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Heinrich George | Helmut Kind | Karl Heinrich | Ewald Ernst | Kurt Müller | Alfred Weiland | Arno Wend | Helmut Brandt | Georg Dertinger | Max Fechner | Karl Wilhelm Fricke | Wolfgang Harich | Walter Janka | Walter Linse | Paul Merker | Sigrid Paul | Rudolf Bahro | Heinz Brandt | Jürgen Fuchs | Gerulf Pannach | Michael Sallmann | Hans-Joachim Helwig-Wilson | Bärbel Bohley | Freya Klier | Stephan Krawczyk | Vera Lengsfeld | Ulrike Poppe
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 Helmut Brandt was a prominent conservative politician, who was in prison for years because of his criticism of judiciary injustice in the GDR.
Born in 1911 in Berlin, he studied law and economics and received his doctorate in both disciplines. From 1929, he became active in the German People's Party (DVP), and as the party’s secretary, he served in the Reichstag until 1933. He then worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for International Law and as an attorney. During the Second World War he served on the front and in the Ministry of Armaments. In June 1945 he returned to Berlin, where he established a law practice. In the Christia-Democratic Union (CDU), which he was a founder, he made his mark as an expert in legal matters. With the split in the party organization in Berlin in 1948, he was among those who established a pro-Soviet state association in the eastern part of the city. Because of his bourgeois attitude he was soon ousted from the CDU leadership and appointed to the post of "Staatssekretär" in the GDR Ministry of Justice in 1949.
In May 1950 he protested to GDR Justice Minister Max Fechner and CDU Chief Otto Nuschke against the so-called Waldheim trials where more than 3,000 Soviet camp inmates were condemned in summary proceedings of special courts of the GDR. In September 1950 he was arrested by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) and brought to the basement prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen a year later. In June 1954 after nearly four years in detention, the Supreme Court of the GDR sentenced him to ten years in prison in a secret trial for alleged "subversive work." He was arbitrarily associated with the “conspiracy group,” which the East German foreign minister Georg Dertinger (arrested 1953) was also a part of. Because of a pardon from Nuschke in September 1958 he was released "ahead of schedule" from the special prison Bautzen II. Since the Stasi wanted to avoid an appearance of Brandt in front the Western press, he was arrested 36 hours later, when he tried to flee to West Berlin.
Brandt returned to Hohenschönhausen and was sentenced by the District Court of Frankfurt / Oder to another ten years' imprisonment for alleged espionage, incitement to illegal emigration and subversive propaganda in March 1959. In August 1964, after 5095 days of imprisonment, he was ransomed by the West German government, so that he could move to the Rhineland. He then worked at the university and as a consultant to the Bundestag. Because he was prevented from having political career at CDU in the West, he jointed the CSU in 1977. After reunification in 1990, he participated actively in the reworking of the Waldheimer trails. He died in 1998 in Königswinter near Bonn. |
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