Filbinger affair

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hans Filbinger (1978)

The Filbinger affair or the Filbinger case in 1978 was a controversy about the behavior of Hans Filbinger (1913–2007) during the Nazi era and his handling of it as Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg . It began in February 1978 with Filbinger's injunction against the playwright Rolf Hochhuth , who had publicly described him as a “terrible lawyer”.

In the further course four death sentences were discovered which Filbinger had applied for or passed as a military judge of the Kriegsmarine in 1943 and 1945. He previously denied three of them and then claimed to have forgotten about them, but maintained their legality. In the face of growing public criticism, he lost the support of the CDU , to which he had been a member since 1951. He then resigned as prime minister on August 7, 1978.

His attempts at rehabilitation, which he continued until his death on April 1, 2007, and Günther Oettinger's controversial funeral speech for him kept memories of the affair alive. It influenced the coming to terms with the past in the Federal Republic of Germany and the rehabilitation of victims of Nazi military justice . Filbinger's behavior during the Nazi era is now considered an example of the failure of many followers among the lawyers of the time.

prehistory

Military judge during and after the Second World War

Filbinger had become a member of the NSDAP during his legal training in 1937 and a voluntary soldier in the German Navy in 1940 . In March 1943 he was appointed to the naval justice system . He worked in succession in five military courts in northern Germany and Norway and participated in at least 234 criminal proceedings. In 169 cases, as presiding judge, he was directly responsible for verdicts and orders, in 63 cases indirectly as prosecutor or investigating officer. After the end of the war he was used as a prisoner of war by the British in Oslo until February 1946 as a naval judge to supervise the camp.

This chapter of his biography first became a media topic in 1972, but it was not publicly debated nationwide until 1978. Up to then neglected files from 41 proceedings in which Filbinger was involved were found in the Bundesarchiv , branch Kornelimünster , by June 13, 1978 , but were not released for inspection by him.

Filbinger's trial against the Spiegel in 1972

Der Spiegel , editorial house in Hamburg

The magazine Der Spiegel reported on April 10, 1972 about Kurt Olaf Petzold , who, as a prisoner in a British prisoner-of-war camp, had torn swastikas from his clothes and refused a move order with the words:

“You shit now. You Nazi dogs , you are to blame for this war. I'll tell the English what kind of Nazi dogs you are, then my time will come. "

Naval judge Filbinger sentenced him on June 1, 1945 to six months in prison and justified this with a “high degree of disorientation”. Petzold had "had a corrosive and inciting effect on male discipline". The term "male breeding" came from Prussian military tradition and determined soldiers' training and military law under National Socialism. In the last phase of the war, armed forces judges, especially often those of the navy, justified thousands of death sentences for mostly minor official or disciplinary offenses with a “danger to male discipline”.

In an interview with Der Spiegel in 1972, Petzold stated that Filbinger had praised “our beloved Führer” before his trial, who “brought the fatherland back up”. Filbinger sued for the omission of these statements. He no longer remembers the case, but as a “religious personality” he “acted actively against this regime in many ways”. He was expelled from the German National Academic Foundation in 1933 because of anti-Nazi sentiments and was later a member of a well-known anti-regime Freiburg group. In addition, as an uninvolved naval judge, he had obtained a retrial in the spring of 1945 for the priest Karl Heinz Möbius, who was sentenced to death for " degrading military strength " , in which Möbius was acquitted. For Lieutenant Guido Forstmeier , he had averted a threatened death sentence by delaying the hearing.

Filbinger did not submit any files on these cases; they were not found in the later course either. But both of the named have repeatedly testified in writing that Filbinger saved their life. Adolf Harms , Filbinger's colleague as a naval judge and who has worked at the same military tribunal since 1944, testified that the latter had “an extremely negative attitude” towards the Nazi regime. The court upheld Filbinger's lawsuit on August 3, 1972 because it considered the statements quoted by Petzold to be improbable and suspected confusion.

