Bequest Heinz Friedrich Meyer-Velde

In 2017, the Fritz Bauer Institute acquired the bequest of Heinz Friedrich Meyer-Velde (1926-2015) from his daughter. In September 2018, an addition was made. Heinz Friedrich Meyer-Velde grew up in Brunswick where he worked as a court reporter for the local newspaper of Brunswick in the late 1940s. This way he came to know the then presiding judge of the Landgericht and later Attorney General of the Oberlandesgericht Braunschweig, Fritz Bauer in 1949. This first encounter soon resulted in a close friendship between them and from 1961 onwards, a friendship between Bauer and Meyer-Velde's wife Gisela developed as well. They remained in contact until Bauer's death in 1968. Throughout his life, Bauer kept in close touch with the family Meyer-Velde and actively took part in the family life. In 1965, he even became the godfather of Meyer-Velde's daughter. In the 1950s, Heinz Friedrich Meyer-Velde at first studied economics and architecture and then law in Göttingen. He earned his doctorate in 1957 and worked as an attorney in West Berlin. In the early 1960s, he entered the civil service of Hesse and worked in the penal system. Heinz Friedrich Meyer-Velde started as a representative of the head of the correctional facility Kassel-Wehlheiden and then became head of the correctional facilities Ziegenhain and Butzbach, the detention center Hammelgasse in Frankfurt (Main), as well as the detention center Frankfurt-Preungesheim. He later worked at the Hessian Ministry of Justice in Wiesbaden until his retirement. The bequest Heinz Friedrich Meyer-Velde contains after description, demetallization and filing 78 archival units with at total extent of 1.8 running meters. Since the record group did not have an inner structure upon the acquisition in October 2017 and the addition in September and December 2018 the processor Johannes Beermann-Schön completely reorganized the collection during indexing in 2017. It follows the "rules for the description of personal papers and autographs" (RNA, Regeln zur Erschließung von Nachlässen und Autographen). The archives group is structured in five sections: "opus" ("Werk"), "correspondence" ("Korrespondenzen"), "personal documents" ("Lebensdokumente"), "collections" ("Sammlungen") and "realia" ("Realia"). The section "opus" ("Werk") covers notes, memoirs and drafts of manuscripts regarding his friend Bauer, as well as a number of typescripts regarding the topic "penal system". It also contains an archival unit regarding the whereabouts of Bauer's bequest, its handling and retention that Meyer-Velde arranged with Bauer's executor. The sections "correspondence" ("Korrespondenzen") comprises a comprehensive correspondence of the years 1953 until 1968 between Heinz Friedrich and Gisela Meyer-Velde, and Fritz Bauer. The about 80 documents are mostly transcribed. The record group is complemented by notes of phone conversations of the family Meyer-Velde with Bauer, by correspondence of Heinz Friedrich and Gisela Meyer-Velde with friends and acquaintances of Bauer after his death in 1968, and also by letters to the editor by Gisela Meyer-Velde. The section "personal documents" ("Lebensdokumente") includes among other things records of Meyer-Velde regarding his participation in the congress "regarding Fritz Bauer and the Auschwitz trial" from December 17-19, 1993 in Frankfurt (Main), and at a memorial in honor of Fritz Bauer held by the Attorney General Frankfurt (Main) on November 15, 1993. The section "collections" ("Sammlungen") consists of several archival units with collected materials regarding Fritz Bauer. These include a copy of an extensive letter from Bauer to his mother Ella Bauer from 1938 in which he recalls his childhood in Tübingen, as well as records regarding several life phases of Bauer, a collection of newspaper clippings regarding him, the First Frankfurt Auschwitz trial and other proceedings concerning Nazi violent crimes (NSG-Verfahren). The section "realia" ("Realia") consists of several objects formerly owned by Fritz Bauer, for example, a photography of his mother in a Bakelite frame, a desk pad, two ashtrays, bookends and an ornamental plate.