Historical photos, documents from investigation files and court hearings provide an insight into the Jakubowski case.
Exhibition period: March 13, 2025 to June 15, 2025
The Jakubowski case is of immense importance in the historical development of the judicial and criminal system in Mecklenburg. The murder trial of a boy from the village of Palingen in the district of Schönberg, who was killed in the fall of 1924, brought the small state of Mecklenburg-Strelitz into the public spotlight of the Weimar Republic for years.
Just one day after the child's body was found, Josef Jakubowski, a Pole living in Palingen after his release from German captivity, was arrested as a suspect. He was sentenced to death in March 1925 in a quickly initiated circumstantial trial without sufficient evidence of guilt.
The death penalty was already highly controversial in Germany at this time. Various initiatives and parties now fought for a retrial - and it turned out that the executed man could not be proven to be solely guilty.
Jakubowski's execution on February 15, 1926 was the first ever in the state of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
This miscarriage of justice is the subject of the special exhibition "I DID NOTHING. WHY TALK SO MUCH? - The case of Josef Jakubowski". Historical photos, documents from investigation files and court hearings, excerpts from the DEFA film "Mord ohne Sühne" (Murder without Atonement) and other responses to the case as well as current art photographs of the Palinger Heide - the place where Ewald Nogens' child's body was found - provide an introduction to the Jakubowski case.