Filbinger's memorial speech in 1974

To commemorate the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , Filbinger, as President of the Federal Council , gave a speech on July 19, 1974 in the Berlin Reichstag building on the resistance to National Socialism . He first described the background to the attack and the conscience of the participants. Then he explained that during the Nazi era he had belonged to the Freiburg Circle of Friends around the Catholic writer Reinhold Schneider , who had contacts with resistance groups, and had "acted out of the convictions that inspired this group, while accepting the risks involved" . Nevertheless, he feels that his actions at that time were a "serious omission" in view of the necessary. He sees this aptly expressed in the Stuttgart Confession of Guilt of October 1945, the core sentence of which he quoted. Then he described the church struggle between the Catholic bishops and the Confessing Church , which had developed into a "total front of resistance" since 1933 and applied to "the National Socialist system itself".

Some relatives of executed resisters protested against Filbinger's right to speak in advance. During the speech there were interjections like "Nazi", "Hypocrites", "NS judges" until the callers were expelled from the hall. The weekly newspaper Die Zeit commented on the incidents with reference to the Petzold case, which became known in 1972:

"... whoever sentenced a soldier in a prison camp to six months' imprisonment for 'rebellion against discipline and order' and for 'disaffection' has little in common with those who rebelled against the order of the time."

The contemporary historian Peter Reichel compares Filbinger's commemorative speech with that of Gustav Heinemann in 1969. In it, the latter had also recognized the communist resistance, pointed to the undemocratic, German-national tradition of the assassins of July 20, the division of Germany also as a result of their late arrival and Described failure and, most recently, his own failures during the Nazi era specifically named biographically.

course

Rolf Hochhuth 2009

Filbinger's trial against Rolf Hochhuth and the time 1978

In a preprint of his novel Eine Liebe in Deutschland from February 17, 1978, Rolf Hochhuth referred to Filbinger as "Hitler's naval judge, who even in British captivity after Hitler's death persecuted a German sailor with Nazi laws". He was "such a terrible lawyer that one must assume - because the naval judges were smarter than those of the army and air force, they destroyed the files at the end of the war - he is only at large thanks to the silence of those who knew him."

In response to Filbinger's renewed injunction, the Stuttgart Regional Court issued an injunction on May 23, 1978, prohibiting the assertion that he had only escaped a prison sentence because he had avoided criminal charges . Hochhuth had previously withdrawn this part of his statements: They were absurd, since no judge during the Nazi era in the Federal Republic was ever punished for unjust judgments. The court allowed the remaining statements to be free and partly fact-based expression of opinion. The affair seemed to be over at first.

Filbinger, however, also wanted to legally oblige Die Zeit not to reprint all of Hochhuth's statements about him. In the course of this process, the Federal Archives in Kornelimünster granted lawyers on both sides access to the files of the naval courts in which Filbinger had worked. In April 1978, Hochhuth found the case of Walter Gröger , which the editor-in-chief of Die Zeit, Theo Sommer Filbinger, presented on May 4th. Sommer's lawyer Heinrich Senfft presented him in his plea on May 9, referring to the judgment of 1972 and asked who, in view of his alleged anti-Nazi sentiments and his commitment to those sentenced to death, had forced Filbinger to apply for the death sentence this time and to order his execution .

Erich Schwinge replied with a legal opinion that Filbinger could neither be legally nor morally charged with the Gröger case. Schwinge was a leading military criminal during the Nazi era. With his legal commentary on the military penal code, which was tightened in 1940 , he called for the death penalty for “decomposing military strength” for general prevention and, as an armed forces judge, himself sentenced him to death. Since 1949 he has defended former members of the Wehrmacht and SS in around 150 trials and continued to influence German case law until 1995 with his thesis that the Nazi military justice system represented constitutional principles against National Socialism .

On July 13, 1978 the court upheld the previous injunction and allowed the statements "terrible lawyer", "Hitler's naval judge" and "Filbinger persecuted a German sailor while still in British captivity under Nazi laws" as free expression of opinion . His verdict against Petzold and the motion for a judgment against Gröger do not fit “with a judge who emphasizes his opposition to the Nazi regime”. Although he acted "within the framework of the law then applicable" in both proceedings, he has to put up with today's inquiries about his behavior.

