“the rosenburg - the federal ministry of justice in the

EXHIBITION BOOKLET

“THE ROSENBURG -THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF JUSTICE IN THE SHADOW OF THE NAZI PAST”

bmjv.de/rosenburg

2

An Independent Academic Commission spent a number of years investigating what hap-pened within the walls of the first official building of the Federal Ministry of Justice, the Rosenburg in Bonn, in the early years of the Federal Republic. The findings presented in the study “The Rosenburg Files” are as shocking as they are shameful.

Reinstalling a state based on the rule of law and protecting the constitution were tasks en-trusted to jurists, most of whom had been involved in the National Socialist regime. The fact that the Federal Ministry of Justice even gave official refuge to a war criminal responsible for the extermination of thousands of Greek Jews and enabled him to escape prosecution can-not be justified in any way and cannot be explained to anyone.

Many former Nazi officials pursued their careers at the Rosenburg without any difficulty because they understood themselves to be apolitical legal technicians and were accepted as such. There was collective silence concerning their past. A critical examination of their own biography did not take place.

“THE ROSENBURG -

THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

IN THE SHADOW OF THE NAZI PAST”

3

These officials did not bring about a democratic departure. Rather, backward-looking ideas determined their work. Discrimination and persecution of homosexuals, Sinti and Roma was continued, critical examination of Nazi injustice was delayed and there was support for drawing a line under the past. Little sign was to be seen here of the spirit of the young Basic Law.

“The Rosenburg Files” is not reading material one can simply put to one side. It highlights the special responsibility of jurists for the state and society: they perform a service to justice and in so doing have an obligation to the values of our constitution. This task requires a steadfast attitude, so as to be sensitised when even today, populists and demagogues attack human dignity or call our fundamental rights into question.

Our exhibition aims to disseminate the findings of “The Rosenburg Files”. Its intention is not to teach, but to encourage reflection. If it makes a small contribution to raising awareness of the inalienable humanitarian and democratic values of the Basic Law, it will have achieved its purpose.

Christine Lambrecht Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection

4

THE EXHIBITION “THE ROSENBURG - THE FEDERAL

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE IN THE SHADOW OF THE NAZI

PAST” IS PART OF THE CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF

THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST PAST OF THE FEDERAL

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE AND CONSUMER PROTECTION.

In 2012, the Ministry set up an Independent Commission to investigate the Ministry’s handling of the Nazi past in the early years of the Federal Republic. A team of researchers headed by historian Professor Manfred Görtemaker and legal scholar Professor Christoph Safferling examined how the Ministry dealt with the Nazi past of its staff, the personnel-based and approach-based continuities, the prosecution of crimes perpetrated in connection with the Holocaust, and amnesty and the statute of limitations in the 1950s and 60s.

The research was based on the concept of “public history”, and its interim findings were frequently presented at public symposia and put up for discussion. Since then, eight “Rosenburg symposia” have taken place – not just in Germany, but also in the USA and Israel.

THE “ROSENBURG PROJECT”

AND THIS EXHIBITION

5

In autumn 2016, the final research findings were presented to the general public under the title “The Rosenburg Files”. The findings are unequivocal: many jurists employed in the Justice Ministry of the young Federal Republic had previously worked in the Reich Ministry of Justice or in the Nazi judicial system and had been deeply involved in the injustice of that time. More than half of all senior staff had been former Nazi collaborators and one in five had been a member of the SA. This personnel continuity had grave consequences: many laws were denazified only on a very superficial level, and discrimination against former victims, such as homosexuals or Sinti and Roma, was continued. Nazi criminals, on the other hand, were barely prosecuted for decades and profited from amnesties and provisions under the statute of limitations.

The purpose of this exhibition is to present the findings of “The Rosenburg Files” to a wide audience and raise awareness of the historical injustice that took place. The exhibition “The Rosenburg - The Federal Ministry of Justice in the Shadow of the Nazi Past“ will be on tour throughout Germany from summer 2017.

Book publication of “The Rosenburg Files”, 2016.

© C

. H. B

eck

Verl

ag

6

The exhibition is divided into nine sections. Each of these sections is represented by a dis-play stand, which addresses each respective topic using eye-witness accounts, victim and perpetrator biographies as well as examples of legal texts. The display stands convey the two-faced nature of the Ministry, contrasting a bright front with a dark reverse side: on the one side the brilliant expertise of many lawyers, on the other their dark past and deep involve ment in the Nazi injustice.

This impression is enhanced by the exhibition design. The tilted and distorted shapes of the exhibition boards convey a sense of uneasiness and instability. Oversized office lamps li-terally shine a light on that which for a long time remained in the shadows.

Stack of files 11957 Start of the GDR’s “Brown Book Campaign”1958 Ulm Einsatz-gruppen trial

Stack of files 21958 Establishment of the Cen-tral Office of the Land Judicial Administrations in Ludwigsburg1959 Student exhibition entitled “Unpunished Nazi Judiciary”

Democratic new beginning with former Nazi jurists?The Federal Ministry of Justice in the shadow of the Nazi past

Only the best?The Federal Ministry of Justice’s personnel policy between 1949 and 1963.

Who were the staff?The Ministry’s personnel: brilliant lawyers – often with a dark past

Drawing a line under the past instead of dealing with the past?The Federal Ministry of Justice and its handling of Nazi criminals

LAYOUT OF THE

EXHIBITION

1

23

4

7

Stack of files 31961 Eichmann trial1963–1965 Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt am Main

Should murder be subject to a statute of limitations?The Federal Ministry of Justice and the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes

Prisoners of war or war criminals?The Central Division for Legal Protection to Germans Prosecuted Abroad (Zentrale Rechtsschutzstelle) in the Federal Minis-try of Justice: official help and warnings for Nazi criminals

Convincing facade?Handling of its own past Discrimination by law?

What remained of Nazi law after 1945?

No end to historyThe current Ministry’s handling of its own past

56

7 8

9

9

The founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 also saw the creation of the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ). The new democracy was the alternative to Nazi dictatorship. The Basic Law gave high priority to human dignity and civil liberties. Within the ministries, however, the democratic new beginning often took place with former personnel from the Nazi period.

Many jurists working in the Federal Ministry of Justice, for example, had previously worked in the Reich Ministry of Justice or in the judicial system of the Nazi dictatorship. The Federal Ministry of Justice set up an Independent Academic Commission to in-vestigate the extent of this personnel-based continuity and its effects. The researchers gained access to all the Ministry’s files for the first time. The findings of their work were presented in autumn 2016: “The Rosenburg Files”.


IN THE SHADOW OF THE NAZI PAST

THE FEDERAL MINISTRY

01

1

Democratic new beginning with former Nazi jurists?

OF JUSTICE

02

10

To this day, the Federal Ministry of Justice is first and foremost a ministry that drafts legislation. It prepares the Federal Govern-ment’s bills in the fields of civil law, criminal law, commercial and economic law and pro-cedural law. As the “constitution ministry”, it also examines the draft laws of other ministries to ensure their conformity with the Basic Law.

The Ministry is also responsible for super- vising the authorities in its area of compe-tence, for example the Public Prosecutor General of the Federal Court of Justice. Administrative matters concerning the Federal Court of Justice, the Federal Administrative Court and the Federal Fiscal Court are also subject to its super- vision. The Ministry also prepares the election of judges to these courts.

The Rosenburg, a villa in Bonn, the former capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, was the seat of the Federal Ministry of Justice from 1950 to 1973.

CONSTITUTION

MINISTRY

01

12

This exhibition is part of a critical study of the National Socialist past of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV). Supplemented by accompanying events, the exhibition is intended to present the results of the “Rosenburg Files” study and stimulate discussion. What until now has been “in the shadows” is to be brought to light.

That is why the exhibition elements also have two sides:a brighter front side = public façadeand a darker shadow side = background and abyss.

The critical examination of Germany’s Nazi past is not over – there are still many open questions. We are all part of this awareness-raising process, in which we learn from the mistakes of the past and prevent them happening in the future.

Report on the German news programme “Tagesschau” on 10 October 2016

WHY THIS

EXHIBITION?

02

13

© B

MJV

Presentation of “The Rosenburg Files” by Professor Manfred Görtemaker and Professor Christoph Safferling to Heiko Maas, former Federal Minister of Justice, and his predecessor in office, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger on 10 October 2016 in Berlin.

ROSENBURG FILES

THEBook publication of “The Rosenburg Files”, 2016

© C

. H. B

eck

Verl

ag

14

51 % 76 %29 % 33 %

1950 1957

Nazi Party Nazi PartySA SA

Senior staff at the Federal Ministry between 1950 and 1963 who were tainted by their Nazi Party and/or SA membership.

Source: The book “Die Akte Rosenburg” (“The Rosenburg Files”), page 263

Who were the staff ?

15

“The Federal Ministry of Justice is regarded as the best-quality ministry in Bonn.It has staff of exceptional quality and with an exceptional willingness to serve our democratic system.”Richard Jaeger, Federal Minister of Justice, 1965

all top experts, often the leading authorities in their field.

