Ernst Jennrich

Ernst Jennrich (15 November 1911 – 20 March 1954) was a German gardener who was executed in East Germany for the murder of a Volkspolizei officer in Magdeburg during the Uprising of 1953.

Jennrich was a former member of the ruling Socialist Unity Party who joined the protests in Magdeburg and was accused of fatally shooting officer Georg Gaidzik during a confrontation on 17 June 1953. Jennrich was found guilty of Gaidzik's murder despite the weak evidence against him and sentenced to life imprisonment. Jennrich's sentence was increased to the death penalty days later under the influence of Justice Minister Hilde Benjamin, and he was executed by guillotine in Dresden.

On 20 August 1991, the original court verdict was overturned, and Jennrich was posthumously rehabilitated by a decision of the district court in Magdeburg.

Early life Ernst Jennrich was born on 15 November 1911 in , a village in the Province of Saxony, a short distance to the north of Magdeburg, into a working-class family. He was the eighth of his parents' nine recorded children. In 1940, he was again conscripted by the Reich Labour Service to work at the nearby Junkers aircraft factory.

Soviet occupation zone Following the German surrender and his release from captivity, Jennrich re-joined the SPD, though there is no indication that he became an active member. Having married in 1938 and now responsible for supporting his wife and four growing children, he established himself as an independent trader in fruit and vegetables in July 1945. In April 1946, the SPD was merged with the Communist Party of Germany under pressure from the Soviet Military Administration. Jennrich became a member of the resulting Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), though, much like with his SPD membership, he was not a party activist. Nevertheless, in 1947, he brought himself to the attention of the SED by resigning his party membership altogether. Some time later, he was called upon to explain why he resigned from the SED. In a courageous move, he explained it as his reaction to having been told, when attending a meeting with party officials, that he had acquired his fruit and vegetables business only through the [good offices of] the party".

Uprising of 1953

On 1 June 1953, he accepted a position as a gardener with an Agricultural Production Cooperative (LPG) based in Magdeburg.

Later that morning, Jennrich met up with his eldest son and they returned to the streets, where there were shouts in the crowd that there was about to be a shooting incident at the Magdeburg police headquarters in Sudenburg. Jennrich made his way to the main police office with his son and others, where the gathering crowd was concentrated outside the Sudenburg detention centre, which was part of the same "justice complex" as the main police office. The sequence of the events that ensued is not consistently reported. Following Jennrich's posthumous rehabilitation by a Magdeburg court, it is his own version of events that becomes more persuasive, and which features in most of the more accessible sources. By the time Jennrich and his son arrived, probably at around mid-day, the guards outside the detention centre had already been disarmed by the crowd. An adolescent stranger next to him was brandishing a carbine rifle which Jennrich seized from him. An alternative version indicates that the reason he was holding the carbine was that it was Jennrich himself who had disarmed a guard outside the detention centre. Either way, Jennrich then fired two shots, first at the prison wall and then into the air. He did this in order the empty the weapon and thereby render it harmless. He discharged the gun harmlessly at the insistence of fellow protesters, and when he had done so he smashed it. During the course of the disturbance protesters had already broken through the outer gate of the "justice complex". Inside the complex, two policemen of the Volkspolizei and one official of the detested Ministry for State Security (Stasi) were fatally shot.

Arrest By the time Soviet troops arrived on the scene and a state of emergency had been declared at around 14:00, most of the crowd at Sudenburg had dispersed though Jennrich, for some reason, was still hanging around.

The charges against Jennrich, which indicate that surveillance reports in respect of the accused had been received and evaluated over a significant period of time, are as follows: "...inciting boycott and murder against democratic institutions and organisations and, since 8 May 1945, endangering the peace of the German people through spreading propaganda in support of fascism: consistent with this, acting from insidious and base motives, making possible a further crime, being the intentional killing of a human being".

Permitted to address the judge in his own defence, Jennrich delivered an unexpectedly effective speech: "...I can only say this: that I never wished to become a murderer. And I never committed any murder, because I know for sure that I did not shoot through the window on the right [of the main gate] at any member of the Volkspolizei service. Furthermore I never had any wish to become the tool of these people, the tool of western provocateurs, nor of people who try to exploit the workers. I am not a person wishing to be exploited." ("...ich kann nur das eine sagen, dass ich niemals zu einem Mörder werden wollte.) Und ich niemals den Mord begangen habe, weil ich genau weiß, ich habe keinen Schuss in dem rechten Fenster abgegeben auf einen Volkspolizeiangehörigen. Und ich war auch niemals gewillt, Werkzeug dieser Menschen zu werden, oder Werkzeug der Provokateure vom Westen noch zumeist von Menschen, die versuchen, den Arbeiter auszubeuten. Ich bin kein Mensch, der sich ausbeuten lassen will".

In November 1953, from the isolation cell in which he was being held, Jennrich wrote a detailed seven page plea for clemency to Wilhelm Pieck, the President of East Germany, in which he insisted on his innocence and declared himself ready to accept even the most difficult of working conditions "in order that I can later be accepted as a complete person within the social order of the German Democratic Republic", but this was rejected by Pieck. Many years later, it emerged that he had written a farewell letter for his wife and sons, in which he continued to protest his innocence. Belatedly, the letter has found its way into the possession of one of his younger sons called, like his father, Ernst Jennrich.

Posthumous rehabilitation On 20 August 1991, following a successful application by his son Ernst Jennrich Jr., the "4th Criminal Senate" at the Halle District Court overturned the 1954 verdict against Ernst Jennrich Sr. and he was acquitted retrospectively. The opening up of East German archives from the courts and state justice officials after reunification had triggered a major wave of research on the 1953 uprising by respected academics such as, most notably Karl Wilhelm Fricke, and others.