Caro-Petschek trial

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Photo from the Caro-Petschek trial; in the background the prominent defense bench: on the far right (leaning forward) Wolfgang Heine , next to him Rudolf Dix , then the defendant Nikodem Caro and (looking to the right) Max Alsberg

The Caro-Petschek trial was one of the most complex criminal trials in the final phase of the Weimar Republic . Against all common sense, an absurd family dispute between the Jewish industrialists Nikodem Caro and Ignaz Petschek escalated into a sensational criminal case and stirred up distrust in the Weimar judiciary in large parts of the population . The proceedings lasted from June 6, 1932 to December 23, 1932.

In today's jurisprudence , the case is a textbook example of how a banal, private conflict can grow into an "eternal trial" when very rich people, driven by vengeance and represented by excellent lawyers, attempt an escalation and the court is unwilling or unwilling is able to limit the taking of evidence to what is necessary.

prehistory

Nikodem Caro (1871–1935) was a highly respected inventor, born in Lodz , with a doctorate in chemistry, multiple honorary doctorates and honorary senator, professor, general director of Bayerische Nitrogen-Werke AG , member of the supervisory board of 23 other companies and honorary citizen of 17 cities. Together with Adolph Frank , he had developed a process for the industrial production of calcium cyanamide in 1895 and in the same year received a patent for the synthesis of cyanides . During the First World War, Caro was involved in poison gas research and made a large fortune with the production of nitrogen. In 1920 he became a secret councilor as well as an expert in the trade policy committee of the Reichstag and consul general for Bulgaria. He was a German citizen, had lived in Berlin-Dahlem since his youth , and owned second homes in Trostberg , Piesteritz and Zurich, among others . His only child was Vera Deborah Caro, born in Berlin in 1896.

Ignaz Petschek (1857–1934) was a lignite industrialist born in Kolin . He lived in Usti , which like all Bohemia until 1918 to Austria-Hungary was one, and had four sons, including the in Teplitz -born chemist Dr. Ernst Petschek (1887–1956). After the Washington Declaration , all family members of the Petschek became Czechoslovak citizens. The Petscheks were one of the richest Jewish families in Europe. Ignaz Petschek and his brother controlled 50% of European coal production. In the Central German area and the East Elbe area , the proportion was 70%. Among other things, the Petschek brothers largely controlled the Central German Brown Coal Syndicate .

Nikodem Caro and Ignaz Petschek met in December 1916 on the train from Berlin to Vienna. Caro showed a photo of his unmarried 20-year-old daughter Vera and Petschek a photo of his 28-year-old son Ernst, who was also unmarried and was fighting in the front line of the Austro-Hungarian army at the time . Shortly sent for getting to know the two fathers Miss Caro young Petschek a "charitable gifts package" together with a long letter to the field . In the summer of 1917, the two met in Karlsbad in the presence of their parents . The engagement was announced that same year. As a dowry , 400,000 marks plus repayment in the event of separation are said to have been agreed.

Nikodem Caro later regretfully stated in court that he “founded” the marriage because he wanted a “good match”. Ignaz Petschek is also said to have said in the colonnades of Karlsbad that “the marriage of nitrogen and lignite” would suit his financial interests. Petschek's statement reached the press after the engagement was announced and was later found in many newspapers when the trial was reported. The wedding took place in the summer of 1918. A few years later their daughter, Anneliese Petschek (1920–2010), and their son, Ernst Peter Nikodem Petschek (1924–1976), were born.

The marriage fell into a crisis under very unpleasant accompanying circumstances, and the friendship of the fathers-in-law also broke up permanently. In June 1927, Nikodem Caro had given the speech on Ignaz Petschek's 70th birthday. The divorce took place in the autumn of 1928. One reason for separation is said to have been Ignaz Petschek's permanent demand for a “company of grandchildren”. Nikodem Caro later stated: "Outwardly, Ignaz Petschek was a person of great charm, and I think my daughter was perhaps more in love with him than with her husband." Ernst Petschek loved his children very much and paid voluntarily after the separation a maintenance fee of 70,000 monthly RM . Adjusted for inflation, this amount corresponds to purchasing power of around EUR 217,000 today .