“When I was called to the Federal Ministry of Justice on 1 November 1962, I entered an institution where ‘old hands’ had been at their desks for 10 years or more,

(…) So understandably, it was with a ‘shiver of awe’ that I entered this circle.”Erich Corves, Head of Directorate, BMJ, 19912

55 % 22 %

1963

Nazi Party SA

Who were the staff ? THE MINISTRY’S PERSONNEL:

OFTEN WITH A DARK PASTBRILLIANT LAWYERS –

MINISTERSchäffer

Personal AssistantMesserer

State SecretaryDr. Strauß

Director of the Ministerial OfficeHage (until further notice)

Internal Audit UnitButennandt

Press Office Thier

Representation in BerlinSünner

Directorate-General ZAdministration

Dr. Richter

Division Z 1

Elsenheimer

Division Z 3

Dr. Winners

Division Z 6

Brandl

Division Z 7

Dr. Zorn

Division Z 5

Groth

Division I 1 Division I 9

Dr. Saage

Division I 2 a

Dr. Weitnauer

Division I 3

Dr. von Spreckelsen

Division I 4

Massfeller

Division I 8

Dr. Böhle-Stamschräder

Directorate-General I

Civil Law and Proceedings

Directorate I A

Dr. Erdsiek

Directorate- General II

Criminal Law and Proceedings

Directorate II A

Dr. Schafheutle

Division II 1Division II 2Dr. Dreher

Division II 1 a

Dr. Schwalm

Division II 1 b

Dr. Tröndle

Division II 3

Dr. Lackner

Division II 4

Dr. Dallinger

Division II 5

Schölz

Division II 6

Dr. Goßrau

Division I 2 bDivision I 10

Riedel

Division I 5 Division I V 9

Dr. Knopp

Division Z 4

Erdmann

Division I 6

Dr. Marquordt

Directorate I BDivision I 7

Professor Bülow

THE STAFF AT THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

IN 1957

Directorate III ADivision III 1

Dr. Geßler

Directorate- General IVPublic Law

Directorate IV A

Roemer

Division II 9 a

Dr. Lüttger

Division II 10

Dr. Grützner

Division II 11

Dr. von der Linden

Division II 12

Schmatloch

Division II 7

Dr. Herzog

Division II 8

Wahl

Directorate II B

Dr. Kanter

Directorate- General III

Commercial and Economic Law

Directorate III B

Dr. Joël

Directorate IV BDivision IV 6

Dr. von Arnim

Division II 9

Dr. Kleinknecht

Division III 2

Dr. Franta

Division III 6

Ebersberg

Division IV 1

Dr. Maassen

Division IV 2

Dr. Jung

Division IV 3

Bertram

Division IV 4

Wohlfarth

Division IV 7

Dr. Lohse

Division IV 8

Dr. Wilhelm

Division IV 10

Dr. Bergmann

Division IV 11

Sonnabend

Division III 7

Hill

Division III 8Division III 9Dr. Haertel

Division III 3

Dr. Caspers

Division III 4

Dr. Fleischmann

Division III 5Division IV 5

Professor Rinck

THE ORGANISATION CHART SHOWS THE STAFF

STRUCTURE AT THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF

JUSTICE IN 1957.

THE STAFF WHOSE NAMES APPEAR WITH A GREY

BACKGROUND WERE MEMBERS OF THE NAZI PARTY

OR ITS SUB-ORGANISATIONS BEFORE 1945,

AND THOSE WHOSE NAMES APPEAR ON A DARKER

BACKGROUND WERE SERIOUSLY TAINTED BY

INVOLVEMENT WITH THE NATIONAL SOCIALIST

REGIME. THE NAMES OF POLITICALLY UNTAINTED

MEMBERS OF STAFF ARE SHOWN AGAINST A WHITE

BACKGROUND.

NSDAP + SA-Scharführer

Dr. Geßler

NSRB As a Munich attorney, he was involved in the execution of death sentences on

political prisoners.

Roemer

NSDAP + SA

Dr. Lüttger

NSDAP + NSRB

Dr. Grützner

NSDAP

Dr. von der Linden

NSDAP + SA

Schmatloch

NSDAP + NSRB

Dr. Herzog

Untainted

Wahl

NSDAP + NSRBAs General Judge in occupied Denmark, he

was involved in passing 103 death sentences.

Dr. Kanter

“Person of mixed race first-degree”

Untainted

Dr. Joël

NSRB

Dr. von Arnim

NSDAP + SA + NSRB

Dr. Kleinknecht

NSDAP + SA + NSRB

Dr. Franta

NSDAP

Dr. Maassen

NSDAP + SA+ BL +NSRB

Dr. Jung

NSDAP + NSRB

Bertram

NSDAP + SA

Wohlfarth

NSDAP

Dr. Lohse

NSRB

Dr. Bergmann

NSDAP

Sonnabend

NSDAP + SA

Hill

NSDAP + NSRB

Dr. Haertel

NSDAP + SA + BL +NSRB

Dr. Caspers

NSDAP + NSRBDistrict Party Court Associate Judge

Oberstabsrichter (Senior Staff Lawyer)

Dr. Fleischmann

NSDAP + SS +NSRB

Professor Rinck

NSDAP + NSRB + SA-Sturmführer

Personal Assistant to Reich Minister of Justice Otto Thierack

Ebersberg

NSDAP + SA + NSRB

Dr. Wilhelm

NSDAP: National Socialist German Workers Party

NSRB: National Socialist Association of German Legal Professionals

SS: Schutzstaffel – Nazi Defence UnitSA: Sturmabteilung – BrownshirtsBL: Blockleiter – block leader*

* Blockleiter were Nazi Party functionaries who oversaw whether the residents of a housing block followed political instruc-tions.

** Special Courts were Nazi courts that dealt specifically with political crimes.

ABBREVIATIONS:

THE STAFF MARKED WITH A BLUE TRIANGLE

IN THE TOP RIGHT-HAND CORNER WORKED AT

THE REICH MINISTRY OF JUSTICE BEFORE

1945. Untainted Schäffer

Untainted Messerer

Persecuted on grounds of raceDismissed from judicial service in 1935

Dr. Strauß

NSDAP + SA RottenführerHage

NSDAP + SS + BL + NSRB Butennandt

NSDAP + NSRB Thier

UntaintedSünner

Untainted Dr. Richter

NSDAP + SA + BL + NSRBWorked at the Special Court Bamberg**

Elsenheimer

NSDAP + SA + NSRBParticipant in the follow-up conference to the Wannsee

Conference on the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”

Dr. Weitnauer

Untainted

Brandl

Untainted

Dr. Zorn

NSDAP

Groth

NSDAP + BL + NSRB Participant in the follow-up conference to the so-

called Wannsee Conference on the “Jewish question”

Dr. Saage

NSDAP + NSRB

Dr. von Spreckelsen

NSRBParticipant in the follow-up conference to the Wannsee Conference,

commentator on the Law for the Protection of German Blood

Massfeller

NSDAP + SA Truppführer (troop leader)

Dr. Böhle-Stamschräder

“Person of mixed race first-degree”

Untainted

Dr. Erdsiek

Applications for admission to the NSDAP + NSRB

Dr. Schafheutle

NSDAP + NSRBPublic Prosecutor at the Special Court

Innsbruck**

Dr. Dreher

NSDAP + NSRB +SA Scharführer Dr. Schwalm

Untainted

Dr. Tröndle

NSDAP

Dr. Lackner

NSDAP + NSRB + BL

Dr. Dallinger

NSDAP + SA + NSRBOberfeldrichter (Senior Field Judge )

Schölz

NSDAP + NSRB

Dr. Goßrau

NSRB

Riedel

NSDAP

Dr. Knopp

NSDAP

Erdmann

NSDAP + NSRB +SA Oberscharführer

Dr. Marquordt

NSDAP + NSRB

Professor Bülow

NSDAP + SA + NSRB Worked at the Special Court Bamberg**

Dr. Winners

203

Only the best?

21

Adenauer in his government declaration of 20 September 1949:

“We stand fundamentally and decidedly on the ground of the civil service.

Much misfortune and much harm have been caused by denazification. Those really guilty of the crimes committed in the Nazi period and during the war should be rigorously punished. But otherwise we should no longer put people into two categories:

Dr. Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949–1963

© F

eder

al A

rchi

ve

those who are politically irreproachable and those who are not irreproachable. This distinction must disappear as soon as possible.”

02

Excerpt from the government declaration by Konrad Adenauer on 20 September 1949 © Federal Archive

Only the best?

RELIANCE ON

“PROVEN PERSONNEL”

THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF JUSTICE’S

PERSONNEL POLICY BETWEEN 1949 AND 1963

AS A RESULT OF THE LAW, THIS NUMBER INCREASED FURTHER. IN 1953, 513 OUT OF 968 POSTS WERE OCCUPIED BY PEOPLE WHO HAD BEEN CIVIL SERVANTS IN THE NAZI PERIOD.

53 %Civil servants of the former Nazi regime

As a result of the law, the BMJ and its area of competence increasingly employed people who had previously worked as civil servants in the Nazi period.

IN 1951, 267 OF 900 POSTS WERE OCCUPIED BY PEOPLE WHO HAD BEEN CIVIL SERVANTS IN THE NAZI PERIOD.

29.7 %Civil servants of the former Nazi regime

01

22

THE “FINAL

DENAZIFICATION LAW” Dr. Adenauer’s objective of integrating the civil servants of the “Third Reich” in the new state was implemented in 1951. All former civil servants, judges, workers and employees of the Nazi state were given the right to be reemployed.

The following exceptions were made:

• those classified as “main offenders” or “offenders” in the denazification pro-cess. Across all the zones of occupation, this applied to only 1.4 percent of all the people vetted, of whom 1,071 were civil servants.

• former members of the Gestapo or Waf-fen SS. An exception was made if they had taken on this activity “against their will”, however. Since this was assumed even if they had consented to the trans-fer – which was almost always the case – members of the Gestapo and Waffen SS also had a right to reemployment.

23

© F

eder

al A

rchi

ve

“People with the qualifications for such ministerial service are a relatively limited resource at all times (...). An administration can only perform such tasks (...) if it succeeds in recruiting the best men. (...)

The decision should be based only on objective qualifications.”Walter Strauß: memorandum of 12 August 1947

Dr. Walter Strauß, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) from 1949–1963

Dr. Walter Strauß – who was himself persecu-ted by the Nazis - was responsible for the BMJ’s personnel policy between 1949 and 1963. He held the office of State Secretary in the Ministry of Justice under six Ministers of Justice. His personnel selection emphasised candidates’ specialist legal skills.

03

WALTER STRAUSS’

PERSONNEL POLICY

Walter Strauß, Stuttgart 1976

Dr. Ernst Geßler worked in the Reich Ministry of Justice until 1945 and from 1949 in the BMJ.

“However, toughpolitical vetting took place, particularly at that development stage.”

24

“It was said that members of the civil service had nothing to set against National Socialism because, for lack of political expertise, they did not have the

(...) sense of orientation and because in many cases they were outstanding technicians in their specialist fields - perhaps a specific German quality (...). Nominally, the vast majority in the higher echelons of ministerial bureaucracy maintained (…) their negative attitude towards National Socialism (...). A large majority, however, (…) simply carried on cooperating on the basis of this misguided technical attitude.”Walter Strauß, Parliamentary Council, Main Committee Meeting held on 23 February 1949

Strauß consciously relied on jurists tainted by their Nazi involvement. He passed conspicuously lenient judgement in particular on ministry officials:

“Certificates of good standing (Persilscheine)were unavoidable”.Walter Strauß, 1976.

