Around 30 letters fall out of the grey envelope, which is neatly filed in a dossier in the General Persons File of the Leipzig State Security Office. Thirty copies of the letter F, each one measuring about 7 centimetres and cut out of pink paper that sometimes reveals its previously function as a pre-printed form; in some cases, the top horizontal line of the letter is longer than the lower one.
Three Leipzig police officers found the colourful letters in the Dresdner Straße at 12:10 a.m. on 10 July 1950 and identified them as ‘agitation letters’. The unusual letters stood for the ‘freedom’ longed for by the creators. The culprits had adopted the symbol from the West, where the distinctive ‘F’ had been used in several leaflets and brochures and become popular in opposition circles at that time.
A random arrest
Because the MfS was initially unable to identify the culprits, the case was temporarily shelved in September. However, just one month later, the case was considered solved. On the night of 4 October, two students, Herbert Belter and Helmut du Menil-Schürer, were ‘detained’ by the People’s Police because they were not carrying their identity cards with them. Du Menil-Schürer was – inadvertently – released and managed to flee to the West, but his friend’s ordeal continued, ultimately ending in his execution on 28 April 1951 in Moscow. A letter found in Belter’s pocket had led to his downfall. A school friend who had fled to the West had written in the letter to him: ‘One can do scholarly work again with ease, without being burdened by political rhetoric. A real weight has been lifted from my shoulders.’
The implicit criticism of the GDR caught the attention of the investigators. During a search of Belter’s room, which was located just a few streets away from where the letters had been found, the People’s Police seized a large quantity of ‘agitation material’, mostly leaflets and brochures expressing critical views of the SED regime. Several publications, small-format brochures, had been disguised, such as one bearing the cover of ‘The Mystery of Human Nature’ by Dr Elfriede Kauffmann. Inside, however, it contained Margarete Buber-Neumann’s memoir ‘Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler’. According to Belter’s confession of 5 October 1950, Gerhard Löwenthal, with whom he and du Menil-Schürer had been in contact since May 1950, had sent the material to them in Leipzig. At the time, Löwenthal, who later became known for his work as a journalist with ZDF, was involved in establishing both the Free University and the ‘RIAS’ radio station in West Berlin. Through his experiences as a student at Humboldt University in East Berlin, he became an important voice for the student resistance movement in the GDR. Belter and du Menil-Schürer had distributed the texts secretly.
During the room search, the investigators also found the names and addresses of other individuals, which led to the arrest of nine men in addition to Belter. Four days later, the Stasi handed the detainees over to the ‘Friends’, which was how the East German secret police often referred to their Soviet colleagues. This sealed the fate of the so-called ‘Belter Group’, whose members were accused of engaging in ‘anti-democratic activities’. On 20 January 1951, the ten GDR citizens were convicted by a Soviet military court in Dresden: eight defendants were sentenced to 25 years of hard labour, one received ten years, and Herbert Belter was sentenced to death by firing squad.
Years of uncertainty for the families
As was customary at that time and in such trials, the families were often left in the dark for years regarding the fate of their loved ones. On 21 October 1950, Karl Belter, who lived in Rostock with his wife, sent a telegram to his son in which he asked: ‘Why don’t you write?’ Clearly, the parents were deeply concerned about their son, who – as they could not have known – had already been in prison for over two weeks. On 4 November, the father finally contacted the Leipzig police headquarters and asked to receive ‘information [...] regarding the whereabouts’ of his son.
The parents of the other imprisoned men also tried desperately to obtain information about their sons. After Martha Scharf, the mother of the 20-year-old student Hans-Dieter Scharf, contacted various authorities, who were unable – or, more likely, unwilling – to provide her with any information, she filed a ‘complaint of abduction against persons unknown’. She was evidently granted the opportunity to raise her concerns in person with the Chief of Police in July 1951, but this too was unsuccessful. In a letter to the Chief of Police dated November 1951, she noted: “You assured me at the time that you would look into the matter [...]. As I have yet to receive any news, and, in my distress and worry for my son, am at my wits’ end, I am taking the liberty of reminding you of our conversation and ask you to inform me of the outcome of your efforts. You will no doubt sympathise with the concern and grief of an unhappy mother and not hold my repeated request against me.’ The Chief of Police forwarded this letter to the Stasi.
Hans-Dieter Scharf and the other members of the ‘Belter Group’ returned home from Soviet penal camps in 1953 and 1955, respectively. The fate of Herbert Belter could not be clarified until 1994, when the Russian archives were opened. After he was executed in 1951, his ashes were buried in a mass grave in a Moscow cemetery.