The Walter Gröger case

Die Zeit , Pressehaus Hamburg

On May 12, 1978, Die Zeit published details of the proceedings of the twenty-two-year-old sailor Walter Gröger . In 1943, he had hidden for four weeks in Oslo with a Norwegian friend, Marie Lindgren, and considered fleeing with her to neutral Sweden . She told a friend who was a police officer who had Gröger arrested on December 6, 1943. He was sentenced on March 14, 1944 to eight years imprisonment and loss of military worth for having " deserted the field" . His escape plan was not counted as an attempted desertion abroad because he had retrieved his uniform and thus signaled his intention to return to the troops.

The judge, General Admiral Otto Schniewind , overturned the judgment on June 1, 1944, “because the death penalty should have been recognized”. He justified this with Groeger's previous convictions, a "Führer guideline" on desertion of April 14, 1940 and a decree of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy (ObdM), Karl Dönitz , of April 27, 1943. The Führer guideline required the death penalty for attempts to escape abroad and had a significant criminal record The perpetrator, however, also named mitigating circumstances in which a prison sentence would be sufficient: "youthful imprudence, incorrect official treatment, difficult domestic circumstances or other not dishonorable motives". The Dönitz decree, on the other hand, required the death penalty for every desertion that was a “failure of faithless weaklings”.

Filbinger was assigned to the case on January 15, 1945 in place of the previous prosecutor after his preliminary investigation. In the main hearing on the following day, the court found that Gröger had issued an Iron Cross and an Eastern Medal as his property. Now his escape plan has been interpreted as an attempt to escape abroad. Following the court lord, Filbinger applied for the death penalty for Gröger on the basis of the “Führer Guideline” because of weaknesses in character and previous convictions in the soldier's certificate of good conduct. Defense attorney Werner Schön asked for pardon for him: The court had admitted that according to the current military law there had been no attempted escape abroad. He indirectly accused the prosecutor and judge of perverting the law .

Naval Chief Justice Adolf Harms sentenced Gröger to death on January 22, 1945 as the “only appropriate atonement ”. When the confirmation of the judgment from Berlin initially failed to materialize, Filbinger made several inquiries in writing and by telephone, thus pushing Groeger's execution forward with an unusually determined determination. On February 27, 1945, the High Command of the Navy (OKM) in Berlin confirmed the death sentence and rejected the petition for clemency. On March 15, the brief arrived in Oslofjord. On the same day, Filbinger ordered the execution, thereby shortening the usual three-day time limit for execution. He advocated himself as chief officer, as was the custom for prosecutors. On March 16 at 2:05 p.m. he announced the order of the judge to the condemned and had Gröger sign the receipt. At 4:02 p.m. he had him shot. He was present and probably gave the order to fire as the chief officer.

Contrary to his official duty, Filbinger had not announced the execution date to Groeger's lawyer. The latter should have stood by his client and, decades later, expressed his dismay at Filbinger's failure. Groeger's relatives received no news of his execution. His mother Anna Gröger found out about it in 1954, but the exact circumstances only from Hochhuth in 1978, as did Marie Lindgren. After two rejection notices, Lower Saxony's CDU Social Affairs Minister Hermann Schnipkoweit granted Anna Gröger a pension on September 24, 1979 as a member of the NS victim by classifying the death sentence for her son as “an obvious injustice under the circumstances”.

Filbinger's statements

Knowing the forthcoming publication, Filbinger declared on May 4, 1978 that desertion had been threatened with the death penalty worldwide in 1945 and had been "persecuted with particular vigor" on all fronts. That is why the fleet boss demanded the death penalty for Gröger and thus did not accept any different judgments from the outset. The Prosecutor therefore had to apply for this and was not able to influence Gröger's proceedings as a representative at the meeting.

He tried to evade naval judicial activity "by all means" and offered himself as a submarine soldier, knowing that "this service was considered a suicide mission". Throughout the entire Nazi era, he had “visibly lived” his “anti-Nazi sentiments” and had therefore experienced “considerable disadvantages” professionally since his student days.

