrator

Could be sure they wouldn’t be discovered and then they brought the naked body to where it was found under the cover of Darkness the police files make no mention of rape but they do contain another unusual detail she’s described as looking well kept she had delicate hands not the hands of a working Woman and there were no signs of malnourishment so she seems to be a woman from above average or privileged economic circumstances the only people who are well nourished after the war are the occupiers there are some 30,000 British soldiers in Hamburg many officers have even brought their families the German police start

To investigate but nobody can identify the woman at Hamburg Police Headquarters they’re hoping for hints from the population the investigators publish posters featuring an image of the dead woman the police work on the basis that this was a combined find robbery and murder and ask who knows the deceased

The reward for leads 1,000 rice marks about 3,000 Euros however it’s the British occupiers who decide how the police in Hamburg operate they also make sure that those with Nazi pasts are fired the police and the SS had very close ties the police as an institution was basically the system used by the third right to terrorize people and

Suppress desent it wasn’t just the guo who did that almost 1,200 police officers in Hamburg are suspended because of their involvement with the Nazis the only police employed after the end of the war were those who had been officers before the Nazi era or very young and inexperienced officers the Allies don’t

Want the German police to carry weapons yet they have to make do with a trunion 5,000 police officers operated in Hamburg at that time half the number in the city today the officers of the homicide department continue to try and find out more about the murdered

Woman a few days later another body is found in the rubble a man about 60 he’s also naked and looks well groomed nearby is a walking stick like the woman he’s also been strangled to death the crime scene is 7 km away from the first body on the other side of the aler

Lake the investigators wonder whether there’s a connection between the two bodies were they perhaps even killed at the same time again the police assume it’s a combined murder and robbery the investigation focuses on hamburg’s Black Market the murderer might try and barter clothing and valuables found on the

Victims but they failed to turn up any clues in early February 1947 another body turns up again in central Hamburg the victim is again found in the rubble of a factory in an old lift shaft this time a 6-year-old girl fears grow that this is a serial killer inter is

It’s interesting that after this third fine when the little girl was found it was then that the head of the police wrote a letter to Hamburg school cator children and teenagers are to be made aware of these dangers and he said we have three murders here and now a small child so

There exists a danger that perhaps this is part of a serious and we don’t know whe other children might be approached please inform your schools about this and since this involves a child please ask them whether any children are missing relatives schoolmates or neighbors must have noticed that the

Little girl was missing a while back yet the police have no clues the investigations are going nowhere the chaos of the postwar era makes police work difficult thousands of people stream into the cities former soldiers prisoners of war and refugees Holocaust Survivors and forced laborers the police suspect the victims

Themselves may be recent arrivals to Hamburg people don’t have to register their addresses and they live wherever they can between the rubble of bombed out houses in cellers and ruins it seems impossible to identify the dead but that’s not the last of it 10 days later another body is found

In a Cellar a woman of about 30 also strangled her corpse is found just a few kilometers from the other crime scenes she seems to have been murdered at the same time as the little girl this is the fourth body in 4 weeks the crimes are all over the headlines fear courses through

Hamburg powerless the police advise people to stay away from bomb s sites as always in difficult times criminality surges there is more of it so this volume of murders and robberies is typical for the postwar era the Hamburg police are massively Under Pressure they distribute thousands of

Posters the reward for a tip off leading to an arrest is raised to 10,000 rice marks in vain officers are still in the dark and can only spec Cal at what the connection between the murder victims is several things suggest that this might even be a family we have an older

Man who could be the grandfather we have a woman of about 30 or 40 she could be the mother and then these two children one 6 to8 and this other young girl so it is possible today it would be easy to establish a family connection via DNA

Analysis back then all the police had was Fingerprints of the deceased Unlike DNA characteristics fingerprints are not inherited so looking at the fingerprints won’t enable you to establish whether they’re related the string of murders remains a mystery as does the motive of the perpetrator criminal psychologist ludia bica has some ideas

The little that we know suggests that the perpetrator initially planned to Rob them and to kill each of these people so as to get their valuables this wasn’t a crime of passion following an argument there is no evidence to suggest that this perpetrator must have been an extreme narcissist because most violent people

Won’t harm a child when it comes down to it especially not in such a premeditated way and actually go ahead and kill them after the fourth body is found the murder spree ends as abruptly as it began the people of Hamburg breathe a sigh of relief the officers of the

Homicide Squad investigate for another year but without success the Killer is never caught it might well be the case that the person or people responsible left the country and that they could have taken the valuables they’d Acquired and boarded a ship in Hamburg to some place in the