Subject of dispute

According to Nikodem Caro, after the separation, the Petscheks set several detectives on him and his daughter and tried to kidnap the children with the help of a bribed doorman . In addition, "a skilfully selected, handsome, blond young man is said to have approached his daughter" in order to discredit the morality and virtue of the newly divorced Vera Petschek (Caro) on behalf of the Petscheks . As a result, Caro moved his consulate to his villa in Dahlem, which means that the property was monitored regularly and extraterritorial .

The actual legal dispute began when Nikodem Caro asked Ernst Petschek for the dowry back that his daughter wanted to donate to State Secretary Otto Meissner for the Reich President's fund for the benefit of ailing Waldenburg mining families. Ernst Petschek denied having ever received the money. Nikodem Caro pointed out that he had given the dowry to Ignaz Petschek against a receipt. Ignaz Petschek insisted on presenting the receipt.

Caro first claimed that he destroyed the receipt in 1924 while tidying up his desk with other papers. Ignaz Petschek then asked for an oath to confirm the existence of the receipt. Caro did not give this insurance and filed a civil action for repayment of the dowry. Shortly before the trial date , he stated that he had found the receipt "which he almost no longer believed in existence". However, he refused to hand over the document to the Petscheks and withdrew the lawsuit. Caro later stated that he wanted to put Ignaz Petschek to the test and see how far he (Petschek) dared to go with the ad.

In the meantime, however, the Petscheks had obtained a court order to hand over the receipt. When the bailiff, accompanied by a lawyer from the Petscheks, appeared at Caro, Caro shouted in a theatrical act: “I just tore up the receipt and threw the scraps of paper into the toilet. Now she is on her way to the sewage fields. ”The following day he explained that he had not“ destroyed the original receipt in this radical way ”, but only a copy; the original receipt still exists; he had given it to a friend in Lemberg , the Polish lawyer Löwenstein, for safekeeping .

The document could not be found in Lemberg; The Polish lawyer had died just then. Instead of the original receipt for the 400,000 marks and instead of a copy, Nikodem Caro now filed an affidavit of the received receipt. The Petscheks then filed a criminal complaint against Caro. The public prosecutor's office refused to initiate investigative proceedings several times, but Petschek lodged a complaint and the criminal process had to be carried out. The indictment was, in the end, attempted fraud , making false affidavits , forging documents and destroying documents .

Start of process

The trial took place in the Moabit Criminal Court from June 6, 1932 to December 23, 1932. The hearing was open to the public and was well attended by many press representatives from day one. The parties to the dispute were represented by well-paid and well-known star lawyers. The defense of Nikodem Caro was taken over by Max Alsberg , Rudolf Dix and the former Prussian Justice Minister Wolfgang Heine . Ignaz and Ernst Petschek appeared as joint plaintiffs , represented by Martin Drucker , Leo Davidsohn and Alfons Roth , among others . The lawyers on both sides fought lively verbal battles on a high intellectual level, characterized by quick-wittedness and insight. The presiding judge was Kurt Ohnesorge and Max Jäger was the first public prosecutor. The main subject of the process was the receipt.

The court first discussed jurisdiction again. The lawyers on both sides almost made the nationality of their clients a legal fact and tried to outdo each other with regard to their “national sentiments ”. The accessory lawsuit accused Nikodem Caro of having acquired German citizenship over the years. The defense held against the fact that Caro was born as the son of the German Vice Consul Albert Caro in Lodz, but not only because of his father's passport, but rather because of "his commitment to being German and his achievements for the German fatherland as a German". During the discussion about his origins and upbringing, Caro quoted an unknown religion teacher, whereupon a lawyer on the other side interrupted him briskly and asked: "Who is this Pole?" Caro fired back: "It is a better German than you."