01

02

The “tough vetting” of staff with regard to their Nazi past that Strauß retrospectively claimed had taken place did not take place in the 1950s.Only after 1965, after Strauß had left the Ministry, was a regular enquiry made to the Berlin Document Center, where the Nazi Party membership file was kept, when new appointments were made. Strauß had already been aware of key biographical data about staff from the personnel files back in 1949, however. The way in which he dealt with these data shows that he felt even extreme Nazi involvement, such as that of Dr. Ernst Geßler, to be unproblematic, and that he even strongly relativised it.

This is shown in his statement on the case of Dr. Ernst Geßler, a senior civil servant at the BMJ. When in 1950, he was to be promoted to the position of Ministerialrat, the Federal Ministry of the Interior expressed its reser- vations. Geßler had been a member of the Nazi Party since 1933, a Rottenführer in the SA and had held the senior position of Oberregierungsrat in the Reich Ministry of Justice until 1945.

Statements that were to be interpreted as anti-Semitic were also attributed to him. Al-though Strauß was aware of some of these statements, he attached no great importance to them.

STRAUSS’ VIEW OF

NAZIS OR DEMOCRATS?

NAZI CIVIL SERVANTS

BY NAZI INVOLVEMENT:

THE GESSLER CASE

HOW WALTER STRAUSS

DEALT WITH PEOPLE TAINTED

25

Strauß pursued a personnel policy that led to a considerable number of personnel who had been involved with the Nazis being in-tegrated into the BMJ. However, he did not instigate any targeted integration of people persecuted by the Nazis in senior positions, although presumably this would have easily been possible. Thus, in 1949, there were on the one hand 67 planned civil service appointments at the BMJ, and on the other 574 Jewish lawyers who had worked in the judicial system and had been thrown out of office after 1933. In Prussia, another 205 non-Jewish judicial officials had been dismissed on political grounds.Figures from Lothar Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich 1933-1940, Munich, 1987

THE NAZI INVOLVEMENT OF 170 SENIOR STAFF AT THE BMJ BETWEEN 1949 AND 1973

Members of the Nazi Party

53 % 3.5 %20 %

Members of the SS

Members of the SA

03

THE NAZI

BMJ STAFF

INVOLVEMENT OF

26

Statement by Dr. Walter Strauß concerning Dr. Ernst Geßler, 3 October 1950

29

In 1945, the Allies and the West German judiciary had quickly begun to bring Nazi criminals to justice. Yet the Germans’ will to deal self-critically with the past soon slackened. In the judiciary, former Nazi judges returned to their posts and in society at large, the dominant mentality was to “draw a line under the past”.The BMJ was involved in these developments in a number of ways. In the 1950s, the Ministry drafted two amnesty laws and in the 1960s, the BMJ was increasingly confronted with the Nazi past of its staff and advocated their exoneration.

01

4

Drawing a line under the past instead of dealing with the past?AND ITS HANDLING OF NAZI CRIMINALS


THE PAST MENTALITY

DRAWING A LINE UNDER

30

In the 1949 Bundestag election campaign, many political parties advocated putting an end to denazification. There was a widespread desire for an amnesty, not only on the political right, but across the political centre and into the milieu of the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany).

FDP election poster for the election to the Bundestag, 1949

ZEITGEIST

02

31

“The war and also the turmoil of the post-war period have brought such a hard test for so many people and such temptations that one has to show

understanding for some wrongdoings and offences. The question of an amnesty

will therefore be examined by the Federal Government”.

From the beginning, the first Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer linked his assumption of government office with his will for an amnesty. His aim in so doing was to strengthen confidence in the new state. In his first government declaration of 20 September 1949, he underlined:

© F

eder

al A

rchi

ve

Dr. Konrad Adenauer (left) is sworn into office by Dr. Erich Köhler, President of the German Bundestag, as the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. Bonn, 20 September 1949.

1949 AMNESTYThe first Federal Law drafted by the Federal Ministry of Justice in 1949 was the “Amnesty Law”. Its main purpose was to deal with black market and property offences committed between May 1945 and 1949.

03

04

Excerpt from the government declaration by Konrad Adenauer on 20 September 1949© Federal Archive

ADENAUER’S PLANS

FOR AN AMNESTY

32

THE AMNESTIES

OF 1949 …Already in 1949, black marketeers and people who stole to make ends meet were not the only ones to benefit from the amnesty. All prison sentences of up to 6 months and fines of up to DM 5,000 were amnestied. Nazi perpetrators convicted of assault or membership of criminal organisations (SS, Gestapo, SD, Führerkorps of the NSDAP) were among those benefiting from the amnesty.

... AND 1954

In 1954, a second Amnesty Law came into force. It covered all offences committed after 1 October 1944 for which a prison sentence of less than three years had been imposed or was threatened. That enabled crimes typical of the final phase of the war to go unpunished, for example the execution of “deserters” or crimes against prisoners of war. The law also amnestied anyone who “for political reasons” had concealed their civil status. This benefited Nazi perpetrators who had assumed a false identity after 1945 in order to evade prosecution. The law symbolised the attitude in West German society of “drawing a line under the past”; it was the political signal to the judiciary to end the prosecution of Nazi crimes.

1945

25257

1946 1947Year

1948 1949 1950 1953 19571951 1954 19581952 19561955 1959

1600

2000

1400

1800

12001000

800600400200

Sentences

Figures based on: Andreas Eichmüller, Die Strafverfolgung von NS-Verbrechen seit 1945. In: Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 2008, issue 4, p. 621 (p. 626)

900

2011

1474

743

262172 114 46 15 25 29 20 12

Sentences passed by West German courts between 1945 and 1959 for Nazi crimes

01

02

33

Max Merten was so sure that he would not be held accountable for his actions that in spring 1957 he returned to Greece. To his great surprise, he was arrested and sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment by a special military court for war criminals in Athens.

The BMJ then demonstrated a remarkable willingness to act on behalf of the war criminal and former colleague. Ernst Kanter, Head of the Criminal Law Directorate at the BMJ, travelled to Athens himself to make Merten’s case – and was successful:Just 8 months after his conviction, Merten was handed over to Germany where, within a few days, he was released by the German judiciary.

Max Merten’s handcuffs are removed at the beginning of the trial in the Athens courtroom in March 1959.

© u

llste

in b

ild

Max Merten worked at the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1938 to 1942 and had processed enforcement law. In spring 1952, he was employed by the Federal Ministry of Justice and once again took up the post of Head of Division on Enforcement. With regard to his activities during the war, Merten had previously stated that he had been a war administration counsellor in Northern Greece. In a detailed curriculum vitae, he had presented himself to the BMJ as the rescuer of some 13,000 Greek Jews.

Max Merten, 1941

© u

llste

in b

ild

03

04

05

CONTINUITY

A MODEL OF

PERSONNEL-BASED

50,000 GREEK JEWS

THE DEPORTATION OF

TO AUSCHWITZ

(WAR CRIMINAL)

A HELPING HAND

FOR A COLLEAGUE

In autumn 1952, the Greek Public Prosecutor General handed over a list of wanted war criminals to the German authorities: it included the name Max Merten. Merten was said to have extorted considerable assets from Greek Jews in the Thessaloniki region by making false promises for their protection and later to have signed the decisive orders for their “resettlement”. Some 45,000 to 50,000 people were subsequently deported to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; most were murdered. Having evidently been confronted with the Greek investigations by his superiors, Merten asked to be dismissed from the BMJ a few days later. He left the service – there were no criminal law consequences for him.

34

Should murder be subject to a statute of limitations?

35

DEBATES ON THE STATUTE

In 1965, however, a majority in the Bundestag advocated a longer period within which Nazi murderers could be prosecuted. In an impressive speech, Ernst Benda, a young Bundestag deputy, had convinced many parliamentarians in favour of an extension.

In 1979, the statute of limitations was finally abolished in cases of murder. Thus, perpetrators in Nazi extermination camps can still be tried today.

5

01

Report on Ernst Benda on the statute of limitations debate,UFA-Wochenschau 45171965, 16 March 1965

Should murder be subject to a statute of limitations?

THE FEDERAL MINISTRY OF JUSTICE AND

THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS FOR NAZI CRIMES

OF LIMITATIONS

In the early 1960s, a debate began in the Federal Republic of Germany on the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes. Under the Criminal Code, manslaughter offences were to be statute-barred from 8 May 1960 and murders were to be statute-barred from 8 May 1965. In spring 1960, the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) advocated enabling the judiciary to prosecute these offences for a few more years. The Federal Ministry of Justice strongly objected. The Bundestag rejected the SPD’s applications and the manslaughter offences became statute-barred.

The statute of limitations debate was revived in 1965 when murders from the Nazi period threatened to become statute-barred. The Federal Minister of Justice was now Ewald Bucher, who from 1931 had been a member of the National Socialist Schoolchildren’s League, had been awarded the Golden Party Badge of the Hitler Youth organisation and in 1937 had joined the Nazi Party. Once again, the Ministry and the Minster opposed a longer period of prosecutability for Nazi murders.

Fritz Schäffer, Federal Minister of Justice:“I am convinced that the German people and the German legal system have

It is my conviction that today, there is no longer a danger that any major matter in this field remains undiscovered and therefore threatened by the statute of limitations.”German Bundestag, 24 May 1960

already done the best that is possible to prosecute the crimes committed during the Nazi period. Fritz Schäffer,

Federal Minister of Justice 1957–1961

© B

unde

sreg

ieru

ng

When Jewish organisations in New York demonstrated against the impending statute of limitations, Ewald Bucher, Federal Minister of Justice, accused them of provoking anti-Semitism:

Ewald Bucher,Federal Minister of Justice 1962–1965

“The exceptional situation referred to as the Third Reich

has already been taken into account in that our judiciary has suspended the limitation period for specific Nazi crimes for the entire duration of the Nazi regime. That is something.“Der Spiegel no. 5/1965

Ewald Bucher, Federal Minister of Justice:

Der Spiegel, no. 5/1965.