World and either managed to establish a new life for themselves there or possibly committed further killings that we know nothing about dozens of people are murdered in Hamburg in the years after the war many of these cases are solved but with the bomb site murders the guilty party disappears in the

Confusion of the postwar Era over a year and a half earlier in the summer of 1945 the goal of the Potsdam Conference is to bring order to the chaos at cecilian Hoff Palace British prime minister Winston Churchill US president Harry S Truman and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin decide how to deal with defeated Germany at pots them all allies agreed on uh to punish Germany for the crimes uh it uh had committed uh during the Nazi regime but also to provide the German people with a uh perspective of post-war Rehabilitation the the Allied Powers focus on four points dentification and decentralization disarmament and

Democracy but for many Germans it’s just about surviving sometimes at any price like here at the German Belgian border near Aran tank traps from the second world war are still in place today the border is also known as the hookala the hump line after the end of

The war dozens of children and young people crossed the border here every day on foot or by bicycle a dangerous undertaking they’re crossing the border at the coffee front the spot where Germany Belgium and the Netherlands meet in Germany a kilo of coffee is

Taxed at up to 50 doch marks a lot of money for the time on the Black Market coffee beans are known as black gold and even used as currency Customs officials are under strict instructions to stop coffee being smuggled across the border with whatever means Necessary smuggling in the black market in smuggled Goods deprive National and Regional governments of several 100 million in Taxes but whether the Smugglers are small or large they will all eventually be caught most people in the Border zone are smuggling for private consumption very few people can actually afford to buy coffee many of the Smugglers are underage Customs officials are powerless in the face of their

Tactics there were these huge bands of children known ASAT in German or rowdies one or 200 children crossed the border as a group they were between 14 and 17 years old their advantage was they couldn’t be punished like adults when the Customs officials came they literally got Rowdy they Jered and

Whistled and ran in all directions and the Customs men couldn’t really lay a finger on them or catch them their tactics are portrayed in a post-war German movie it was filmed in akan on the German side of the Border Antonio mul was one of these rowes he’s 7 years old when he starts

His smuggling career his family is fighting for survival they exchange the coffee for food when they’re back in Germany we usually met here we would run across the railway tracks in a large pack as far as the tunnel and then through the tunnel and then we would be in Belgium then we bought coffee or cigarettes or food and went back the tank traps of the hooker Linea were really

Useful you could hide quite well behind them and the Customs officials didn’t see you the children are risking their lives every time they cross the border smuggling is considered a particularly serious Crime the main difference between the Customs officers and the police is that Customs were allowed to carry weapons at the border while German police officers were not allowed to carry weapons and they were also told to use their weapons when the situation required it they were ordered to shoot weapons were allowed

The Customs authorities make it known that those fleeing who have provoked the use of weapons as a result of their actions are responsible for the consequences it says the officers cannot be made liable this policy protects the estimated 1,000 Customs officials in the region around akan from legal

Consequences most of them are badly trained and unable to cope with the job it’s only a matter of time before someone getss killed on the 27th of December 1947 a customs officer notices a boy on a bicycle he’s on his way back from Belgium to Germany 14-year-old horse Clinger was cycling up the road visibility was bad it was a bit dark already a customs official hailed him and told him to stop the boy carried on after hailing him again the officer got out his weapon the bullet strikes horse cler’s

Head he dies on the spot just a few hundred meters from his parents house in his bag they find half a pound of coffee some cocoa and a packet of baking Powder the Customs official later testified that he believed to be addressing an adult he said he had only wanted to fire at the bicycle just a deadly mistake the really tragic thing about this case is that hor Clinger was himself the son of a customs official

And the smuggled Goods he had with him were not very significant a really tragic case overall especially as he was the only only child of the Clinger family in the police file the word accident is noted as the cause of death the Customs officer never has to account for his

Actions but cases like these don’t go unnoticed when somebody was shot dead at the border people weren’t just upset they took their grievances to the Customs officers people organized marches in their Villages and protested about the treatment of the Smugglers by Customs officials and demanded that they stop using their

Weapons today some people still don’t understand why the measures taken had to be so Draconian yeah we didn’t do it for the fun we had to survive and they shot you if you didn’t stop there were court cases too but the Customs officials were always LED off

That’s just the way it was the F the church also stands by the Smugglers in his new year’s address the Archbishop of cologne YF Franks justifies theft and smuggling if people are doing it to survive since then the people of the Ryland have had a new verb for stealing out of want fingon coffee duty is not reduced until 1953 many Germans are starting to do

Better and they now buy coffee in their own country but until then horse Clinger and 25 other people lose their lives at the border another 100 are injured in the postwar Years Nazi leaders are vigorously prosecuted by the Allies the defense and the war crimes trial starting with the nurenberg trials which

