Willi Geiger (judge)

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Violinist 1951

Willi Geiger (born May 22, 1909 in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse , † January 19, 1994 in Karlsruhe ) was a German lawyer. During the period of National Socialism Geiger was 1941-1943 prosecutor at the special court in Bamberg . After the end of the Second World War he was a judge at the Federal Court of Justice and a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court .

Life

After the NSDAP and its German national alliance partners came to power , the lawyer Geiger joined the SA in 1933 and became a training and press officer. Since 1934 he was a member of the Nazi legal guardian association and the National Socialist People's Welfare . In 1937 he became a member of the NSDAP and in 1938 he was promoted to Rottenführer in the SA .

In 1940 he wrote a dissertation under Wilhelm Laforet on the subject of the legal status of the editor under the law of October 4, 1933 . In it he justified, among other things, the professional bans for Jewish and left-wing journalists. The regulation "abolished the overpowering, people-damaging and culture-damaging influence of the Jewish race in the field of the press in one fell swoop". In the bibliography he put asterisks for "author is a Jew" for some authors. Journalistic recourse to Jewish texts is a professional offense. Thanks to the National Socialist Editor's Law , it was possible to quickly and thoroughly cleanse German journalism of undesirable elements and to put an end to the “ Marxist press”. In this context, he put journalists on an equal footing with civil servants. In this profession it is unbearable who has proven himself - as a non- Aryan (cf. Aryans ) or politically and professionally as a “ pest on the people and the state ”. It is not about membership in a left party, but about the “necessary personal qualities” of the journalist. Geiger derived that a secretary had to be of Aryan descent directly from the party platform of the NSDAP .

From 1941 to 1943 Geiger worked as a public prosecutor at the Bamberg Special Court. He passed death sentences there on at least five cases , including an 18-year-old who allegedly committed sexual acts on a minor who was slightly younger than himself. Geiger rejected a request for clemency from the defense attorney because of the defendant's youth. He participated in the execution and ensured that it was publicized through posters and press releases. Another case concerned a forced laborer , the young against six to eight boys who begin beating on him a pocket knife was pulled. Geiger made it very important to publicize the death sentence by posting posters.

After the end of the Nazi regime, Geiger was classified as "exonerated" in the denazification process . He became a higher regional judge at the Bamberg Higher Regional Court , in 1948 he lectured on constitutional and administrative law at the Julius Maximilians University in Würzburg, and in 1949 became head of the constitutional department in the Federal Ministry of Justice and personal assistant to the first Minister of Justice, Thomas Dehler .

Geiger and his colleague Hermann Höpker-Aschoff were entrusted more than any other judge with drafting both the Basic Law and the Federal Constitutional Court Act . In 1950 he was appointed as a so-called “neutral” judge (alongside CDU / CSU and SPD members) at the Federal Court of Justice (BGH). From 1951 he was President of a Senate. From 1951 to 1977 he was a judge of the Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) and thus ten years at the same time at the BGH and the BVerfG. When the minutes of the Federal Cabinet were released , it later emerged that he had kept the Adenauer government informed about the internal decision-making processes in the BGH and BVerfG. Geiger's tenure was the longest of all constitutional judges, as BVerfG judges who came from federal courts could serve until retirement. In 1954 Geiger became an honorary professor at the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer . By 1990 alone he had written over 300 specialist publications.

Geiger had a decisive influence on the judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court on the Basic Treaty of July 31, 1973 .

In 1975, after the normalization of relations between the FRG and the GDR , he prepared the constitutional court ruling on the radical decree as rapporteur . Despite his anti-Semitic and anti-communist Nazi dissertation, Geiger saw no reason to declare himself biased about the question of civil servants' loyalty to the constitution , but instead wrote - according to the assessment of legal scholar Ingo Müller - his image of the civil servant: The duty of political loyalty requires that a civil servant feels at home in the state he is supposed to serve - now and at all times, but not staying cool and distant in his attitude. It was said that it was not about discriminating against someone because of their membership in a political party, but about the personality of an applicant. This had to ensure that he stood up for the free democratic basic order at all times . One part of the behavior that can be significant when judging personality is belonging to a party that is described as anti-constitutional in politics, regardless of whether or not legally prohibited as unconstitutional. “Professional ban” is just a catchphrase to emotionalize.

Of the constitutional judges, Geiger alone “openly” (Hans-Peter Schneider) assigned them the political task of “helping to shape the political process”.

In 1966, GDR newspapers published Geiger's death sentences at the Bamberg Special Court for the first time, and West German media investigations confirmed the facts. There was no judicial investigation or indictment , but public criticism began. The German-Jewish lawyer and publicist Ernst Linz, who lives in Israel , spoke in an article for the social democratic newspaper Vorwärts about “Geiger's brown vest”. Linz referred to his efforts towards a German-Israeli understanding and Geiger's counterproductive presence in the West German judiciary. Geiger "shouldn't even be a district judge in Durlach". Linz considered Geiger's loyalty to the Basic Law to be questionable and assessed him as a “rabid anti-Semite”. On the other hand, the Deutsche National-Zeitung of the nationalist publisher Gerhard Frey said that Geiger, as an “old school judge”, served the rule of law in an exemplary manner . He earned “first merits ” in Bamberg.