“It should not be overlooked that these demon-strations, mainly supported by Jewish organisations, could

in the world – after all, it is not just a German characteristic.”

feed latent anti-Semitism

© B

unde

sreg

ieru

ng

36

37

TODAYFor a long time, many Nazi perpetrators could not be punished because their involvement in a specific killing in the concentration camps could not be de-monstrated. In 2011, the courts changed their view.

The proceedings against Gröning and Hanning represent a very late legal revaluation: anyone who kept the murder machinery going through their work in an extermination camp was an accessory to murder.

SS Unterscharführer Oskar Gröning was deployed in Auschwitz concentration camp from 1942 to 1944 where he was responsible for administering prisoners’ money. In 2015, he was convicted by the Regional Court Lüneburg as an accessory to murder in 300,000 cases.

SS Unterscharführer Reinhold Hanning was deployed at Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. In 2016, he was convicted by the Regional Court Detmold as an accessory to murder in 170,000 cases.

Oskar Gröning in SS uniform during his time in Auschwitz from 1942 to 1944

Oskar Gröning in court in Lüneburg, April 2015

Reinhold Hanning in uniform as an SS Unterscharführer, around 1943/1944

Reinhold Hanning in the courtroom in Detmold, June 2016

© F

eder

al G

over

nmen

t

© F

eder

al G

over

nmen

t

© p

ictu

re a

llian

ce/A

P Ph

oto ©

pic

ture

alli

ance

/dpa

© F

eder

al A

rchi

ve

Auschwitzconcentration camp

The victims of Nazi genocide in the concentration camps

© d

pa

Dachauconcentration camp

02

In 1968, a limitation of Nazi crimes unintended by the legislator took place. Discussions continue to this day as to how this “limitation mistake” could have happened. It has often been suspected that Dr. Eduard Dreher, who was in charge of criminal law reform at the BMJ, sneaked this “cold amnesty” past the legislator. It may certainly be assumed that he was well aware of the consequences and knowingly did nothing. Dr. Dreher profited personally from the amendment since in 1968 he had to reckon on being called to account for his Nazi past.

COLD AMNESTY

Dr. Eduard Dreher, who from 1943 to 1945 was First Public Prosecutor at the Special Court Innsbruck, was involved in passing many death sentences. From 1951 onwards, he was in the BMJ, his last position until 1969 being Head of Directorate Criminal Law.

23 SEPTEMBER 1968Richard Sturm, Head of Division at the BMJ, passes on the information orally to his superior Dr. Eduard Dreher. Dreher does nothing.

26 SEPTEMBER 1968Richard Sturm informs Dr. Dreher and the Head of Directorate-General Hans-Joachim Krüger in writing of the information from Rudolf Schmitt, a Judge at the Federal Court of Justice. Neither State Secretary Horst Ehmke nor Federal Minister of Justice Gustav Heinemann is informed of the problem. Thus, no attempt is made to amend the act at short notice.

1 OCTOBER 1968The Introductory Act to the Act on Regulatory Offences (Einführungsgesetz zum Gesetz über Ordnungs widrigkeiten – EGOWiG) comes into force.

Under the 16th Amendment to the German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch - StGB) of 1979, the statute of limitations for murder was lifted in the cases of perpetrators and accomplices (accessories) for all offences not yet statute-barred before this date. Thus, today, Nazi crimes can be prosecuted.

38

01

DID DREHER MANIPULATE

24 MAY 1968

17 SEPTEMBER 1968

The Bundestag adopts the Intro-ductory Act to the Act on Regulatory Offences. It includes an amendment to Section 50 of the Criminal Code. The Act is to come into force on 1 October 1968.

Rudolf Schmitt, Judge in the Fifth Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice, tells a member of staff at the BMJ that the amendment to the Act could result in ongoing criminal proceedings for Nazi crimes being stopped on account of the statute of limitations.

20 MAY 1969The Fifth Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice decides that “base motives”, such as racial hatred, are special personal characteristics within the meaning of the new Section 50 II of the Criminal Code. This means that all cases of being an accessory to murder on account of racial hatred become statute-barred.

THE EFFECT OF THE

“STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS

MISTAKE”

REVISED VERSION

SECTION 50 II OF THE

CRIMINAL CODE 1968

“If special personal traits are lacking (…)”From 1969, the Federal Court of Justice treated racial hatred as a “personal trait”.

“(…) in the case of an accomplice”From the 1950s, people who obeyed orders to kill Jews were regarded as accomplices (accessories) and not as perpetrators.

“(…) the sentence shall be mitigated.”The sentence was now reduced. From now on, the maximum sentence was 15 years’ imprisonment and not, as previously, life imprisonment.

In the legislative process, a provision that reduced the maximum sentence without shortening the period of limitations is forgotten.

The following second paragraph was inserted into Section 50 of the Criminal Code:

“(2) If special personal characteristics, conditions or circumstances (particularly personal traits) are lacking in the case of an accomplice on which to establish the criminal liability of a perpetrator, his punishment shall be mitigated in accordance with the regulations on the punishment of an attempt.”

Statute of limitations mistakeSince offences subject to a maximum sentence of 15 years’ im-prisonment had been allowed to become statute-barred on 8 May 1960, the crimes of all Nazi acces-sories to murder were statute- barred retroactively as of 1960 in one fell sweep.

THE SITUATION?

39

02

03

04

01

41

It went without saying that the young Federal Republic of Germany would work committedly on behalf of former German soldiers held abroad as prisoners of war. However, former Nazi jurists in the Ministry used their knowledge about the whereabouts of “old comrades” to warn them of the threat of prosecution abroad. Thus, under the cloak of offering legitimate legal assistance, an efficient “early warning system” was set up, benefiting a large number of war criminals who had absconded abroad. How much did the Federal Government know about this secret dual function?

HELP FOR

PRISONERS OF WAR

Prisoners of war or war criminals?FEDERAL MINISTRY OF JUSTICE

THE “CENTRAL DIVISION FOR LEGAL PROTECTION

TO GERMANS PROSECUTED ABROAD” IN THE

OFFICIAL HELP AND WARNINGS FOR NAZI CRIMINALS

42

Arrival of the last German prisoners of war in Friedland reception camp in October 1955: a mother searches for her missing son.

© a

kg-i

mag

es

SPD poster appealing for the release of German prisoners of war, ca. 1947

© F

eder

al A

rchi

ve

02

03

02

43

“The Federal Government recognises the need to provide legal protection for Germans detained and prosecuted abroad as a result of the war - not with a view (...) to granting protection to war criminals, but at least to do our part to grant these people

the most primitivelegal guarantees.”

Thomas Dehler, Federal Minister of Justice, to the Bundestag on 1 December 1949:

On 1 December 1949, the Bundestag passed a resolution to set up a Central Division for Legal Protection to Germans Prosecuted Abroad (Zentrale Rechtsschutzstelle – ZRS). Its task was to provide legal assistance for Germans being held abroad as prisoners of war or facing charges on account of their actions during the Nazi period.

Dr. Thomas Dehler speaking to the Bundestag

© F

eder

al G

over

nmen

t

Dr. Hans Gawlik took overall charge. Dr. Gawlik had been a public prosecutor in Breslau before 1945 and subsequently worked as counsel for the defence. He had experience of criminal trials and was the Director of the “Coordination Office for the Promotion of Legal Protection for German Prisoners Abroad” at the Länder Council in Stuttgart.

Dr. Hans Gawlik, Head of the Central Division for Legal Protection to Germans Prosecuted Abroad from 1950 to 1968

© F

eder

al F

orei

gn O

ffice

THE FOUNDING OF

THE CENTRAL DIVISION

THE LEADING

FIGURES

“On the basis of the Ordonnance of August 1944 that was authoritative during the trials in France (...), it is assumed that every member of an SS or SD unit or of the Feldgendarmerie is guilty, unless he proves that he was forced to join these organisations or was not involved in the act in question, proof that is practically impossible to provide. (…) I am only telling you this to show you how necessary it is

for us to help the defendants from here

so that there is the possibility of adequate legal protection.”Thomas Dehler, German Bundestag, 1 December 1949

Dr. Thomas Dehler, Federal Minister of Justice, 1949 – 1953

01

44

Dr. Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963

Adenauer replied to François-Poncet on 2 August 1951 in a letter largely drafted by Walter Strauß, State Secretary at the BMJ:

“The Federal Government exercises its right and its duty through this department

to grant legal protection to German citizens accused or sentenced by Allied courts for war crimes. (…).”

The French High Commissioner André François-Poncet accused the Central Division for Legal Protection of systematically attempting to

André François-Poncet: Letter to Adenauer of 2 July 1951

“present those convicted as victims of Allied justice.”

André François-Poncet, French High Commissioner to Germany from 1949 to 1953

© F

eder

al G

over

nmen

t

© F

eder

al A

rchi

ve

POLITICAL

TAILWIND

ZRS

45

The Central Legal Protection Division

informed Nazi perpetrators that they

had been convicted and were being

sought. The perpetrators reacted by

going underground, thus escaping

their punishment.

The choice of Dr. Gawlik as Director of the Central Division for Legal Protection proved fatal. From 1933, Dr. Gawlik had been a Nazi Party member and associate judge at the Nazi Gau Court in Lower Silesia. From 1942, he had worked as a public prosecutor at the special court in Breslau, where he had been involved in passing many death sentences. He was part of the Nazis’ politicised penal judicial system that imposed death sentences on supposed enemies of the regime for even the most trivial offences.

After 1945, Dr. Gawlik had acted as defence counsel for Nazi criminals. He appeared at the Nuremberg trials and later defended Waldemar Hoven, an SS camp doctor at Buchenwald concentration camp. Dr. Gawlik thus consistently used the opportunities of the Legal Protection Division to warn Nazi war criminals and protect them from punishment.

A FATAL CHOICE02

Encouraged by the political tailwind, Dr. Gawlik operated in particular in the Western countries. Here there was more hope of achieving something on behalf of the perpetrators than in East Germany, Yugoslavia or the USSR. By mid-1950, 2,784 people, mainly convicted or wanted war criminals, were being advised. The Central Legal Protection Division developed into an instrument that protected Nazi perpetrators who were officially being sought. In 1953, Dr. Gawlik and his division were transferred to the Federal Foreign Office.

