Alfons Sack

Alfons Gustav Sack (born August 7, 1887 in Wiesbaden , † 1944 in Brandenburg) was a German lawyer. Sack was best known as a defender in fememicide trials, by Joseph Goebbels in trials that he provoked because of his anti-democratic and anti-Semitic actions, and other National Socialists such as the Ulm Reichswehr Trial in 1930. Sack was a member of the NSDAP and in 1933 a defender in the Reichstag fire trial .

Life

Alfons Sack's birth certificate.

Sack studied law. He was a member of the striking student fraternity Corps Normannia in Berlin. With a criminal dissertation, he was in 1920 in Würzburg with Friedrich Oetker to Dr. jur. PhD. Sack then practiced as a lawyer and criminal defense attorney.

Sack was a member of the German National People's Party during the Weimar Republic . As a criminal defense lawyer, he defended, among other things, assassins from the radical right who wanted to achieve their political goals with terror. Sack first attracted public attention in the early 1920s as a frequent defender of feminist murderers of the so-called Black Reichswehr , for example with Willy Hahn and Walter Luetgebrune as lawyers for the defendants Techow Brothers in the Rathenau trial . In the later 1920s and early 1930s, Sack - described by journalist Edmund Demaitre as "a great man with a sonorous voice that suited a famous trial attorney" - shifted the focus of his work to representing members of the NSDAP in court who had been charged with acts of violence.

In 1930 Sack appeared together with Hans Frank as one of the defenders in the Ulm Reichswehr trial . The trial was directed against four young Reichswehr officers who were charged with high treason after they had made propaganda for National Socialism in the Reichswehr. In 1932, Sack became a lawyer in the trial of the Potempa killers . With this, Sack had developed into the star lawyer of the right-wing extremist and National Socialist scene.

During the rule of law has been dismantled, took Sack, a member of the Nazi party, as a defense lawyer of the Communist Ernst Torgler the Reichstag fire trial in part, was acquitted in the Torgler. As early as the spring of 1934, Sack published the book The Reichstag Fire Trial - with the permission of the Nazi authorities . In this book, the Reichstag fire trial was honored as the result of the rule of law by the Nazi judiciary. Sack was particularly interested in proving that suspicions that the National Socialists themselves were involved in the fire were wrong. In particular, Sack referred to the criticism of the German émigrés, as expressed, for example, in the Brown Book and in the public tribunal of emigrants in London, which took place parallel to the Reichstag fire process.

On June 30, 1934, Sack was arrested by the Gestapo in connection with the so-called Röhm Putsch . He was subsequently held prisoner for a month before being released. The Gestapo used the time of his detention to search his office and private apartment. The allegations against him that he had removed the assets of the murdered SA group leader Karl Ernst turned out to be unfounded.

Sack was killed in a bomb attack in Brandenburg in 1944. There he worked as a representative of the prosecution ( Reich Attorney ) at the People's Court .

Sack is described as "basically apolitical"; His main concern was public reputation, and he knew how to present himself in the courtroom and in public.

Works

• The defense attorney. v. Decker, Berlin 1943.
• Gold and value date clause in German and Dutch court practice. CH Beck, 1937.
• The defense attorney and the new state. Westkreuz printing works, Berlin-Lichtenrade 1935.
• The Reichstag fire trial. Ullstein, Berlin 1934. With a foreword by the Nazi lawyer Friedrich Grimm . A quasi state publication.
• Blackmail and its reforms in German, Austrian, Swiss and Nordic criminal law. At the same time a contribution to their development in the most ancient times and in the Middle Ages. Würzburg, Univ., Ms. Diss., 1920.
• The General German Waffenring: ADW. What is he? What does he want? What is its purpose? Enlightenment for the suggestion. corporation student. Circles v. O. Korpshaus Normannia, Berlin 1919.

literature

• Stefan König: From the service of law - lawyers and defense lawyers under National Socialism. de Gruyter, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-11-011076-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ s. Tilman Krach: Jewish lawyers in Prussia. Munich 1991, p. 151
2. ^ Dudley Leigh Aman Marley / Alexander Abusch: Brown book about Reichstag fire and Hitler terror. The original brown book of ... 1973, p. 393.
3. ↑ Edmund Demaitre: Eyewitness. A Journalist Covers the 20th Century. 1981, p. 141.
4. ↑ Lothar Machtan : Hitler's Secret. The double life of a dictator . Alexander Fest Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 978-3-8286-0145-1 , p. 247. Also Walther Kiaulehn : Berlin. Fate of a cosmopolitan city. Biederstein Verlag, Munich and Berlin 1958, p. 510.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Stefan König: On the service of law - lawyers and defense attorneys under National Socialism. Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-11-011076-8 , p. 77. König quotes a personal communication from his former partner.