23 Facts About Ernst Melsheimer

Ernst Melsheimer was a strong believer in party control of the courts.

Ernst Melsheimer was opposed to any Western-style separation of powers between the justice system and the state.

Ernst Melsheimer took a hands-on approach to his job, appearing in person as the principal advocate in numerous secret trials and in high-profile show trials during the 1950s.

Ernst Melsheimer was born in the Saar region, a mining area in the extreme west of Germany, close to the border with France.

Ernst Melsheimer's father was a director of the local iron works.

Ernst Melsheimer instead studied Law at and Marburg and Bonn, passing his state law exam in 1918.

Ernst Melsheimer was appointed to Landgerichtsdirektor in 1933, and in 1937 he joined the Higher District Court Council in Berlin.

Ernst Melsheimer became involved in the Nation zialistische Rechtswahrerbund in 1936, and in 1937 he was appointed a consultant to the Nation zialistische Volkswohlfahrt.

Ernst Melsheimer was nominated as a Supreme Court Judge in 1944, but he was never able to take up the position because no vacancy had arisen by May 1945, when the court was dissolved as a consequence of the country's military defeat.

Ernst Melsheimer was therefore successful in building his career under the Nazi regime without the need fully to demonstrate "Total Loyalty to the National Socialist State".

Immediately after the end of World War II, Ernst Melsheimer joined the Communist Party of Germany.

Ernst Melsheimer found himself one of just three senior lawyers who had been active under the Nazi regime still permitted to work as lawyers in the new German Democratic Republic.

Ernst Melsheimer got himself noticed within The Party, notably on 14 August 1948 when his was the decisive signature for a personnel-purge at the top of the DJV.

Ernst Melsheimer returned to find high-level personnel changes at the DJV that favoured the SED.

On 7 December 1949 Ernst Melsheimer was appointed to the position for which he is best remembered, as the first Attorney general, and thereby Chief Prosecutor, in the Number 1 Criminal Division of the East German Supreme Court.

Victims of other high-profile show trials prosecuted by Ernst Melsheimer included Wolfgang Harich, Walter Janka, Leo Herwegen, Otto Fleischer und Leonhard Moog.

Ernst Melsheimer became notorious for court room tactics that included savage verbal assaults which at that time would have been unacceptable in western courts, against defendants and witnesses, and which regularly overstepped the bounds of constitutional justice.

In pretrial discussions Merker was initially unwilling to accept a deal regarding his testimony on Janka's involvement in the conspiracy alleged, but Ernst Melsheimer successfully threatened him:.

At the start of the same trial Ernst Melsheimer was just as successful in using similar threats to dissuade Janka's wife from testifying in support of her husband.

Ernst Melsheimer pointed out that in the trial of the editor Wolfgang Harich, which had taken place in March 1957, three months earlier, the journalist Heinz Zoger and the radio commentator Richard Wolf who had turned up to testify on behalf of the defendant had been arrested in the courtroom, charged with membership of the same conspiracy as the defendant, detained, and a few months later convicted and sentenced themselves.

Ernst Melsheimer retained his position as Chief State Prosecutor until March 1960, when he died.

Ernst Melsheimer's ashes were placed with those of others honoured by The Party, at the Socialists' Memorial in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery at Lichtenberg.

Twice Ernst Melsheimer was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit for "his services to building socialism in the GDR".