The key witness against Caro, Ignaz Petschek, who had come to Berlin frequently up until then and was briefly referred to as the Czech "coal king" in the court reports, refused to appear in court in person. Doctors were found who not only confirmed that he was too ill to travel to Berlin, but that he could not swear because of a one-sided paralysis . The judge commented rather as a rhetorical question : “As a Czech, Mr Ignaz Petschek is perhaps too proud to appear before a German court?” Caro's lawyer Alsberg added: “If a foreigner seeks justice in a German court, he must already comfortable here. "Nikodem Caro testified that Ignaz Petschek would not come because he had" robbed "in Germany, and that" this man never reports when he is in Germany in order not to be recorded under tax law. "

With this statement, Caro poured the first pot of oil into the fire of a dispute that the Moabit tax office, as the tax authority responsible for foreign companies, had had with Ignaz Petschek since 1925. Aware of this, Ernst Petschek, in addition to the medical certificates, presented several photographs to the court that were supposed to prove that his 75-year-old father was currently too ill to travel to Berlin. As proof of the “idealistic attitude” of his father, Ernst Petschek stated with increasing excitement: “My father was already collecting creations of German literature as a 16-year-old.” He himself was able to find a notebook from his father that “contained quotations from German poets full "would be. Incidentally, Ignaz Petschek was still an Austrian with German mother tongue when he met Nikodem Caro. Ultimately, a bailiff was sent to Aussig, to whom Ignaz Petschek handed an affidavit that he had never signed a receipt. This made oath against oath. Judge Ohnesorge again signaled that he was willing to drop the charges, which, according to Ernst Petschek, his father strictly rejects.

Litigation

Caro reported in detail how, during the war, his inventions, "which were of tremendous importance in the manufacture of ammunition for warfare, made an extraordinarily large fortune". Because he foresaw the outcome of the war early on “based on intimate knowledge”, very large amounts of cash were kept in his house. Therefore it was possible for him to hand over 400,000 marks to Ignaz Petschek in 1917 when his daughter was engaged. He put his average monthly cash consumption at that time at 150,000 marks and his taxable annual income for 1932 at 800,000 RM. After this statement, the Social Democratic Press Service passed the directive on to around 200 SPD newspapers that "Privy Councilor Caro was one of the greatest war profiteers ".

When asked by the court why Caro a document would have torn that represented a value of 400,000 marks for him, said Caro, he had acted in excitement, he also suffered from "fist-sized kidney stones have" just at the said date a severe colic strong Causing pain. Incidentally, the “whole thing would have been a trap for old Petschek to tempt him to perjure”. The visibly irritated chairman replied: "I am trying to find understanding for your motives, but I have to say that something like this has never happened to me."

There was even more incomprehension when asked why the Polish lawyer needed the original receipt from the “Czech coal king”. Caro stated that he could not give any more detailed information on this, since at that time he occasionally met Löwenstein in German-Polish economic negotiations in which he (Caro) had been involved in the interests of the German Empire. He added exaggeratedly: "However, it was in our country's interest to open the eyes of the Poles to a certain extent through the Czech Petschek". Martin Drucker, the attorney for the secondary prosecution, then tried to make it clear to Caro in a cross-examination that his statements about the adventurous circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the receipt made no sense. A highly quick-witted argument developed out of this. Examples:

Caro: "What you are talking about is all sorts of Leipzig ."
Drucker: "And your representation is the Polish economy ."

Then Drucker went into Caro's "fist-sized kidney stones":

Caro: "Because of me, you can get my kidney stones."
Drucker: "I also refuse to do business with you in this area."
Caro: "When I have played out my role as a defendant, we will both speak to each other as it is customary among academics."

