Alfred Seidl

Alfred Seidl (born January 30, 1911 in Munich ; † November 25, 1993 ibid) was a German lawyer , politician of the CSU and, together with Hellmut Diwald and Alfred Schickel, founder of the historical revisionist contemporary history research center in Ingolstadt .

Life

After studying law and economics at the University of Munich, Seidl passed the first state examination in law in 1935 . Until 1938 assistant at the university there, he received his doctorate under Edmund Mezger on The Beginning of the Crime . The work tried to scientifically support the " National Socialist criminal law":

"The progress ... can be seen primarily in the fact that the will ... is brought to the fore, and that criminal law of the will has been made the starting point for the entire reform of criminal law. In the new criminal law it is not the act that is punished, not the accidental external success, but the will of the perpetrator. "(P. 92) Seidl quoted Roland Freisler in a detailed and positive manner :" Freisler emphasizes with gratifying clarity and sharpness ... "( P. 97), "Freisler correctly points this out ..." (p. 101).

In 1938 Seidl passed the major state examination in law. From 1937 to 1940 Seidl was a member of the NSDAP . From 1940 Seidl belonged to the Wehrmacht ; In 1945 he settled in Munich as a lawyer.

Seidl at the lectern in front of the International Military Court

Seidl achieved particular fame as a defender in the Nuremberg trials . In the trial against the main war criminals before the International Military Tribunal, he defended Rudolf Hess and Hans Frank . Until the end of his life, Seidl campaigned for the rehabilitation of Rudolf Hess. In the Wilhelmstrasse trial he was the defender of the former Reich Minister and Head of the State Chancellery Hans Heinrich Lammers . In the so-called Pohl Trial (United States of America vs. Oswald Pohl , et al. (Case No. 4)) he defended Oswald Pohl, in the Nuremberg Doctors Trial (United States of America vs. Karl Brandt , et al. (Case No. 1)) he defended Fritz Fischer , Karl Gebhardt and Herta Oberheuser , in the IG Farben trial he defended Walter Dürrfeld and in the Augsburg trial Ilse Koch .

In the civil proceedings of the former slave laborer Norbert Wollheim against IG Farbenindustrie AG iL from 1951 to 1957, the first sample lawsuit by a slave laborer for damages against a German industrial company, he represented the defendant as a lawyer. Seidl also defended Nazi perpetrators in later criminal trials before German regional courts, such as the location doctor for the Flossenbürg concentration camp, Hermann Fischer .

From 1958 to 1986 Seidl was a member of the Bavarian State Parliament, from 1970 to 1974 first deputy and then chairman of the CSU parliamentary group, from November 1974 to May 1977 State Secretary in the State Ministry of Justice and from May 1977 to May 1978 State Minister of the Interior . During his term of office as Minister of the Interior, the municipal territorial reform in Bavaria also fell , which had been carried out initially on a voluntary basis from 1972 and was completed in 1978 with forced incorporation.

In 1977, in connection with the Red Army parliamentary group , he spoke out in favor of removing the ban on the death penalty from the Basic Law and regulating the question of the death penalty in the penal code .

After Seidl's death it became known through a publication in the right-wing National-Zeitung that Seidl had been connected to the DVU chairman and editor of the National-Zeitung Gerhard Frey for "three and a half decades of harmonious and diverse cooperation". Together with Theodor Maunz , Seidl examined the constitution of the DVU in 1988, according to the national newspaper .

Honors

• Large Cross of Merit (1973) with Star (1976) of the Federal Republic of Germany
• Bavarian Order of Merit

Publications

• The beginning of the offense. Wuerzburg 1938.
• The Rudolf Hess case 1941–1987. Documentation of the defense attorney. Munich 1997.
• The denied peace. Germany's parliamentarian Rudolf Hess has to be silent. Berlin 1991.

literature

• Hubert Seliger: Political lawyers? : the defenders of the Nuremberg trials . Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2016.

Web links

Commons : Alfred Seidl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Alfred Seidl in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Quotations from Gert Heidenreich : Freedom in the Free State . In: Die Zeit , No. 43/1978.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Klaus Dörner (Ed.): The Nuremberg Medical Process 1946/47. Verbal transcripts, prosecution and defense material, sources on the environment. Saur, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-598-32028-0 ( indexing volume ), p. 139.
3. ↑ quoted from CSU: Wonderful companions . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1993 ( online ).
4. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 25, No. 43, March 9, 1973.