EAST GERMANY: Red Hilde’s Law

In all the lands where the hammer and sickle seek to blot out the cross, a pitiless struggle goes on to render unto the Red Caesars the things that are God’s. Last week the spiritual combat zone was East Germany, where Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen joined in protesting a Soviet-style “family law.” Due for enactment by the East zone legislature, the law mirrors the macabre woman who fashioned it, Hilde Benjamin, 52, known as “Red Hilde,” “Hanging Hilde,” and “the Red Guillotine.”

Citations from Luther. A trim, apple-cheeked young law student at Heidelberg 30 years ago, Red Hilde was first stained with the party dye when she met and married a fanatical Communist who was later killed by the Nazis. Red Hilde became a brandy-swigging, chain-smoking harpy and Germany’s most dedicated fighter against family and religion. Appointed vice president of the Soviet zone Supreme Court, she presided over political-show trials. In three months of 1952 alone, she handed down two death sentences, eight terms of life imprisonment and 109 years at hard labor. In court she shrilly interrupted defense counsel with cries of “go on, go on, we have no time for your silly excuses.”

Hilde’s latest task is to “liberate” the housewives of Soviet-occupied Germany from kitchens, children and church. Red Hilde’s family law proclaims the equality of men and women, says that children are to be trained according to their talents, encourages divorce if a marriage “has lost its value … to society.” Recent East-zone court rulings indicate the realities behind such a high-sounding sham. If the state needs miners, a group of youngsters alleged to have mining “talent” are rounded up and packed off to Communist training camps. Parents who protest are charged with “sabotage.” Mothers whose “equality” between pregnancies consists of a heavy crop-harvesting quota are deprived of their children if they fail to meet the norms. A man who is a Communist can divorce his non-Communist wife on the ground that he cannot do his job properly.

The new “family law” is cynically wrapped in a pseudoreligious covering, citing the Fourth Commandment and Martin Luther’s explanation of it (“We should fear and love God that we may not despise our parents or masters or provoke them to anger . . .”).

Reminders of Hitler. West German clerics have roundly condemned the new rulings. Said a spokesman for the Evangelical Church in Germany: “We are reminded of events in Hitler days, when families were torn apart because children were used as instruments against their own parents.” Petrusblatt, official organ of Berlin’s Roman Catholic diocese, hotly condemned the new code as “contrary to Christian belief . . . ‘Equality’ in the East zone doesn’t respect woman as a human being but only as a working machine.” Last week, at the risk of bringing Red reprisals down on their heads, East German Roman Catholic bishops sent a letter of protest to the East German puppet government. But Red Hilde says that “a judge must never follow his objective opinion, but must reach his verdict by calling on his political party.” She was scarcely likely to read or heed protests.