Geiger was a member of the Catholic student union KDStV Aenania Munich and KDStV Gothia Würzburg . It belonged to the jurists' association Lebensrecht e. V. , who advocated the prosecution of abortion and published in their series of publications as a prominent author in the 1980s and 1990s on the "illegality of abortion" and against the law on pregnancy and family support .

literature

  • Hans Joachim Faller , Paul Kirchhof , Ernst Träger (Ed.): Responsibility and freedom. The constitution as a value-determined order. Festschrift for Willi Geiger on his 80th birthday . Mohr, Tübingen 1989, ISBN 3-16-645471-3 .
  • Friedrich Karl Fromme : An unusual judge. Willi Geiger's work at the Federal Constitutional Court. In: Yearbook of Public Law of the Present 32 (1983), pp. 63–70.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945? S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2003, 2nd edition 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
  • Otto Köhler : A journalist has to be Aryan. From the blood robe in Bamberg to the red robe to Karlsruhe: Willi Geiger. In: Ders .: We typist offenders. Journalists under Hitler - and afterwards. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1989, pp. 153-163.
  • Helmut Kramer : A versatile lawyer - Willi Geiger 1909–1994. In: Thomas Blanke (ed.): The legal processing of the injustice state. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1998, pp. 373-379.
  • Helmut Kramer : Willi Geiger: From anti-Semite and public prosecutor at the Nazi special court to judge at the Federal Constitutional Court. In the series “perpetrators, helpers, free riders. Nazi-polluted people from North Baden + North Black Forest "(THT), Kugelberg Verlag, Gerstetten 2017. ISBN 978-3-945893-08-1 .
  • Rolf Lamprecht : I'm going to Karlsruhe. A history of the Federal Constitutional Court. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2011.
  • Richard Ley : Willi Geiger †. In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 1994, pp. 1050f.
  • Martin Will: Ephoral Constitution. The party ban of the right-wing extremist SRP from 1952, Thomas Dehlers Rosenburg and the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-16-155893-1 (Geiger's biography on pp. 152–158).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 177.
  2. ^ Quote from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt a. M. 2005, p. 177.
  3. ↑ Ingo Müller , Terrible Jurists . Munich 1989, p. 220f.
  4. ↑ Unless otherwise stated: Otto Köhler, A journalist must be Aryan. From the blood robe in Bamberg to the red robe to Karlsruhe: Willi Geiger, in: ders., Wir Typewriter Offenders. Journalists under Hitler - and afterwards, Cologne 1989, pp. 153–163, here: pp. 153, 157f.
  5. ↑ Ingo Müller , Terrible Jurists . Munich 1989, p. 220.
  6. ↑ Otto Köhler, A journalist must be Aryan. From the blood robe in Bamberg to the red robe to Karlsruhe: Willi Geiger, in: ders., Wir Typewriter Offenders. Journalists under Hitler - and afterwards, Cologne 1989, pp. 153–307, here: pp. 155, 306.
  7. ↑ Katja Gelinsky, followers of the new beginning. Horst Dreier pays tribute to Willi Geiger on the occasion of an event by the Federal Ministry of Justice on the subject of coming to terms with the Nazi past, FAZ, May 2, 2012, [1] .
  8. ↑ Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg: Lecture directory for the summer semester of 1948. University printing house H. Stürtz, Würzburg 1948, p. 10.
  9. ↑ Hans Vorländer (ed.), Die Deutungsmacht der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit, Wiesbaden 2006, p. 146.
  10. ^ Walther Fürst , Roman Herzog , Dieter C. Umbach (Eds.): Festschrift for Wolfgang Zeidler , Volume 1, p. 170.
  11. ^ Dierk Hoffmann, The Federal Constitutional Court in the Political Force Field of the Early Federal Republic. The dispute over the Western Treaties 1952–1956, in: Historisches Jahrbuch 120 (2000), pp. 227–273, here: p. 253.
  12. ↑ Richard Ley, Willi Geiger †, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 1994, p. 1.050.
  13. ↑ Axel Tschentscher, Legal Framework and Legal Practice of the Appointment of Judges to the Federal Constitutional Court (PDF; 110 kB) in: Jan Sieckmann (Ed.), Constitution and Argumentation , 2005, p. 95 (107), footnote 43.
  14. ↑ Richard Ley, Willi Geiger †, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 1994, p. 1.050f.
  15. ↑ [2] .
  16. ↑ Ingo Müller , Terrible Jurists . Munich 1989, p. 221 f.
  17. ↑ BVerfGE 39, 334, May 22, 1975 .
  18. ↑ Otto Köhler , The renazified justice. Melancholy memories on the occasion of the 'Rosenberg Files' from the CH Beck publishing house, in: Junge Welt , December 28, 2016, p. 12f.
  19. ↑ Walther Fürst / Roman Herzog / Dieter C. Umbach (Eds.), Festschrift for Wolfgang Zeidler, Volume 1, Berlin / New York 1987, p. 295.
  20. ↑ Violinist. Duty to Truth, Der Spiegel, No. 32 (1966), August 1, 1966, see: [3] .
  21. ↑ Rolf Lamprecht, I'm going to Karlsruhe. A history of the Federal Constitutional Court, Munich 2011.
  22. ^ Manfred Görtemaker / Christoph Safferling, The Rosenburg files. The Federal Ministry of Justice and the Nazi era, Munich 2016.
  23. ↑ Otto Köhler, A journalist must be Aryan. From the blood robe in Bamberg to the red robe to Karlsruhe: Willi Geiger, in: ders., Wir Typewriter Offenders. Journalists under Hitler - and afterwards, Cologne 1989, pp. 153–163, here: p. 306.
  24. ↑ Helmut Kramer, A versatile lawyer - Willi Geiger 1909–1994, in: Thomas Blanke (ed.), The legal processing of the injustice state, Baden-Baden 1998, p. 373–379, here: p. 378; HP of the Jurists' Association for Life Law e. V .: [4] .
  25. ↑ Michi Knecht, Between Religion, Biology and Politics. A cultural anthropological analysis of the life protection movement, Münster 2000, p. 168.
personal data
SURNAME Violinist, Willi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, judge at the Federal Constitutional Court and at the Federal Court of Justice
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Neustadt an der Weinstrasse
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1994
Place of death Karlsruhe