In 1992 Torsten Jurell turned his attention to the Ossietzky affair, in
which Germany time and time again has trampled rough-shod over justice
to protect the interests of the state.
Carl von Ossietzky, at the time the editor of the newspaper, Die
Weltbühne, was sentenced for high treason on 23rd November 1931.
Ossietzky, who had exposed how the Weimar Republic had been
clandestinely arming for war in contravention both of the constitution
and the Treaty of Versailles, was imprisoned and sent to
Pappenburg-Esterwegen concentration camp, where he was tortured
horribly.
In 1936 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and under intense
international pressure, the Germans were forced to transfer him to a
hospital in Berlin where he died soon afterwards as a result of the
brutal treatment he had suffered at their hands.
In 1991 his daughter, Rosalinda von Ossietzky-Palm requested a review
of the trial, but her request was rejected by the German courts, and in
1992 the high-treason verdict against Carl von Ossietzky was confirmed
in the highest legal instance in the country.
Jurell’s relief, made originally for a travelling exhibition in France
but later also shown in Sweden, soon became a rallying point for all
those who condemned the verdict against Ossietzky and the Nazis’
treatment of the man.
The work was later purchased by the City of Hamburg whose mayor
presented it to the Carl von Ossietzky City and University Library,
where it hangs today, a symbol of the greater struggle against all
kinds of injustice. |
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