SECRET ADVICE

03

46

Der Spiegel, “Ist benachrichtigt”, no. 16/1968.

In 1968, “Der Spiegel” magazine made the activities of the Central Division for Legal Protection public.

04

EXPOSED

Vienna, wrote to Federal Chancellor Kiesin-ger “with the greatest respect” that he fea-red his “trust in the new Germany had been wrongly invested.”

While Austrian Minister of Justice Hans Klecatsky ordered an immediate criminal investigation of the Red Cross affair in his country, Bonn took a relaxed view of the ac-cusations. Foreign Office Spokesman Jürgen Ruhfus said that the warning action was “not a process deserving criticism”. And German Red Cross Tracing Service executives, who accused Wiesenthal in Vienna of committing “a crime against the idea of the Red Cross”, had “an entirely clear Red Cross conscience

WAR CRIMINALSWARNING SERVICE

Has been informed

Bonn was searching for former SS Haupt-sturmführer (captain) Alois Ennsberger, aged 53, for war crimes. In 1951, he was sentenced in absentia in France to 20 years’ imprison-ment and currently stands accused by Austria’s judiciary of murdering Jews.

Bonn was searching for former SS Obersturm-führer (senior assault leader) Heinz Pfanner, aged 55, for crimes including “premeditated killing”. In 1950, he was given two death sen-tences in absentia by French military courts and a current arrest warrant for war crimes has been issued by the Viennese public pro-secution office.

Bonn was searching for former SS Haupt-sturmführer (captain) and head of Eichmann commandos, Alois Brunner, aged 55. After the war, he was given two death sentences in absentia for mass murder and is currently on West German, Czech and Greek lists of wanted Nazi criminals.

But Bonn was searching for Brunner, Pfan-ner and Ennsberger not to make it possib-le to punish them, but to protect them from punishment.

Germany’s Federal Foreign Office submitted requests to the German Red Cross Tracing Service to look for a total of 800 Germans and Austrians sentenced in absentia by French courts for war crimes in order to “advise (them) of difficulties they might run into abroad” (Federal Foreign Office).

The discretely-handled government action (code-named “Warning Service West” by the German Red Cross) that has recently come to light has prompted new distrust towards Ger-mans abroad. The Swiss newspaper Weltwo-che sees this “monstrous scandalous story” as “probably the darkest chapter in Germany’s coming to terms with the past”. The Vienna correspondent of the New York Times cabled to America that “secret Nazi organisations” had “infiltrated” the German and Austrian Red Cross.

In a dispatch to Foreign Minister Willy Brandt, the “Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime” protested “against preferential treatment and warning of Nazi criminals”. And Eichmann hunter Simon Wiesenthal, Direc-tor of the Jewish Documentation Center in

about the affair,” said Dr. Kurt Wagner, Direc-tor of the Tracing Service, last week.

The affair began in 1949 when the Bundestag passed a motion submitted by the CDU/CSU “concerning measures for Germans detained abroad as a result of the war”, and the Federal Government set up a Central Division for Le-gal Protection, which was later affiliated with the Federal Foreign Office. This was done, as the then Federal Minister of Justice Thomas Dehler explained, “not with a view (...) to granting protection to war criminals, but at least to do our part to grant these people the most primitive legal guarantees.”

Since the mid-fifties, the Legal Protection Division (annual budget for 1967: DM 440,000) had been headed by a lawyer well-versed in legal protection for war criminals: Dr. Johannes Gawlik, aged 62, who had defended mem-bers of Himmler’s SS at the Nuremberg trials.

Gawlik’s office made sure that Germans ac-cused of war crimes abroad were given legal assistance. And it collected trial documents on proceedings against war criminals, for example, to be able to warn Germans who had been sentenced in absentia, “so they do not travel unawares”, the Federal Foreign Office says today, “anywhere where they will be arrested”.

Between 1962 and 1964, for example, Gawlik asked for lists of the names of 800 Germans sentenced in absentia by French courts, in-cluding former SS and SD men, to be sent to him via “counsels of choice” (Federal Foreign Office) of the German Embassy in Paris. But because Gawlik, the defender of rights, did not have the sentenced men’s home addres-ses, he was unable to effectively warn them at that time.

One of the men not warned was Heinrich Gaad, former driver of a company commander from Altenkirchen in the Upper Lahn district, who had been sentenced to death in absentia by a military court in Metz shortly after the war for his involvement in the shooting of seven partisans and hostages in the Vosges village of La Bresse.

When Gaad, meanwhile the driver of an exhibition car of the Buderus iron works in Wetzlar, an Opel Blitz, stopped for an over-night break in the French city of Roanne on 15 September 1964, the police arrested him in his hotel bed. Following Gaad’s acquittal of involvement in the hostage shooting at a new hearing after three months in custody, his attorney complained to the Federal Foreign Office of “a lack of care and protection

G E R M A N Y

DER SPIEGEL, NO. 16/1968 51

47

The German Red Cross warnings evidently also alerted war criminals wanted not only in France but also for other crimes in Germany and Austria. Simon Wiesenthal claims, for example, that a “member of Eichmann’s staff” living overseas for whom an arrest warrant had been issued in the Federal Republic of Germany was probably deterred from retur-ning to Germany, where the public prosecution office was waiting for him, by a visit from the German Red Cross to his German relatives.

And Senior Public Prosecutor Adalbert Rü-ckerl, Head of the Central Office for the Inves-tigation of Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg, who only heard about the activities of the Federal Foreign Office/German Red Cross after the event, said angrily: “If the German Red Cross warns people and ... gets their addresses or information about their whereabouts of which we have not been informed, that would severely undermine our investigation interests”.

It was only by accident that the “Warning Service West“ was made public. Names of wanted Austrians passed on confidentially by the German Red Cross to the Viennese Red Cross were published inadvertently in the Linzer Turm, a “newsletter of the front-line fighters’ association of the 45th Infantry Division Linz and Wels”, under the heading “Red Cross Warns Wanted Austrians”. Said Thomas Leusch, Deputy Director of Bonn’s Tracing Service, of the Viennese blunder: “If only we hadn’t given the Austrians the list.”

When Wiesenthal associates chanced upon this German Red Cross list of names in the bulletin, including that of Eichmann’s ac-complice Alois Brunner, a protest was raised. Wiesenthal complained to the Austrian Minis-ter of Justice about the Red Cross’s “flagrant act of aiding, abetting and favouring wanted Nazi criminals”.

In Bonn, however, the Federal Foreign Office rejected the accusation that it warned criminals without contributing to their prosecution. In late March, Federal Foreign Office Spokes-man Ruhfus told journalists that when the Red Cross received the 800 convicts’ names in order to warn them, the “same list was simultaneously also made available to the competent German prosecution authorities ... through the Federal Ministry of Justice so that criminal proceedings could be brought against them”.

That is not the case. The “competent” pro-secution authority, the Ludwigsburg Central Office, only received copies of the original French list after the Federal Foreign Office had had warnings issued to all the available

wanted persons through the German Red Cross. The copies of the lists in Ludwigs-burg include notes by the Federal Foreign Office after some names, some written out in full and some in shorthand, such as: “Has been informed”.

Confronted last week with these research findings by SPIEGEL magazine, the Federal Foreign Office had to retract its spokesman’s statement: The list was in fact “not initially sent to Ludwigsburg”.

for German citizens” and demanded com-pensation because his client had not been warned by the Legal Protection Division.

In order to prevent similar future recourse claims, Gawlik’s office asked the German Red Cross Tracing Service to find the ad-dresses of people who were in danger of prosecution in France in a file containing 10 million names. As a guide, Gawlik presented the German Red Cross with an excerpt from the original French list of names. Unlike the original list, this excerpt did not include the rank, ground for punishment or sentence of the 800 convicts.

Thus, the German Red Cross, claiming ig-norance of the criminal acts of some of the people sought, promptly declared its willingness to research the addresses. According to Joachim Leusch, Deputy Director of the Bonn-based Tracing Service, “that is one of our tasks in cases relating to the personal protection of citizens of the Federal Repu-blic of Germany”.

Otto Ohlsen, Head of the Hamburg German Red Cross Tracing Service and a former ma-jor in the Wehrmacht’s general staff, was in charge of implementing the “Warning Service West”. Within nine months, 280 of the addresses sought had been established, and throughout the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany, German Red Cross local association representatives had given an oral warning to the men accused of committing crimes in France of making trips across the Rhine – against receipt.

One of the people found, for example, who lives in Bonn, informed Joachim Leusch, De-puty Director of the Tracing Service himself. A former war administration councillor, he had “requisitioned a few pigs” in Lyon during the war, says Leusch, but had no idea that the French had later sentenced him for it.But whether they were responsible merely for requisitioning a few pigs or had been com-plicit in deporting Jews – those warned can now rest assured that if they follow Federal Foreign Office advice they will never have to make amends for the crimes they commit-ted in France.

According to a “transition agreement” conclu-ded in 1954 between Bonn and the Western Allies, the West German judiciary cannot prosecute any war crimes that have already been the subject of military court judgments or of investigative proceedings concluded by Allied prosecutors – even if it had never been possible to execute the foreign judg-ment against the – absent – German accused.52

G E R M A N Y

49

HANDLING OF ITS OWN PAST

The romanticism of the buildingrubbed off on the mood of the staff. They deliberately looked forward, not back. This attitude enabled past injustice to be ignored. This self-imposed amnesia stood in contrast to a demonstrative enthusiasm for the new start. It is reflec-ted in nostalgic memoires. Sometimes, however, the brown surface below the carefully applied whitewash became visible again. How did those who were exposed justify their actions?

01

7

Convincing facade?THE “SPIRIT”

OF THE ROSENBURG

50

In 1991, the BMJ Staff Council published a volume of reminiscences entitled “The Spirit of the Rosenburg. Memories of the Early Years of the Federal Ministry of Justice”. It made no mention of the Nazi past of many staff.

“It is a long time ago now, the founding era of the Federal Ministry of Justice (...). If

are not to gradually fall into oblivion, the memories have to be put on paper (...).”From the preface to “Der Geist der Rosenburg”, 1991

those good old days of the Rosenburg

51

“It was a pleasant, very lively time. (...)

