Ernst Mantel (lawyer)

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Ernst Mantel (born May 6, 1897 in Augsburg , † November 20, 1971 ) was a German judge. He was examining magistrate at the People's Court , judge general at the Reich Court Martial and judge at the Federal Court of Justice .

Life

Empire and Weimar Republic

Mantel, the son of a police chief, was of Protestant denomination. After returning from the First World War as a lieutenant in the reserve, he began to study law at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , where he joined the Corps Bavaria . In 1919 he joined the Epp Freikorps , which participated in the suppression of the Ruhr uprising in March 1920. In 1920 he showed himself to be an anti-Semite : “ 3 marks roughly. Mischief / sticking notes with anti-Semitic content ”. The fine that was imposed at that time was entered as a note in his personal file after 1933 on his advice. Mantel passed the trainee examination in 1922 and the state law examination in November 1924. In 1925 he entered the Bavarian civil service. Mantel made a career in the civil service and in 1932 became the first public prosecutor in Munich . From 1924 to 1929 he was a member of the German People's Party .

time of the nationalsocialism

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Mantel was appointed district judge at the Munich I district court in September 1933 . In 1933 and 1934 he was seconded to the Munich Special Court. In this " responsible position, which places very special demands on the judge ", Mantel "has proven itself excellently ", as the chairman of the special court, District Court Director Adolf Braun, emphasized in an assessment. On August 1, he began working as an examining magistrate at the People's Court . In the eleven high treason cases in which he was active, he was, according to an assessment, " an examining magistrate with a keen eye for the essentials ", whose approach was " not entangled in incidental matters ". His career came to a standstill, however, so on June 1, 1937, Mantel switched to the army justice service as a higher judge of war, which corresponded to a higher regional judge. He justified this step after 1945 with the lesser influence of the NSDAP on the army justice system. After his transfer in 1938, he moved to the Army Legal Department of the Army High Command (OKH). Further promotions there were Oberregierungsrat and in 1940 to Ministerialrat. During this time he participated in the conviction of the Polish defenders of the Gdansk Post Office . He was Eugen Müller's closest collaborator . Mantel presumably contributed to the drafting of the commissioner's order . In any case, Mantel was a supporter of this order, because he and Müller swore the commanders of the respective armies, who were less enthusiastic about it, to the commissar's order at a commanders' meeting on July 10, 1941. From May 1, 1944, Mantel was employed as a chief judge in the special service.

Mantel was also responsible for the chief of the army justice department of the OKH with the appraisal of death sentences of the court courts of the field army . On April 29, 1945, he proposed to reject the pardon of a soldier condemned to death , although in the statement of the Commander-in-Chief of the 16th Army, he thought that keeping the soldier as a labor force was justifiable. On the Fuehrer's birthday , April 20, 1945, he was promoted to judge general. Such promotions took place frequently at this point in time, since provisions were made for the period after the Second World War .

Federal Republic of Germany

In 1949 he became chief public prosecutor in Kempten and in April 1950 head of the public prosecutor's office at the Nuremberg Regional Court . At the suggestion of the Bavarian Ministry of Justice , Mantel became a judge at the Federal Court of Justice on December 7, 1950. Mantel was active in the 1st criminal division of the Federal Court of Justice . This Senate ruled with Mantels participation on the cases of Nazi lawyers Otto Thorbeck and Walter Huppenkothen . He took early retirement on August 31, 1959, because in 1957 Mantel caught up with the past. In the trial against General Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner , the defense offered Ernst Mantel as a witness. Schörner was accused u. a. because of its stand courts . Mantel was not questioned because there was a likelihood that the army judge was involved in the special service. The jury court at the Munich Regional Court I sentenced Schörner to 4 ½ years in prison . Mantels 1st Criminal Senate was responsible for the appeal . Mantel therefore retired in 1959 "for health reasons". At the same time he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany , although Mantel's role in the war was well known.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 13 , 1459
  2. ↑ a b c Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke : The Federal Court of Justice - Justice in Germany - , Berlin 2005, p. 320ff.
  3. ↑ Helmut Kramer : Justizgeschichte Aktuell, careers and self-justifications of former Wehrmacht lawyers after 1945 , accessed on January 15, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Coat, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German federal judge, investigating judge at the People's Court, judge general at the Reich Court Martial
DATE OF BIRTH May 6, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH augsburg
DATE OF DEATH 20th November 1971