Hermann Flade

Hermann Flade (22 May 1932 – 16 May 1980) was a German political scientist.

Flade was born in Würzburg. At the age of 18, he was the victim of a show trial in Dresden in 1951 at which he was sentenced to death after he had been caught distributing sheets/pamphlets objecting to the undemocratic nature of the 1950 general election in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The show trial and the court verdict resonated well beyond the borders of the GDR,

In the year that Flade moved to Dreden, he joined the German Youth section of the Hitler Youth movement. Two years later, he resigned from the movement, which in the context of the times was a bold and unusual step for a twelve-year-old.

Leafleting The German Democratic Republic was a young country, officially established only in October 1949, even though by that time the basis for its one-party political structure had in effect already been created more than three years earlier, when the region was under a more direct form of Soviet administration, with the creation, in April 1946, of the ruling SED (party). On 15 October 1950 the young country held its first general election for membership of the Volkskammer (People's Chamber), which was to be the national legislature under the country's constitutional arrangements. Simultaneous elections were also held for the Landtagen (Regional assemblies) and local government bodies. In conventional psephological terms the elections were not free. Also they were also not free in terms of the country's constitution which had been proclaimed on 7 October 1949 (and which would be extensively modified only after the 1950 general election). There was a single list of candidates and voters simply took the ballot paper and dropped it into the ballot box to vote for the candidate. Any voter prepared to vote against the candidate simply took the ballot paper and dropped it into a different box, without any secrecy. According to official figures, the ruling party's "National Front" list received the approval of 99.6% of voters, with turnout reported at 98.5%.

Flade was not supportive of this undemocratic election process. Using a toy printing set the 18-year-old produced 186 flysheets protesting against the election. One version denounced the "election fraud" while another, titled "The Goose", was a satirical composition concerning the massive reparations having to be delivered to the Soviet Union and the dire condition of the German Democratic Republic: "The goose waddles like [President] Pieck, croaks like [Prime Minister] Grotewohl and is plucked like the German people" Between 10 and 14 October 1950, Hermann Fade pasted his flysheets on houses, walls and lampposts. During the evening of 14 October, he was surprised by a plain clothes policeman. Flade fled after resisting arrest using a pocket knife with which he cut the upper arm and the back of the plainclothes man, who was thereby lightly injured.

The death sentence was greeted with widespread horror. In the town of Olbernhau one radio listener recalled later how her mother broke down, shaking and sobbing that the death sentence was too much. High school students at Werdau staged a particularly well remembered protest and were rewarded later in the year with their own show trial, culminating with lengthy prison sentences.

Sentence commuted In view of the reactions provoked, The Party now pushed for the sentence to be commuted. A date for an appeal hearing at the Dresden district court had already been set, although Flade's defense counsel was not permitted to submit the grounds for the appeal until less than 24 hours before the hearing, which took place on 29 January 1951. The Dresden court upheld the guilty verdict of the lower court and they rejected Flade's annulment application. But they commuted the sentence to a fifteen year jail term. it was in Torgau that he contracted Tuberculosis.

His parents had fled to the west immediately following his trial and conviction. Flade turned down an offer from the Stasi that he might be released if he could persuade his parents to return to the German Democratic Republic. After his solitary confinement was relaxed, he made contact with a fellow prisoner who was a mathematics professor, with whom Flade began to work on his own mathematical skills.

On 5 February 1958, Flade agreed to become an Informal collaborator (IM) for the Stasi, thinking that he might receive his freedom in return, but the Stasi mistrusted his motives and cancelled his IM status. It was only at the start of November 1960 that Flade was released, following an Amnesty.

Life after release from prison Directly after his release, Flade moved to Greiz, but just a few weeks later, before the end of 1960, he had managed to cross into West Germany to join his parents in Traunstein. He was greeted on his arrival at the main station at Hof (on the West German side of the inner German border), only to be removed to an undisclosed location by a reporter from the Hamburg based Magazine Stern. News of the book's publication reached the inmates and the guards at the Waldheim prison back in the German Democratic Republic. A former inmate later recalled that the prison guards were outraged, but the prisoners reacted with deep satisfaction to the knowledge that conditions in the East German prisons had been described from personal experience to a western readership.

On finishing school, he studied political Science and philosophy at Munich and Mainz, gaining his doctorate in 1967 with a dissertation on political theory. He tried to obtain a job with the "inner leadership" of the West German army, but his application was rejected in case he might constitute a security risk. On 1 April 1968 he took a job as a research assistant with the "Association for German Reunification", and in 1969 he joined the deutsches Institut (Whole Germany Institute) in Bonn.

He was in Bonn when he died suddenly, a few days before his 48th birthday. Sources attribute his early death to the torture inflicted on him and the tuberculosis he acquired during his ten years in East German prisons.