Next, Rudolf Dix called Fraulein Mathilde Schneider, the secretary of the Lviv attorney, to the witness stand for Nicodem Caro's discharge. She testified that she saw the receipt and was there when her boss accidentally tore up the receipt one day. In addition, Miss Schneider claimed that a handsome young man had tried to get to know her better in a Lviv café and wanted her to steal the receipt on behalf of the Petscheks. In addition, when she arrived in Berlin, her suitcase in the hotel was broken into and documents ransacked. At the same time, attorney Heine reported on the witness stand that he had been spied on in Lemberg while doing research for his client. According to his statements, among other things, a "blonde beauty for the purpose of intimate exploration" was assigned to him. After she received 100 zloty from him , she thanked him for the name of her client, Petschek.

Max Alsberg stated that "in the heinous trial that I have the honor of leading, the sacred office of the prosecutor fell into the hands of a vengeful private interested party (Petschek) through abuse of the institution of the secondary prosecution". However, his litigation was also described as absurd in some respects. For example, in the course of the trial, Martin Drucker alleged that the defense would take longer than a chicken to hatch eggs to prepare their applications. Alsberg then turned to the court with the question: “How long does a chicken brood?” Judge Ohnesorge promptly replied: “28 days.” After an interruption, Alsberg said: “I inquired and found that a duck takes 28 days, to hatch an egg, but a chicken only 21 days. "

On the sidelines of the process, Alsberg and Drucker came to the conclusion that their two daughters Renate Alsberg and Renate Drucker could become friends. The fathers then sent the two teenagers together for a fortnight in the summer in Swinoujscie . On St. Nicholas Day, Max Alsberg presented his opponents, Martin Drucker and Alfons Roth, with a gift package with satirical poems, wooden rattlesnakes and little billy goats in the middle of the negotiation. Judge Ohnesorge also received a small present, a stuffed hen hatching an egg. St. Nicholas' Day played an important role in the process, since, according to Nikodem Caro, December 6th was the date of issue of the controversial dowry receipt.

Political issue

The press, regardless of what color , reported that the lawyers were "keenly interested in delaying the trial, as each day of the trial earns them more fees than most people have monthly if not annually." Also liberal and conservative circles assumed an abuse of the judiciary. The attorney Carl Haensel , who was present at the negotiations , published a comprehensive article on litigation with the title “The crisis of confidence in the judiciary and its causes” in the monthly magazine Die Tat, which was highly regarded at the time . To this end, he wrote a poem, which was recited in the conference room on the 50th day of the negotiations.

In fact, the evidence was only closed on the 67th day of the hearing. Twelve experts were heard on the question of whether a photocopy could be lost . The costs of the public prosecutor's office amounted to 5000 RM per session day. The shorthand cost 50 RM per hour. The leading lawyers received daily fees that were higher than the monthly salary of the judges. The remuneration of the Petschek lawyers, which was disproportionate to the subject of the dispute , became known very early on . Ignaz Petschek already paid Martin Drucker 400,000 RM, exactly as much as the disputed dowry that led to this process.

Likewise, 400,000 marks obviously played no role at all for Nikodem Caro, because he had meanwhile offered a reward of 300,000 RM in Poland for finding the lost receipt. For comparison: the average monthly wage of a worker in 1932 was RM 164. The dispute quickly developed into a political issue, especially in the left and right press . But even in serious media, the process costs and the duration of the process met with great incomprehension. It must be taken into account here that the process took place at the height of the global economic crisis and that the Reich government pursued a policy of “saving to the limit”.

However, the process only became a real scandal after the opposing parties charged each other with impossible things in court. Scandalous business practices such as unfair competition , tax evasion , extortion , breach of trust , spying on lawyers, bribery of members of the Reichstag and journalists were exposed. Among other things, before the start of the trial, a member of the Prussian state parliament, on behalf of Ignaz Petschek, tried to obtain information about the nationality and possible misconduct of Nikodem Caro from the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. But that's not all: The Petscheks' informant was a member of the state parliament of the NSDAP . In addition, it turned out that the Reich judge Alfred Tittel was on the Petschek's payroll as an unofficial "process observer".

