Former Judge Apologizes—After 45 Years

IN A courtroom in Berlin, in August 1995, a former Supreme Court judge expressed to one of Jehovah’s Witnesses his remorse for a wrong he had committed 45 years earlier.

In October 1950, the Supreme Court of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) declared nine of Jehovah’s Witnesses guilty of antistate agitation and espionage. Two were sentenced to life imprisonment, and the other seven—including 22-year-old Lothar Hörnig, fourth defendant from the right in the photograph—were given long prison terms.

Forty years later, the GDR became part of the Federal Republic of Germany. Officials have since investigated some of the injustices committed in the former GDR and have tried to bring to justice those responsible. One such injustice was the Supreme Court trial of the Witnesses in 1950.

A. T., now 80, was one of the three judges who passed judgment when the nine Witnesses were brought to trial. Now charged with perverting justice, he appeared before the Regional Court in Berlin to explain his ruling.

In his statement to the court, the former judge admitted that he had voted for a guilty verdict 45 years earlier, though he had favored less severe sentences. But the case had made him think again. Why? Jehovah’s Witnesses were persecuted by the Nazis during the second world war because they refused to support Hitler. After the war the Witnesses were again persecuted, this time by the Communist regime. This caused the judge to be “deeply distressed.”

Lothar Hörnig told the court that he spent five and a half years in solitary confinement and was not released from Brandenburg prison until 1959. Upon hearing Hörnig’s statement, the former judge broke down in tears. “I am very sorry,” he sobbed. “Please forgive me.” Hörnig accepted the apology.—Compare Luke 23:34.

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Neue Berliner Illustrierte