As was customary in the federal German judiciary up until then, Filbinger formally equated the Wehrmacht criminal law with the military law of the attacked states, interpreted the last phase of the lost war of aggression as " defense of the fatherland" and thus legitimized the excessive use of Nazi martial law and thus the continuation of war crimes and genocide . He claimed that the lawyers involved had no room for maneuver, including for himself, and at the same time declared himself to be an opponent of Nazi persecution and who had risked his life for his anti-Nazi convictions.

On May 10, 1978 and more, Filbinger claimed:

"There is not a single death sentence that I have pronounced as a judge."

Apart from Gröger, he also “did not participate in any other proceedings that led to the death sentence”. On May 15, 1978, Der Spiegel quoted him as follows:

"What was right then cannot be wrong today!"

After Gerd Bucerius the set in the time took up of 9 June 1978, and referred to "Hitler's laws," stated Filbinger subsequently edition of June 16, 1978 clear: He did not say it the sentence, but the mirror would -journalists his reaction on their accusation that he bowed right in the Gröger case, so interpreted. On September 1, 1978, he declared in Rheinischer Merkur :

"My statement did not refer to the despicable Nazi laws, but to the death penalty for deserting in the field, threatened since 1872 in the Military Criminal Code."

As Groeger's prosecutor, he had referred to the Fuehrer Guideline of 1940, which allowed a margin of discretion. Therefore, it was often understood to mean “that at that time 'justice' had been pronounced” and formally correct judgments made in an unjust state also continued to apply in a constitutional state. This thesis of legal continuity, common in the post-war decades, now became a scandal. Erhard Eppler , then SPD parliamentary group leader and opposition leader in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, certified Filbinger with a "pathologically good conscience".

On July 8, 1978 Filbinger admitted at a press conference that he had not shown himself clearly enough concerned about the Gröger case in good time.

Becoming known of death sentences

Spiegel editor Rudolf Augstein asked Filbinger on May 8, 1978 about his involvement in other death sentences. On July 3, 1978, the ARD magazine Panorama reported on two death sentences that he had passed as presiding judge. On April 9, 1945, he had sentenced Corporal Bigalske to death for murder in unity with mutiny and desertion . Bigalske had shot the commander of the harbor protection boat NO 31 on March 15, 1945 and then fled with the rest of the crew to neutral Sweden. On April 17, 1945 Filbinger sentenced the chief helmsman Alois Steffen to death for deserting and disrupting the military. This had followed Bigalske with the harbor protection boat NO 21 and 15 men crew to Sweden. Both sentences could not be carried out because of the escape of the convicts.

This proved Filbinger's previous false statements. He now called the death sentences “phantom sentences”, which could neither be carried out nor should they be carried out and which he therefore forgot. He told the Federal archivist at the time, Heinz Boberach , that if a fourth death sentence came up, he would resign.

On July 27, 1978, an employee of the Federal Archives accidentally found an older court file from which Filbinger's involvement emerged, but which was not part of the files of naval courts in which Filbinger's involvement was known up to this point and which was erroneously filed there. During the subsequent systematic review of the case files of this "new" court, another death sentence was discovered. Filbinger had applied for it as a prosecutor in 1943 for looting against a young sailor who had taken some items of little value from a drugstore while cleaning up after air raids on Hanover. The judge followed. The senior military lawyers found the verdict exaggerated, so they converted it into a prison sentence. The sailor did not survive serving them. On August 1, 1978, Federal Interior Minister Gerhart Baum , who was constantly informed about the archive search, sent Filbinger a list of all death sentences that had been determined so far without any details, from which the fourth find emerged.

On August 3, 1978 the State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg announced the fourth death sentence, but presented the course as follows: On August 17, 1943, the sailor Herbert Günther Krämer was sentenced to eight years in prison and then to death for continued looting. Filbinger applied for the verdict, but at the same time submitted the results of the interrogation to the judge, which made a pardon appear legally possible. In the appeal proceedings, he then achieved the conversion to a prison sentence as the prosecutor.