People came together for meals, not just at lunchtime. Many people also had their evening meal in the canteen. Back then, official hours of duty played no role. (...) To sum up, one can say: A lot of work was done, and done effectively.” Eduard Dreher, in: Der Geist der Rosenburg, 1991

“Free weekends had not yet been introduced and often even Sundays had

to be used for official work.”Heinrich von Spreckelsen, in: Der Geist der Rosenburg, 1991

“In my view, the drive and energy of the Federal authorities and parliamentary bodies of that period can be explained mainly by the immense need for regulation and the will of all the staff to prove themselves in the unique opportunity to

build the young republic.We all wanted to achieve something, we all wanted to prove our motivation to ourselves and to others.”Heinrich von Spreckelsen, in: Der Geist der Rosenburg, 1991.

Looking back, those involved presented the years in which the BMJ was accommodated in the sequestered, picturesque Rosenburg as a time of intensive joint work and the performance of duties. What is entirely lacking in the “spirit of Rosenburg” that is repeatedly invoked is a critical reflection of the years before 1945. People often knew each other from the Nazi years and knew about many colleagues’ Nazi involvement. The fact that people hardly discussed these years among themselves is interpreted partly as a collective suppression of the Nazi period and thus as a failed attempt to reestablish the state.

Another socio-psychological interpretation by Hermann Lübbe sees in this process a “communicative silence.” People avoided an open critical discussion of National Socialism in order not to have to discuss people’s individual involvement.

SUPPRESS

OR BE SILENT?

02

52

Dr. Eduard Dreher

From the 1950s, the past of BMJ staff tainted by their Nazi involvement was increasingly revealed to the public. The people concerned had to answer to the Ministry and the general public for what they had done. There were recur-ring patterns of justification:

LIVING A LIE?

JUSTIFICATION

STRATEGIES

Dr. Eduard Dreher

• 1943-1945: First Public Prosecutor at the Special Court Innsbruck

• He was involved in passing many death sentences for minor offences

• In 1959, the first case during the Nazi period came to light in which Dreher had applied for the death penalty

• He invoked having complied with the established case law of the Reich Court

The Basic Law had abolished the death penalty. Yet in 1958, Dr. Dreher was still justifying the death penalty in wartime.

“Indeed, the whole issue changes quite fundamentally in wartime.

(…) Life imprisonment definitely cannot be a substitute for the death penalty in this case. In wartime, when the whole nation is in mortal danger, deprivation of freedom is in itself a weak measure. This is particularly the case when the convicted person can expect to regain his freedom at the end of the war or even more than that, can expect a reward from a possibly victorious enemy.”Eduard Dreher: Für und Wider die Todesstrafe (For and Against the Death Penalty). In: Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft, volume 70, 1958, page 543 et seqq.

Franz Massfeller

• Massfeller had worked in the Family Law Division of the Reich Ministry of Justice between 1934 and 1943

• He wrote a commentary on the Nuremberg Race Laws

• In 1942, he took part in two follow-up conferences to the Wannsee Conference in which the topics of discussion were the dissolution of “mixed marriages” and forced sterilisation

• At the Wannsee Conference, the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, the genocide of the Jews of Europe, was discussed

01

02

03

“THE WAR WAS AN

EXCEPTIONAL SITUATION”

“I WAS ONLY

INVOLVED IN ORDER

TO PREVENT WORSE

THINGS HAPPENING”

53

Heinrich Ebersberg as a witness in the Nuremberg trials, 13 July 1945

© U

S A

rmy

phot

ogra

pher

s on

beha

lf of

O

USC

CPA

C/O

CC

WC

Franz Massfeller

• Massfeller had worked in the Family Law Division of the Reich Ministry of Justice between 1934 and 1943

• He wrote a commentary on the Nuremberg Race Laws

• In 1942, he took part in two follow-up conferences to the Wannsee Conference in which the topics of discussion were the dissolution of “mixed marriages” and forced sterilisation

• At the Wannsee Conference, the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, the genocide of the Jews of Europe, was discussed

with our weak resources without regard for our person.”Official declaration by Franz Massfeller of 25 May 1953 on his participation in the Wannsee follow-up conference.

“A thoughtless word could easily have cost me my freedom, if not my life. (...) In any case, I and so many other gentlemen in the ministerial bureaucracy of the time

tried to avert disaster

Heinrich Ebersberg

• From 1942, he was personal assistant to Otto Thierack, Reich Minister of Justice

• He was aware of countless judicial crimes committed by the Nazis, such as the failure to prosecute “euthanasia” murders or the “special treatment” of prisoners, leading to their death

• In 1969, the judiciary carried out investigations against him as an accessory to the murder of prisoners

• The BMJ initiated disciplinary proceedings against him

• In 1970, the criminal proceedings against him were stopped on account of the statute of limitations due to the “cold amnesty” of 1968

• Ebersberg lost his position as Head of Directorate, however, but remained Head of Division

had no influence

“As a young person, I

Note by Heinrich Ebersberg, 1968

It would have been futileto try to persuade him otherwise.” Hearing of Heinrich Ebersberg, 1967, p. 4, Hessian State Archive, department 631a (De-partment of Public Prosecution Frankfurt am Main, no. 1753)

“It was clear that Hitler considered the measurehe ordered [euthanasia] to be lawful.

04

Excerpt from the supplementary statement by Eduard Dreher of 6 November 1959 on the expert report by Schafheutle on Dreher’s collaboration in the criminal proceedings against Anton Rathgeber before the Special Court Innsbruck

Excerpt from the official declaration by Franz Massfeller of 25 May 1953 on his participation in the Wannsee follow-up conference

Excerpt from the interrogation of Heinrich Ebersberg before the Public Prosecution Office Cologne of 15 December 1969, p. 5 of the Hessian State Archive, Division 631a (Department of Public Prosecution Frankfurt am Main, no. 1753)

“I HAD ABSOLUTELY

NO IDEA …”

on the then Reich Minister of Justice, whose attitude was absolutely authoritarian.”

FRANZ MASSFELLER ON

HIS PARTICIPATION IN THE

WANNSEE FOLLOW-UP CONFERENCES:

Commentaries and medical and legal explanations on the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Marriage Health by Dr. med. Arthur Gütt, Dr. med. Herbert Linden and Franz Masseller, Head of Directorate, 1936

55

Not only did many of the legal personnel of the Nazi regime remain in office in the young Federal Republic – many laws also remained in force. Only evidently unjust laws were abolished or amended by the Allies and the Federal Republic.

In the Criminal Code in particular, Nazi influences remain to this day, for example in the sections on murder (Section 211 of the Criminal Code), the reform of which is still under discussion. The competent actors in the BMJ did too little to bring about a constitutional renewal of the laws.

In significant cases, they repeatedly ad- hered to the status quo, for example concerning the punishability of homosexuality.

National Socialism had an evident influ-ence on State Secretary Walter Strauß’ attitude to homosexuality. He favoured the strict punishment of homosexuals in the civil service who used their position to support homosexuals. To substantiate this view, Dr. Strauß referred to the Röhm Putsch of 1934. Nazi propaganda had presented the murder of Ernst Röhm and the SA leadership as the suppression of a supposed homosexual conspiracy.

© m

auri

tius i

mag

es

01

57

State Secretary Walter Strauß at the meeting of the Grand Criminal Law Commission on “homosexual cliques”, 1958

Discrimi-nation by law ? WHAT REMAINED OF

NAZI LAW AFTER 1945?

CRIMINALISATION

OF HOMOSEXUALS

58

1871Section 175 of the Criminal Code criminalises “unnatural fornication” between men.

1945

1951/1967

1969

1994

The Nazi regime strengthens Section 175, but in particular, the Reich Court changes its jurisprudence, enabling even acts involving no phy-sical contact to be punished as “fornication”. There is a dramatic increase in the number of homosexuals subject to criminal prosecution.

1935

1934

948

1935

2106

1936

5321

Year1937

8271

1938

856280007000600050004000300020001000

Number convicted

People convicted under Section 175 of the Criminal Code

Section 175 of the Criminal Code remains in force unchanged.

On two occasions, the Association of German Jurists speaks out in favour of decriminalising homosexuality. Medical associations and the Grand Criminal Law Commission deployed by the BMJ also plead in favour of decrimi-nalisation. However, civil servants at the BMJ hold fast to punishability, also using argu-ments from the Nazi period.

Homosexual acts between adults are decriminalised. Between 1945 and 1969, approximately 50,000 men were sentenced under Section 175 of the Criminal Code.

Discriminatory youth protection regulations in the legislation governing sexual offences are lifted and Section 175 of the Criminal Code is finally deleted.

2017With the Act of 17 July 2017, individuals who had been convicted of consensual homosexual acts after 1945 were criminally rehabilitated: their judgments were annul-led by law. Furthermore, they are now entitled to monetary compensation for suffering the stigma of a criminal record and the deprivation of liberty associated with their criminal judgments.

Act to Criminally Rehabilitate Persons Convicted of Consensual Homosexual Acts after 8 May 1945,

and to Amend the Income Tax Act

of 17 July 2017

The Bundestag has adopted the following Act with the consent of the Bundesrat:

Article 1

Act to Criminally Rehabilitate

Persons Convicted of Consensual Homosexual Acts after 8 May 1945

(StrRehaHomG)

Section 1Annulment of judgments

(1) Any person who has been convicted as a perpetrator of consensual homosexual acts is hereby rehabilitated through the annulment of criminal judgments that were issued on the basis of

1. sections 175 and 175a nos. 3 and 4 of the Criminal Code, as in force in the Federal Republic of Germany up to and including 31 August 1969 and after 8 May 1945 in the territory that would later become the Federal Republic of Germany;

2. sections 175 and 175a nos. 3 and 4 of the Criminal Code, as in force in the German Democratic Republic up to and including 30 June 1968 and after 8 May 1945 in the territory that would later become the German Democratic Republic;

3. section 175 (1) nos. 1 and 3 of the Criminal Code, as in force from 1 September 1969 up to and including 27 November 1973;

4. section 175 of the Criminal Code, as in force from 28 November 1973 up to and including 10 June 1994; and

5. section 151 of the Criminal Code of the German Democratic Republic, as in force from 1 July 1968 up to and including 30 June 1989,

unless the convictions were based on sexual acts with persons under 16 or acts that fulfil the requirements of the offences described in sections 174, 174a, 174b, 174c or 182 of the Criminal Code, as in force on 22 July 2017.