In contrast, the Prussian State Secretary Robert Weismann had contacted various officials in the Ministry of Justice on behalf of Nikodem Caro before the start of the trial with the aim of suspending the investigation. The source was interesting: In the cross-examination, Nikodem Caro's secretary admitted to the defense that she had spied on Ignaz Petschek's boss (Caro) for months and searched documents and his correspondence for reliable material and received 50 marks a month from Petschek. Ultimately, however, the exposure of the connection between Caro and Weismann was useless for the prosecution. The alleged fact rather proved that Caro wanted to avoid an escalation. On the other hand, after the cross-examination of his secretary, Caro noticed that, as a defendant, he had to lead the trial involuntarily, but that he was now “forced to undertake a Balkan campaign of revenge against these machinations of Pechek ”. He recognized the true character of his opponent as early as 1927 when Ignaz Petschek sued his own brother, Julius Petschek , in Prague and "every letter he wrote would have been a bucket of rubbish".

Caro's statements about Ignaz Petschek's position and methods in the Central German Brown Coal Syndicate were absolutely political explosives. Caro quoted the land reformer Adolf Damaschke , who is said to have coined the sentence as early as 1913: “Germany, beware of Petschek!” According to this, Petschek is an “unscrupulous business man, driven by an uncanny and unrestrained greed for money”. Using the example of Ilse Bergbau AG , the defense demonstrated how Petschek had achieved a monopoly position in various Central German and East Elbe territories within a short period of time through fraud and hostile takeovers . Caro testified that Ignaz Petschek, "for the sake of his own benefit, would be ready to walk over dead bodies at any time". So Petschek, "regardless of the immense misery and in response to the slight increase in miners 'wages won during the miners' strike in 1927, unjustifiably increased the price of coal and defrauded the Reich Ministry of Economics with false information." These statements were described by trial observers as credible because Caro so burdened myself. It was Privy Councilor Caro himself who at the time led the negotiations in the Reich Ministry of Economics as a lobbyist for Ignaz Petschek.

On the basis of these statements made under oath, a debate that lasted for days developed in the Saxon state parliament as to whether the “ Coal Industry Act encourages the arbitrariness of Petschek” and which sanctions could be taken against the Petscheks. The penetration of the Petscheks into German coal mining had already aroused a great deal of publicity before the First World War and contributed significantly to the enactment of a blocking law in Saxony in October 1916 and to the introduction of a mountain shelf for coal in June 1918 . Nevertheless, after the establishment of the Weimar Republic, the Petscheks gained even greater influence and determined the prices, especially in the Central German Brown Coal Syndicate. The Reichskohlenrat could hitherto only partially against the antitrust act as a general binding German-Czechoslovak economy contract protected the Petscheks.

Whether Nikodem Caro and Ignaz Petschek were even remotely aware of the cross-party political explosiveness of their legal dispute, or whether they believed they were above things because of their wealth, is still the subject of legal historical speculation. The liberal constitutional lawyer Erich Koch-Weser , who dealt critically with the influence of parties in democracies but was a supporter of the republic, promptly stated: “In the Caro / Petschek family dispute, one cannot even get rid of the assumption that the By opening the main proceedings, the state would have unconsciously made its power available to one party to overcome the other. "

Without a doubt, the trial was grist to the mill of those who proclaimed in the streets every day: “The Jews are our misfortune! The Jews are exploiting us! ”And he was grist to the mill of those who accused the Weimar Republic of“ capitalist class justice ”in many cases, for whom in this case it was clear that one way or another“ the briquette consumer would have to pay for the legal costs ”. Politically left media made extensive use of the coverage of the process of agitation and exposure of “heavy capitalist families and their way of life”, while the proletariat was sinking into poverty and Germany into mass unemployment, and the relevant reactionary right-wing press extensively spread the well - known anti - Semitic in its articles about the process Stereotypes .