This information now seemed all the more implausible after he had declared for months that he had not applied for another death sentence and did not pass one and then stated that he had forgotten the verdicts because of irrelevance. He was now seen in the media as a “man who forgets a death sentence”.

resignation

In the Hochhuth trial on May 9, 1978, Heinrich Senfft had given Filbinger the choice of either announcing further judgments himself or "ceding" them. Theo Sommer asked on May 12:

"Shouldn't Filbinger resign - or should he go to Mother Gröger in Langenhagen and do that cleansing kneeling before the past for himself that Willy Brandt performed for the entire German people in Warsaw?"

After Hochhuth's partial success in court, the opposition state SPD demanded Filbinger's resignation as prime minister on May 27th. The state CDU rejected this unanimously. Helmut Kohl and Heiner Geißler made several declarations of honor for him; the federal CDU unanimously supported him until the beginning of July. Internally, it was not his behavior as a naval judge that was criticized, but the form of his public defense: it was too fixated on the legal level and did not take into account the moral level. Some CDU members felt that he had not expressly regretted the events at the end of the war as narrow-minded and clumsy.

From July 3, public opinion turned increasingly against Filbinger. Party friends now also publicly criticized his handling of the allegations. Norbert Blüm wrote in an article on July 10 about personal guilt despite having formal rights and concluded that communists had the same right to " turn back " as NSDAP members. The " radical decree ", the stricter application of which Filbinger decreed in Baden-Württemberg and tried to enforce this through the Bundesrat as a federal law, should be reconsidered as a result of the affair. He should admit “mistakes” because “the self-righteous” cannot be defended.

On July 11, the Federal Archives announced that on May 24, Filbinger had already been informed of further records relating to his judgments in 1945, including the “phantom judgments”. The leading bodies of the CDU and CSU then kept their distance from him. The world wrote on July 12th that despite the “Nibelungen gymnastics of the CDU” Filbinger's political days were “naturally numbered”; On the following day, Matthias Walden commented on ARD that Filbinger's adherence to his office was damaging the “spirit of democracy”. Some media (FAZ, July 14, Der Spiegel, July 17) made the expected resignation an issue. Franz Josef Strauss told his party friends on July 29th that Filbinger was not to be blamed for his behavior at the end of the war, but that "one does not bring any lawsuits with rats and blowflies."

Lothar Späth , at that time leader of the CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg, convened a special meeting of his party on July 27th, whose participants again assured Filbinger of their "critical solidarity". After the announcement of the fourth death sentence on August 3, however, the state bodies tried to persuade Filbinger to resign and began the search for a successor.

On the afternoon of August 7, 1978, Filbinger resigned from his post as Prime Minister. He explained:

“This is the result of a character assassination campaign that has not previously existed in this form in the Federal Republic. A grave injustice has been done to me. That will turn out to be so far as it has not already been revealed. "

Filbinger had already spoken of a “left-wing launching cartel”; He saw himself all his life as a victim of a "campaign by left-liberal media". His supporters in the state CDU, his predecessor Gebhard Müller , his successor Erwin Teufel and right-wing conservative and new right-wing authors shared this view.

For Filbinger's critics, he had caused his resignation himself. Theo Sommer criticized the fact that he showed no remorse towards the victims' relatives as rigid and unapologetic: "He fends off any experience of guilt ..." His position on the anti-terrorist laws discussed at the time was consistent with his motions and judgments as a marine judge:

"He remains a slave to the state ... He has remained a man of law and order ..."

The communication scientist Hans Mathias Kepplinger attributes Filbinger's resignation to demands of the conservative media at the time, the contemporary historian Knud Andresen to a liberalization of the CDU at the time, through which Filbinger's commitment to the radical decree now had a hindrance. Political scientist Klaus Kamps describes the resignation as a result of botched "scandal management" Filbinger: he had a " salami tactics responding" and challenged so the stronger the research on his past. However, it was not his activity as a naval judge, but the uncovered attempts at veiling that had become a pitfall for him. Only renouncing lies could have limited the damage to the scandalized; only being caught makes it uncontrollable.