Began in November 1945 and during which top Nazis like ham and ging were brought to justice for the war of aggression crimes towards the civilian population and the Holocaust After the big trial held by the international military Court in nurburg against the key war criminals there were a host of subsequent trials that continued until 1948 and 1949 war criminals and top Nazis were still being executed in 1948 a total of 36 perpetrators are condemned to to death at the nurburg

Trials the sentence was carried out in 22 of those cases they would not be the last death sentences before the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in January 1948 zad Chu hitches a ride with a truck driver a recent rury from the war he’s decided to steal the

Vehicle during the trip he pulls out his old army pistol and shoots the driver three times rachu pulls his victim out of the truck and hides the body in a ditch by the road under a Tarpin did he intend to kill him the was if you fire three shots from a

Relatively close distance and hit someone in the head and chest then you know you’re going to cause deadly or potentially deadly injuries that same night a police patrol finds the body the hunt for the killer begins right away meanwhile Leu is trying to sell the truck’s Wheels his thinking is that

Selling the whole truck could draw too much attention but the wheeless truck hidden in the woods is found by a Forester he immediately notices splashes of blood in the driver’s Cab when Leu tries to hide the wheels he’s arrested just 3 days after the crime did the violence he experienced in the German Army turn him into a murderer the judge said that on the one hand a person is more likely to use weapons when they already know how to

Use one and also know what it feels like to kill a person on the other hand the judge also said quite correctly that many people fought in the War but very few would commit such a crime and that it’s not a sufficient explanation for such an

Act in May 1945 Shu returned to his native tubigan after a short time as a prisoner of war he finds it difficult to settle down has two children and doesn’t support them working as a casual laborer he didn’t really try to find a job he could stick at he moved around

And committed robberies and was totally Restless the court convicts Rishad Shu of murder and aggravated robbery and condemns him to death he scheduled to be executed in the following year February 1949 at the same time the Parliamentary council is meeting in Bon the job of its

Members is to draw up a constitution for Germany and Usher in a new political era the death penalty is also part of those discussions demands to repeal the death sentence were initially made by a party which wanted to stop former Nazis being executed by allied military courts the chairman of the central

Committee of the Parliamentary Council Carlo Schmid argued that the death penalty should be abolished but not to protect former Nazis of course he pointed to the thousands of death sentences handed down by the Naes and argued that the new federal republic of Germany had to show that it was based on totally different

Values and that every life deserves to be protected even that of a murderer a total of 33,000 people were condemned to death by courts under the Nazis and execute it politicians like Conrad ardau who would later become Chancellor want to retain the death penalty many Germans support

Him the whole issue of the death penalty shows that not much had changed in people’s heads after 1945 a majority of Germans still supported it and if there had been a referendum on the death penalty in 1948 it would have been kept in place but isatu isn’t privy to these

Political debates he spending the last few weeks remaining to him in a Cell on the 7th of July 1948 his family makes an appeal for clemency the prison Warden supports the Appeal the warden says that Shu has recognized the severity and evil of his crime and shows genuine and bitter remorse the death of his mother contributed to his change of character says the warden she drowned herself after his sentence was announced shu is hoping for a last minute stay it’s a race against

Time but his family’s plea for clemency is rejected even with discussions about scrapping the death penalty in full swing it seems help will come too late had Ru clearly hoped to the very end that he would not be executed and when he found out that he

Really was going to be executed the next day at 6:00 a.m. he was genuinely shocked and scared and became very em until the very end the young man writes letters and desperately tries to explain his Crime the execution is carried out on the 18th of February 1949 the Executioner installs the guillotine in the inner Court chart of tubing and Prison it has to be brought in especially for the Execution journalist hansam langang Works in tubigan he has studied the case It was 6:00 in the morning 12 Witnesses were present from the town Ricard Shu was brought in the priest recited a short prayer with him and the chief prosecutor said to the Executioner I give you rard Shu for you to make him pass from life to

Death they say he was quite calm in those last few Seconds Rishad Chu dies aged 28 under the guillotin the execution bell rings out at tubing and City Hall it’s the last death sentence carried out on the orders of a West German court with the introduction of Germany’s Constitution its basic law the death penalty is abolished This legal text is the

Foundation of the new federal republic founded on the 23rd of May 1949 under the eyes of the whole world its first Chancellor is CDU politician Conrad ardau this school house meeting in bond may live in history as the birth of a new Free Nation for Germany the 23rd of May 1949 is regarded

As a new beginning after national socialism but also after the turbulence of the post-war years those years shaped the Federal Republic of Germany and continue to do so today