(2) Subsection (1) shall apply mutatis mutandis to committal orders issued by a criminal court. (3) The annulment of judgments pursuant to subsections (1) and (2) shall comprise all collateral punishments and collateral consequences imposed therewith, as well as all measures of reform and prevention that are not referred to in subsection (2).

(4) The proceedings on which the judgments designated in subsections (1) and (2) are based shall be terminated.

(5) The annulment of judgments pursuant to subsections (1) and (2) shall have no legal effects beyond the provisions of this Act.

Section 2Partial annulment of judgments

((1) Where a judgment was also issued on the basis of criminal provisions other than those designated in section 1 (1), the part of the judgment that was based on the criminal provisions designated in section 1 (1) shall be annulled.

(2) Subsection (1) shall apply mutatis mutandis to committal orders issued by a criminal court.

Section 3Declaration of annulment; certificate of rehabilitation

(1) The public prosecutor’s office shall declare upon application whether a judgment is annulled pursuant to section 1 (1). In cases pursuant to section 2 (1), the pub-lic prosecutor’s office shall declare a partial annulment of the judgment as well as the extent to which the judgment is annulled. The public prosecutor’s office shall issue the applicant with a certificate of rehabilitation concerning the declarations issued pursuant to sentences 1 and 2.

(2) In order to obtain a declaration pursuant to subsection (1) sentences 1 and 2, it shall generally

02

59

This wording allowed large companies to be controlled in the interests of Nazi ideology, particularly the war economy. The legislator of 1937 distrusted shareholders and the supervisory boards elected by them. “Operation managers” were to have their say. After 8 May 1945, the Stock Corporation Act of 1937 remained in force for another twenty years. Even today, shareholders and supervisory boards have very weak codetermi- nation rights.

The continuation of Nazi law was not limi-ted to criminal law. In supposedly political-ly less highly charged areas such as civil and commercial law, the Federal German legis-lator followed the law of the Nazi period. An example is the Stock Corporation Act of 1937 with its decision to strip the general meeting of shareholders and the supervisory board of their powers and to give the Executive Board practically unlimited management powers.

STOCK CORPORATION LEGISLATION

Stock corporation legislation shows the connection between personnel-based and content-based continuities. Dr. Ernst Geßler was in charge of stock corporation legisla-tion at the BMJ for years. He had previously collaborated on the reform of the Stock Corporation Act of 1937 at the Reich Minis-try of Justice. Geßler remained distrustful of the effectiveness of democratic decisions in companies.

“The Board has to manage a company on its own responsibility as required to ensure the well-being of the opera-tions and their supporters and

the general benefit of the people and the Reich.”

(Section 70 (1), Stock Corporation Act of 1937)

Inconsistency in dealing with the Nazi past:

Dr. Ernst Geßler, stock corporation law expert and former Nazi Party member, is handed the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by Gerhard Jahn, Federal Minister of Justice. During the Nazi period, Jahn was deemed to be a “half-Jew”; his mother was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp.

Quotation by Ernst Geßler on the Stock Corporation Act, 1937

© b

pa

60

The BMJ and the judiciary were closely linked. The Ministry contributed to the selection of judges at the Federal Court of Justice. Conversely, many BMJ staff had previously worked in the judiciary. There was also a high level of continuity with the Nazi judiciary at the Federal Court of Justice. Of the judges working at the Federal Court of Justice in 1962, 77 per cent had previously worked in the Nazi judiciary. As a result, little distance was created in the BMJ from the jurisprudence of the Reich Court, which closed in 1945. Georg Petersen, the first Director-General for Civil Law at the BMJ, is a striking example.

On the opening of the BMJ in 1950, Petersen invoked the “tradition of the Reich court” as a role model. As an example, he stated that even in the Nazi period, the Reich Court’s decision-making yardsticks had been “good faith” and “common decency”. A problematic resource, since these unde-fined legal terms enabled Nazi ideology to be superimposed on existing regulations, there-by systematically depriving opponents and persecuted people of their rights.

“In any case, the (...) general basic idea taken from the racial policy laws must be taken into account

to eliminate the Jewish influence from German business.”

Georg Petersen before the Reich Court, 1940:

01 02

THE FEDERAL COURT OF

JUSTICE AND THE BMJ:

KINDRED SPIRITS?

GEORG PETERSEN:

FROM LOOTERS’

COUNSEL TO

DIRECTOR-GENERAL

AT THE BMJ

61

they have an uninhibited inherent urge towards occupation. (…) The purpose of all public authority measures (…) was not to persecute Gypsies specifically on account of their race, but to protect the rest of society from their socially damaging actions based on strange group traits. (...)”Judgment by the Federal Court of Justice of 7 January 1956

“Since the Gypsies have largely resisted settlement and thus adaptation to the settled population, they are re-garded as antisocial. Experience shows that they have a tendency towards crime, particularly theft and fraud, and often lack the moral motivation to respect other people’s property because, like primitive prehistoric people,

One of the victims of this Federal Court of Justice judgment was Nikolaus Pfeil. He was German and, in the Nazi jargon, “of mixed German and Gypsy blood”. In 1940, he had been arrested on account of his background and taken to occupied Poland. There he had survived in ghettos and forced labour camps under conditions similar to those in concentration camps until his liberation in 1945. After pursuing his case through the courts for years, it went to the Federal Court of Justice for an appeal on points of law in 1955.

Pfeil wrote to the Federal Court of Justice:“The legal action for payment of my compensation for wrongful imprisonment has been under way for a very long time. I am seriously ill and have an invalidity rating of 80 percent; I also am of an advanced age. Since I have been waiting for ten years now, I would like to kindly request the Federal Court of Justice to accelerate my proceedings and not to keep me waiting so long for the judgment. Thank you very much in advance.”

On 7 January 1956, the Federal Court of Justice refused compensation. Only in 1963 did the court revise its legal opinion, but without renouncing the underlying view that “Gypsies” had a tendency towards crime. Meanwhile, Nikolaus Pfeil had died. On 12 March 2015, Bettina Limperg, President of the Federal Court of Justice, distanced herself unequivocally from this jurisprudence on the occasion of a visit to the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma.

A residue of Nazi racial ideology is also to be found in the jurisprudence of the Federal Court of Justice in connection with the compensation of Sinti and Roma. In 1956, the Federal Court of Justice rejected such claims because it was said that “Gypsies” were not taken away to the concentration camps purely on racist grounds.

03

04

The Fourth Rosenburg Symposium of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection in October 2014 prompted the Federal Court of Justice to subject its “Gypsy” jurisprudence to critical examination.

The Federal Court of Justice even justified a circular from Heinrich Himmler, the Head of the SS, of 8 December 1938. In particular, it said, this circular indicated

Gypsies’ antisocial characteristics

“that in spite of the occurrence of racial ideology aspects, it is not race as such that is the reason for the orders given, but the

THE FEDERAL COURT OF JUSTICE

AND THE “GYPSIES”

referred to before.”

THE VICTIMS’

CONCERNS:

OVERLOOKED

AND IGNORED

Event on the presentation of the book “The Rosenburg Files” at the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection

“There is no endto history. Even today, there are dangers to humanity

and freedom that jurists, in their respective positions, have to resist. A knowledge of history can sharpen people’s senses when human rights and the rule of law are being called into question again. In order to reinforce this ethos, the injustice caused by German jurists should be a compulsory subject in jurists’ training.” Excerpt from the speech by Heiko Maas, former Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection

© p

hoto

thek

.net

/ Th

omas

Koe

hler

63

No Endto History THE CURRENT MINISTRY’S

HANDLING OF ITS OWN PAST

64

“The Rosenburg Files” showed the failures of the past. Now consequences have to be drawn for the present.

For much too long, jurists in Germany understood themselves to be apolitical legal technicians; this attitude made many of them accomplices of Nazi injustice. Today, jurists should live and defend the values of the Basic Law – human dignity, individual freedom and social diversity. In order to further strengthen this ethos, Nazi injustice should become an obligatory subject of legal training.

CONSEQUENCES

The Federal Ministry of Justice has launched a new in-service training programme and has commissioned a study of its official building in Berlin. As part of Berlin’s Jewish textile-making district, many of its former owners and users were murdered in the Holocaust. All the Ministry’s employees should be aware of this past and of the responsibility each and every one of them has for a free state under the rule of law.

The work on “The Rosenburg Files” was accompanied by many public symposia. These events and this exhibition are intended to encourage other institutions also to deal with their own past and to ask what each of us can do today to protect human dignity, freedom and diversity.

Today, the headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection are on Hausvogteiplatz in Berlin.

© S

teph

an K

lonk

01

Further information on theRosenburg Project is available at:

www.bmjv.de/rosenburg

65

“The Rosenburg Files” also prompted many older people to ask themselves self-critically how they dealt with the Nazi contamination of leading jurists in the past. Dr. Hans-Jochen Vogel was Federal Minister of Justice from 1974 to 1981. In late 2016, he gave his opinion on camera on his own responsibility and the consequences of the historical findings:

SELF-CRITICISM

02

AND WHAT LESSONS DO YOU LEARN FROM HISTORY?

Dr. Hans-Jochen Vogel,Federal Minister of Justice 1974–1981

© p

ictu

re-a

llian

ce/

dpa

Excerpts from an interview with Dr. Hans-Jochen Vogel, former Federal Minister of Justice, 2016

1957 THE BEGINNING OF

THE GDR’S BROWN BOOK

CAMPAIGN

During the Cold War, the GDR collected a great deal of material against war criminals and Nazi perpetrators in the Federal Republic of Germany.Between 1957 and 1968, the GDR published a number of so-called “Brown Books”, in which it publicised the Nazi past of the West German political, business, legal and academic elites.Initially dismissed as Communist agitation, the accusations generally turned out to be correct and also aroused inter-national attention. The revelations led to the resignation of Federal Public Prosecutor General Ludwig Fränkel and Hans Krüger, Federal Minister of Displaced Persons.The West German authorities reacted, more frequently requesting information on senior officials from the Berlin Document Center, where the Nazi Party membership file was kept.