At the end of March 1979 Filbinger also gave up his position as one of seven deputy federal chairmen. The CDU in Baden-Württemberg named him honorary chairman in 1979. He remained on the CDU federal executive board until 1981.

Post-history

Rehabilitation attempts

Filbinger tried in the following decades to achieve his rehabilitation. In addition, he published his memoirs in 1987. With the title The Maligned Generation , he declared himself the spokesman for the generation of the Nazi era.

In it he unfolded earlier information, according to which he had been a member of a resistant Freiburg circle of friends around Reinhold Schneider since 1938. The later Catholic-Conservative journalist Karl Färber had testified to this in the denazification process in 1946. For this Christian group, opposition to the Hitler regime was "a natural prerequisite". He also claimed an “aristocratic form of emigration ” in the Nazi naval justice system. The conspirators of July 20, 1944 had intended it "for use after a successful assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler". Paul von Hases ' son , Alexander von Hase, confirmed this to him by letter on June 7, 1978.

Reinhold Schneider is known as an opponent of National Socialism, but he, Karl Färber and his circle of friends were not members of the Christian-market-liberal Freiburg circle founded in December 1938 . Filbinger's references to the coup attempt of 1944 are also historically unproven.

He also stated that only by maintaining the soldiers' discipline the navy had been able to save millions of East German refugees across the Baltic Sea in the spring of 1945. His lawyer Gerhard Hammerstein claimed untruthfully on April 4, 1995 that “the sailor G.” (Gröger) had deserted in the course of this rescue operation. Desertion endangered them.

In 1992, two former officers at the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR stated that Filbinger had observed the intelligence department of the GDR as a candidate for the office of Federal President since his great election victory in 1976 with the slogan freedom instead of socialism . Filbinger then met one of the two, Günter Bohnsack , on April 30, 1993 and published the minutes of the interview signed by him, entitled The Truth from the Stasi Files 1993. It said:

"We fought Filbinger through active measures, that is, we collected material and launched counterfeit or adulterated material in the West."

Bohnsack did not state what it was, when it came into being and who wrote it. Unnamed colleagues told him, he told Filbinger in the presence of a witness from the MAD . He denied that the MfS had provided Hochhuth in East Berlin with what Filbinger wanted to include in the protocol. He and Brehmer had not fabricated any documents with Filbinger's death sentences or leaked any Western contacts. Federal German journalists therefore saw the minutes as an attempt to create the impression of falsified death sentences and thus make themselves victims of the Stasi.

Filbinger held on to the end of his life that he had become a victim of a media hate speech and that he had done no wrong, so that he did not have to admit guilt. He stated in various interviews in 2002 and 2003:

"Back then I should have said offensively: 'Not a single person was killed by Filbinger.'" - "Anyone who mutinied endangered the whole thing."

Parts of the CDU still agree with this view today. Helmut Kohl spoke of a “renewed denazification campaign” in 1978 and repeated this in his 2004 memoir, but also emphasized that Filbinger could have survived the affair “with a human word of regret to the relatives of the victims”. He advised him to do this in vain.

The right-wing conservative study center Weikersheim , founded by Filbinger in 1979 and headed until 1997, presented him as an anti-Nazi opponent on its website until 2011. The following President of Weikersheim, Wolfgang von Stetten , claimed in 1997 in the Bundestag that Filbinger had been overthrown by a "remote Stasi campaign" and meanwhile "absolutely rehabilitated". Those who deny this reveal themselves to be "accomplices of the Stasi". Klaus Voss, editor of the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung , and the then right-wing extremist Andreas Molau see Filbinger as a “victim of agitation”. His witness Guido Forstmeier defended him in Weikersheim in 2000 and after his death in 2007 in the right-wing National-Zeitung .