judgment

The trial brought a few surprises, but ultimately turned so much in favor of the accused that even the public prosecutor applied for his acquittal on October 21, 1932. For weeks and months the court had dealt with the clarification of an "offense". In his three-hour plea , the First Public Prosecutor Max Jäger came to the conclusion: “The external facts mean nothing in this criminal case - the motives mean everything.” Among other things, the court followed the representations of the defense with regard to the “facts”, according to which “a Jewish marriage, where there is no talk of a dowry, which is absurd. ”To prove this, Alsberg had seriously called well-known rabbis to the witness stand as experts, who came from London , Ottawa and Warsaw for this purpose .

Likewise, Caro's daughter and wife were able to credibly demonstrate as witnesses that Ignaz Petschek had grandly promised in the colonnades of Karlsbad that he in turn would increase the 400,000 marks to 10 million marks, and that Ms. Caro had demonstrably thanked for this in a letter. However, the "thanks" was premature, as Petschek never increased the dowry. Ignaz Petschek's own investigations and the information provided by other offices were also negative for Ignaz Petschek. In particular, the fact that Ignaz Petschek had sent vicious letters about Caro to various politicians, business leaders and even to the Reich President Paul von Hindenburg before the trial began , was viewed by the judges as a seriously “low motive”.

Alsberg's plea began on November 4, 1932 and lasted no less than six days. In it he presented the trial as a “record of abomination” and as a trial that “should not or should not have taken place at all”. As Alsberg put it, “a scandalous criminal trial was provoked and provoked because of a triviality by the Petschek family was carried out with an unprecedented persistence, a hideous process, a process so ugly, so hideous, so repulsive, as I have never experienced anything like it. "

Since after 96 days of the trial no criminal acts could be proven against the accused, the court announced Caro's acquittal on December 23, 1932 . The costs of the proceedings and the costs incurred by the defendant, including legal fees, travel expenses for the witnesses and experts, were charged to the joint plaintiff, Ernst Petschek. In conclusion, Richter Ohnesorge remarked: "And I still cannot understand how a simple divorce can be turned into a European scandal."

Reactions

Caricature by Eduard Thöny on the Caro-Petschek trial in Simplicissimus
Report on the Trial in the Post-Dispatch of St. Louis

In post-war literature, the process, based on Alsberg's biographer Curt Riess , was portrayed as symptomatic of the period during the emergence of National Socialism. Accordingly, the public's reaction had to be an anti-Semitic one: a trial between two Jews, both significant, both very rich and both able to lay claim to the apparatus of justice. There is no doubt that the reports on the proceedings in the Nazi press were characterized by anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that in post-war literature, with a few exceptions, the facts were viewed from a retrospective and a one-sided perspective.

Today's jurisprudence does not evaluate the case as specific to the conditions at the beginning of the 1930s, but as a teaching example of how a banal, private conflict can grow into an "eternal process" when very rich people, driven by revenge and represented by excellent lawyers, set it up for escalation and the court is unwilling or unable to limit the taking of evidence to what is necessary. The Weltbühne published by Carl von Ossietzky , which reported regularly on the trial from June to December 1932 and finally stated on January 3, 1933, came to exactly this conclusion :

“For the general public [it] matters much less about the main characters this now - hopefully! - Completed process than to the shocking fact that it was brutal money power that made the initiation of such a process possible and forced its implementation to this extent. If an injustice had happened here, if a law had been violated, then there would be a regrettable individual case about which one could complain in public, but it is precisely the sad thing that such a thing was not possible in violation but with the most painful observance of the legal provisions . If the Petscheks were as poor as they are in truth rich, and Caro as guilty as he is actually innocent, there would never have been a scandalous trial of this kind and on this scale, and if the main proceedings had been opened, it would certainly have been does not concern the public in such a way and for so long [...]. "