Albert Norden, Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and author of the Brown Book, here in 1962

© p

ictu

re a

llian

ce/d

pa/Z

B

66

Table of contents and preface to the “Brown Book. War and Nazi Criminals in West Germany”, Berlin 1965

1958 ULM

EINSATZGRUPPEN TRIAL

Between April and August 1958, the first trial before a German jury court in connection with the Nazi mass murders of Jews took place in Ulm. The accused were ten members of a task force that had killed more than 5,000 Jewish men, women and children in the German-Lithuanian border area in 1941.

Public knowledge of these crimes brought about a change in the public mood. In an opinion poll carried out in West Germany before the judgment, 54 % of those polled were in favour of punishing Nazi crimes. In view of the fact that the previous dominant view had been to reject denazification and Allied trials, it is likely that a much lower number would have been in favour in an earlier poll.

The accused Edwin Sakuth, Harm Harms and Bernhard Fischer-Schweder during the Ulm Einsatzgruppen trial, 1958

Journalists and observers in court during the Ulm Einsatzgruppen trial, 1958

© S

üdw

est P

ress

e U

lm (i

f any

thir

d-pa

rty

righ

ts

have

bee

n in

frin

ged,

ple

ase

cont

act t

he p

ublis

her)

© S

üdw

est P

ress

e U

lm, p

hoto

grap

her H

. San

der

67

Spiegel, no. 28/1979

Central Office of the Land Judicial Administrations, exterior view

© C

entr

al O

ffic

e of

the

Land

Judi

cial

Adm

inis

trat

ions

for t

he

Inve

stig

atio

n of

Naz

i Cri

mes

, Lud

wig

sbur

g

In response to the growing public pressure following the Ulm Einsatzgruppen trial, the “Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes” was set up. Its task is to carry out preliminary investigations on the basis of which public prosecution offices can bring charges against Nazi criminals.

7,600 preliminary investigations have been carried out since 1958. In all, the West German judiciary has investigated more than 120,000 suspects, but only about 2,000 were convicted. The Central Office is still in operation today. In 2016 it launched 30 new preliminary investigations into offences including crimes committed in Stutthof, Auschwitz and Flossenbürg concentration camps.

1958 FOUNDING OF THE CENTRAL

OFFICE OF THE LAND JUDICIAL

ADMINISTRATIONS FOR THE

INVESTIGATION OF NATIONALIST

SOCIALIST CRIMES IN LUDWIGSBURG

68

The central file comprises some 1.7 million cards with data on suspects

© C

entr

al O

ffic

e of

the

Land

Judi

cial

Adm

inis

trat

ions

fo

r the

Inve

stig

atio

n of

Naz

i Cri

mes

, Lud

wig

sbur

g

© R

egio

nal C

entr

e fo

r Civ

ic E

duca

tion

Central Office in Ludwigsburg, exterior view

Pupils visit the Central Office in Ludwigsburg ©

Cen

tral

Off

ice

of th

e La

nd Ju

dici

al A

dmin

istr

atio

ns fo

r the

Inve

stig

atio

n of

N

azi C

rim

es, L

udw

igsb

urg

69

Excerpts from:Millionen Morde. Ein ruhiges Städtchen. Zwei alte Generale. Ludwigsburg und die Zentrale Stelle zur Verfolgung von NS-Verbrechen. Documentary film by Jochen Faber, approx. 90 minutes, D 2008

1959 STUDENT

EXHIBITION

“UNPUNISHED NAZI JUDICIARY”

In 1959, the operations of the judiciary during the Nazi period were subject to public criticism for the first time. Berlin members of the Socialist German Student Association (SDS) around Reinhard Strecker organised a touring exhibition of nine German cities. The exhibition venues were usually restaurants and student halls of residence. Using the most basic means, such as photocopies and hand-written posters, the students documented countless crimes by the Nazi judiciary.

©IM

AG

O/Z

UM

A/K

EYST

ON

E

Reinhard Strecker (on the right), one of the organisers of the touring exhibition “Unpunished Nazi Judiciary”, takes a principle witness in the Eichmann trial on a guided tour of the exhibition in Munich in 1961

70

Radio feature 27 November 1959: Karlsruhe students open the exhibition “Unpunished Nazi Judiciary” by Michael Reissenberger for SWR 2, 27 November 2014

The exhibition initially aroused widespread indignation in the Federal Republic, was considered to have been controlled by the GDR, and led to a rift between the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and its student organisation SDS. However, the exhibition also attracted great attention abroad and in 1960 was displayed in the British Parliament. One result was that in 1961, the German Judiciary Act was amen-ded and jurists with a Nazi past were given the opportunity to apply to take retirement. However, this offer was taken up by only 149 out of approximately 15,000 judges and public prosecutors at the time.

Exhibition poster “Unpunished Nazi Judiciary”

A death sentence issued by the People’s Court on 8 September 1943. Similar copies of documents were presented in the exhibition.

71

Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death by hanging, 15 December 1961

©pi

ctur

e al

lianc

e /

dpa

1961 EICHMANN TRIAL

The Eichmann Trial, which was held in Jerusalem in 1961, attracted world-wide attention. Adolf Eichmann was a former SS Obersturmbannführer and as such was responsible for the expulsion, deportation and thus murder of European Jews. After going underground in Buenos Aires for years, he was abducted and taken to Israel by Mossad, the Israeli secret service, and put on trial there.

Not least, this trial changed the image of Nazi perpetrators. Initially, after 1945, the SS and the Gestapo had been iden- tified as the main groups of perpetrators who had been involved in the extermination of the Jews, emphasising the image of the lower-class criminal murderer and thug. The Eichmann trial gave rise to the image of the “perpetrator behind his desk” from the bourgeois elite. Now the Holocaust appeared to be an industrialised mass extermination process (“death factories”) in which the individual disappears in the faceless apparatus of the extermination machine. Only in the 1990s did research on the perpetrators detach itself from these images, once again placing the focus more strongly on perpetrators’ individual actions and motivations.

72

Excerpts from the presentation by Gabriel Bach at the Second Rosenburg Symposium in Nuremberg on 5 February 2013

Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death by hanging, 15 December 1961

1963-1965

AUSCHWITZ TRIAL

IN FRANKFURT AM MAIN

Starting in 1963, 22 former SS men from Auschwitz concentration camp were put on trial in Frankfurt. There had been considerable resistance to the trial from within the judiciary. It was only through the untiring commitment of the Hessian Public Prosecutor General Fritz Bauer that the proceedings took place.

The trial lasted 20 months; more than 200 Auschwitz survi-vors were heard as witnesses. The proceedings, which attracted great media interest in Germany and abroad, showed the pub-lic the whole inconceivable dimensions of the mass murders committed in Auschwitz for the first time.

The trial had a broad influence on the social image of the typical Nazi criminal. Most of those who bore the main responsibility for the organised mass murders came from the middle class, and were doctors, businessmen, craftsmen or bank managers. The lack of sympathy and remorse shown by the suspects on trial shocked many observers.

These trials resulted in six defendants being sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. Ten defendants were sentenced to between three and fourteen years’ imprisonment. Three defendants were acquitted. The court held that a sentence could only be passed if it could be demonstrated that each perpetrator had been specifically involved in committing a murder; thus, in the subsequent period there were only a few proceedings against people who had borne responsibility in the concentration camps.

It was not until 2011 that the legal view taken by Fritz Bauer prevailed in the proceedings against former concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk. Anyone who kept the murder machinery going through his activity in an extermination camp was an accessory to murder. This change of legal view led to new trials against former SS men, such as Oskar Gröning in Lüneburg in 2015 and Reinhold Hanning in Detmold in 2016.

Fritz Bauer was responsible for bringing about the Auschwitz trial and made a key contribution to the capture of Adolf Eichmann.

© w

ww

.aus

chw

itz-

proz

ess-

fran

kfur

t.de

73

Sketch of the courtroom in Haus Gallus by Erich Dittmann, view from the press gallery

74

Auschwitzprozess Mai 1964 = Auschwitz Trial, May 1964 Skizze Erich Dittmann = Sketch by Erich Dittmann Blick von der Pressetribüne FFM = View from the press gallery in Frankfurt am Main

© D

ittm

ann

75

Documents fromthe Auschwitz trial

Akten = FilesAngeklagte = DefendantsBühne = BenchDolmetscherin = InterpreterJustizbeamter = Judicial officialLagerkarte Auschwitz = Plan of Auschwitz campNebenkläger = Auxiliary prosecutorsPolizei = PoliceRadiotechnik = Radio techniciansRechtsanwälte = AttorneysRichter = JudgesStaatsanwälte = Public prosecutorsStandkarten = Bulletin board mapsZeuge = WitnessZuschauer = Spectators

Published byFederal Ministry of Justiceand Consumer ProtectionMohrenstraße 3710117 BerlinTel. 030 18 580-0Fax: 030 18 580- 9046

Weblinkswww.bmjv.de www.bmjv.de/rosenburg

Picture creditskg-imagesFederal Foreign OfficeAxel Springer Syndication GmbHFederal Ministry of Justice and Consumer ProtectionFederal Press OfficeFederal Archive/Federal Photo ArchivesPress and Information Office of the Federal GovernmentC. H. Beck Verlagdpa Picture - Alliance GmbHFritz Bauer Institutimago stock & people GmbHRegional Centre for Civic EducationMauritius ImagesSPIEGEL-Verlag Rudolf Augstein GmbH & Co. KGStephan KlonkSüdwest Presse UlmThomas Koehler/photothek.netUllstein BildUS Army photographers on behalf of OUSCCPAC/OCCWCwww.auschwitz-prozess-frankfurt.deCentral Office of the Land Judicial Administrations for the Investigation ofNationalist Socialist Crimesphotothek.de /Thomas Trutschel

Design krafthaus Das Atelier von facts and fiction GmbH Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection

Print Druck- und Verlagshaus Zarbock GmbH & Co. KG Sontraer Straße 6 60386 Frankfurt a. M.

IMPRINT