Arno Esch

Arno Esch ( born February 6, 1928 in Memel, † 24 July 1951, Moscow) was a liberal politician in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ ). He studied law in Rostock.

Life

Ash grew up in Memel, where he attended the National High School. In 1944, he fled with his family to Mecklenburg. Until April 1945 he was Marineflakhelfer. In 1946 he began studying law at the University of Rostock. Esch was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party ( LDP). As a youth secretary of the LDP, he turned against the Leitanspruch the Free German Youth (FDJ ). In 1948 he was elected to the LDP Main Committee, at the Eisenach Congress in 1949 in the LDP Central Board. He co-authored the Eisenach program of the LDP.

Esch was a pacifist and sat down on the right to conscientious objection in. In editorials Norddeutsche Zeitung, he called for a socially oriented liberalism, separation of powers, civil rights and the abolition of the death penalty. For controversies caused his statement: " A liberal Chinese is closer than a German Communist me."

In August 1949, he became a target of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ( SED), the " a danger as a scientist and as a judge" recognized him. On October 18, 1949 he was arrested with 13 other young LDP members from Mecklenburg. He was sentenced in July 1950 in Schwerin by a Soviet military tribunal for alleged espionage and forming a counterrevolutionary organization under the criminal laws of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic ( RSFSR ) to death and taken to Moscow. He was sentenced on May 26, 1951 and shot to death again on 24 July 1951 in the Lubyanka. According to the Russian human rights organization Memorial, his ashes were interred at the Moscow Donskoy Cemetery.

On May 30, 1991 Arno Esch was rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union.

Honors

The University of Rostock remembered with a plaque in the foyer of the main building at Esch and has named the second largest lecture hall (the largest after the lecture hall ) on campus elm street after him. Opened in 2011 the building was in January 2012 target of an attack with firecrackers and color. In Rostock district Brinckmansdorf, in the district of Schwerin Big Dreesch as well as in Schönberg (Mecklenburg) streets bear his name. Were named after him, the FDP-affiliated Arno Esch- Stiftung eV in Mecklenburg -Vorpommern and the Arno Esch Prize of the Association of Liberal academics. The gymnasium at the Tannenberg in Greve Mills also has a small plaque for Arno Esch.