The process received a lot of attention worldwide. Several reporters from Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia were represented in the courtroom from the start. The fact that the protagonists were Jews played no role in the foreign and - viewed as a whole - predominantly in the German press. For the German weekly magazine Das Echo , which had no specific political direction, the process offered a “shameful picture of human weakness”. In their first January issue 1933, the editorial team summarized the following relatively factually:

"The process of family matters that are not of concern to outsiders was exaggerated into a struggle in the economic field and cost sums that no longer have any relation to the subject of dispute on paper."

The Jewish impromptu poet Anton Kuh parodied the trial in his play "Caro and Petschek by William Shakespeare". Analogous to the warring families Montague (Romeo) and Capulet (Juliet), he presented the dispute between “Petschek-Montecci” and “Caro-Capuletti” as a dispute between lignite and nitrogen, old and new wealth. Kuh presented the voyeuristic in the play Open to the interest of contemporary readers of the scandal newspaper, scoffed at the milieu of high finance, which is worth billions, and that the case is more than a derailment of individuals, rather a characteristic of the morality of capitalism. He appeared in sold out performances at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, the German Art Theater in Berlin, the Deutsches Theater in Mährisch-Ostrau and the Prague Product Exchange. Even the Simplicissimus let his berlinerischen complain several times "Klawuttke", for example, in the issue of December 13, 1932

"Whatever the Caro trial is, I have to shout: is it meechlich! Months and months, rich people spend their days washing their dirty laundry in front of the public - and there is time for that. For poor devils who are caught in a riot, there is no rapid justice system with no appeal, although there is a prison bill. Det vasteh and vasteh ick not! Aba ick vasteh yes not much. And the more I think about it and try to make myself a verse on everything, the more I think it is. "

As a court reporter for the Frankfurter Zeitung , the journalist Joseph Roth summed up the proceedings in an extensive article on July 16, 1932:

“The Caro – Petschek process is one of the really respectable series of processes that reveal the private life of individuals in an obtrusive manner and that give the impression that it is already so far that public curiosity is no longer pushing itself towards the private, but vice versa this begins to bother the public. […] This process, one could call it a process against good morals, would be quite banal and unsavory, if a dark but comforting ray of tragic human poverty were not broken out of the whole tangle of folly and tactlessness. […] The auditorium is numerous during this process: The curious little people listen to the big people's vices - perhaps with the mysterious need to find the comforting conviction that the big ones are even smaller than the little ones on such an exemplary occasion. "

Individual evidence

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  23. ↑ Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund (Ed.): Caro-Petschek. The process of two "business leaders". Der Funke dated December 28, 1932, p. 5. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung library, accessed on December 22, 2019.
  24. ^ Georg Prick: Max Alsberg (1877–1933) - and no end. The life and work of an extremely successful exceptional lawyer. In: Deutscher Anwaltverein (Ed.): Anwaltsblatt , Volume 66, 12/2016, p. 883.
  25. ↑ Curt Riess: The Man in the Black Robe. The life of defense attorney Max Alsberg. Wegner Verlag, 1965, p. 316.
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  29. ^ A b Carl Haensel: Frankfurter Ballade. IH Sauer, 1964, p. 260.
  30. ^ Georg Prick: Max Alsberg (1877–1933) - and no end. The life and work of an extremely successful exceptional lawyer. In: Deutscher Anwaltverein (Ed.), Anwaltsblatt , Volume 66, 12/2016, p. 883.
  31. ↑ cf. Zolanis, was-war-wann.de, historical values.
  32. ^ Klaus Westermann (Ed.): Joseph Roth. The journalistic work 1929–1939. Third volume. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1989, p. 711 f.
  33. ^ Nazi MP - Petschek propagandist. In: Social Democratic Press Service of June 9, 1932; P. 17 (PDF, [2] ). Library of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, accessed on December 22, 2019.
  34. ↑ a b c Werner Arendt: Caro-Petschek-Finale. In: The world stage. Volume 29, 1933, pp. 6–8 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  35. ↑ Curt Riess: The Man in the Black Robe. The life of defense attorney Max Alsberg. Wegner Verlag, 1965, p. 301.
  36. ^ Social Democratic Press Service of June 10, 1932, p.9. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, accessed on December 23, 2019.
  37. ^ State Parliament of Saxony (ed.): Negotiations of the Saxon State Parliament , 1920–1933. Issues 1–34. Dresden, 1933, p. 587.
  38. ^ Walter Herrmann: The capital in the central German lignite mining. Dissertation. Philosophical Faculty of the University of Leipzig, 1930. Georg Weigel Publishing House, 1933, p. 77 f.
  39. ↑ Erich Koch-Weser: And yet upwards! A German post-war balance sheet. Ullstein, 1933, p. 206.
  40. ^ Smart, but dubious, Guilt and Fate in Max Alsberg's Die Zeit, December 17, 1965, accessed on December 22, 2019.
  41. ↑ Josef Keller, Hanns Andersen: The Jew as a criminal. Nibelungen-Verlag, 1937, p. 30 f.
  42. ↑ Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund (Ed.): Caro-Petschek. The process of two "business leaders". Der Funke from December 28, 1932, p. 5 (PDF, [3] ) Library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung , accessed on December 22, 2019.
  43. ↑ Curt Riess: The Man in the Black Robe. The life of defense attorney Max Alsberg. Wegner Verlag, 1965, p. 315.
  44. ↑ Josef Keller, Hanns Andersen: The Jew as a criminal. Nibelungen-Verlag, 1937, p. 30 f.
  45. ↑ Curt Riess: The Man in the Black Robe. The life of defense attorney Max Alsberg. Wegner Verlag, 1965, p. 301.
  46. ^ Klaus Westermann (Ed.): Joseph Roth. The journalistic work 1929–1939. Third volume. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1989, p. 717.
  47. ^ Social Democratic Press Service of September 6, 1932, p.9. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, accessed on December 23, 2019.
  48. ^ Georg Prick: Max Alsberg (1877–1933) - and no end. The life and work of an extremely successful exceptional lawyer. In: Deutscher Anwaltverein (Ed.), Anwaltsblatt , Volume 66, 12/2016, p. 883.
  49. ↑ Curt Riess: The Man in the Black Robe. The life of defense attorney Max Alsberg. Wegner Verlag, 1965, p. 301.
  50. ^ Georg Prick: Max Alsberg (1877–1933) - and no end. The life and work of an extremely successful exceptional lawyer. In: Deutscher Anwaltverein (Ed.), Anwaltsblatt , Volume 66, 12/2016, p. 883.
  51. ↑ Miljonowa fortuna lodzianina - Proces Caro contra Petschek; Dziennik Białostocki, June 15, 1932, p. 3. Podlaska Digital Library, accessed December 28, 2019.
  52. ↑ Further examples: St. Louis Post-Dispatch , St. Louis, Missouri, December 23, 1932, p. 2; Albuquerque Journal , Albuquerque, New Mexico, December 24, 1932, p. 4; The Gazette , Montreal, Quebec, Canada, December 24, 1932, p. 7.
  53. ↑ Emil Schulz (Ed.): Das Echo. Volume 52. Judgment in the Caro-Petschek trial. Internationaleverlag Berlin, 1933, p. 39.
  54. ^ Walter Schübler: Anton Kuh. Wallstein Verlag, 2018, pp. 44, 367, 551.
  55. ↑ Klawuttke complains one Simplicissimus from December 13, 1932, p. 444, accessed on December 4, 2019.
  56. ^ Klaus Westermann (Ed.): Joseph Roth. The journalistic work 1929–1939. Third volume. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1989, p. 727.