In contrast, Ralph Giordano described the Filbinger case as a “shameful example” of the “second guilt” that many Germans had incurred by suppressing and denying their involvement in National Socialism and its crimes after 1945. For Neele Kerkmann and Torben Fischer, Filbinger embodies “his immovable attitude of justification, which did not reveal any self-critical reflection on his work, [...] in the eyes of the sensitized public, almost ideally a conservative-authoritarian habitus that promises success in dictatorship and democracy, which is characterized by a ' pathologically good conscience '(Erhard Eppler) and - according to the addition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung - a' pathologically bad memory '. "

Baden-Württemberg's then Prime Minister Günther Oettinger took up Filbinger's assertion that his judgments did not result in death literally in his funeral speech at the state act on April 11, 2007, and referred to him as an “opponent of National Socialism”. This triggered outrage and opposition from many victims' members, associations, parties and celebrities nationwide; some historians spoke of falsification of history . After clear criticism from Chancellor Angela Merkel , Oettinger withdrew the expression "opponent" on April 16. In this context, Filbinger's behavior during the Nazi era and his handling of reports about it were examined again.

Debate about Filbinger's relationship to National Socialism

On May 22, 1978, Der Spiegel published excerpts from an essay by Filbinger from March / April 1935, in which he explained the National Socialist criminal law reform prepared at the time in a memorandum from the Prussian Minister of Justice. It was not until National Socialism, it said, that the “effective new construction of German law” was spiritually made possible and that instead of the individual's rights of freedom, the “ national community ” was protected by a strong state . As a “blood community”, according to the National Socialist view, this must “be kept pure and the racially valuable components of the German people must be systematically developed.” Therefore, the memorandum contained “Protection provisions for the race , for the population and public health [...]”. Filbinger also wrote:

"However, pests in the population as a whole, whose obvious criminal tendency will repeatedly lead to criminal acts, will be rendered harmless."

The previous criminal law failed because it examined the influences of hereditary disposition, upbringing and the environment on the “soul life of the criminal” in order to rehabilitate the “mostly incorrigible” perpetrator, instead of “considering an impressive and harsh punishment and effective protection of the whole " to be. However, the new law will only work into the people through “living judge personalities”; It therefore demands "the new lawyer who speaks law out of knowledge and connection with the people of the people", not just for the formal factual and legal situation.

Filbinger stated in 1978 that at the time he had only presented the views of his then teacher Erik Wolf without adopting them. Political scientists and historians nevertheless suspect that elements of National Socialist ethnicity and race doctrine , which were reflected in the Nuremberg Race Laws in September 1935 , later co-determined his judgments as a naval judge and that he was still “very much attached to the National Socialist way of thinking” even after the German surrender . According to military historian Frank Roeser in 2007, the National Socialists only allowed reliable lawyers to work as military judges for them, and this office could be refused without any disadvantages. The judge Helmut Kramer wrote in May 2007:

“It is pointless to argue whether Filbinger was a follower of Hitler at home. It can also be left open whether Hans Filbinger joined the SA and the NSDAP solely as an opportunist and for reasons of his career and whether he only wanted to talk to the Nazis when he wrote in a student magazine in 1935 about 'Blutsgemeinschaft', 'pests on the people's whole' and spoke of 'racially valuable parts of the German people'. If he actually saw through the Nazi ideology, it was all the worse. Because then, contrary to his convictions, he would have placed himself in the service of the unjust state. But maybe even after the end of the war he was still an incorrigible Nazi ... "

In a commemorative speech in 1960 in Brettheim , Filbinger distanced himself from National Socialist injustice. There a court martial had hanged the “ Men von Brettheim ” - a farmer who had disarmed members of the Hitler Youth and two officials who did not want to sentence him to death for this - in 1945 shortly before the end of the war. The court in Ansbach declared the court martial in a trial against the murderers in 1960 to be legally valid after hearing the convicted war criminals Albert Kesselring and Erich Schwinge as experts. In response, Filbinger described the hangings as "blatant injustice".

Debate about Filbinger's room for maneuver

Whether and to what extent Filbinger had contributed to Groeger's execution became a central issue of the affair. Groeger's former defense attorney Werner Schön stated in a letter to the editor on May 4, 1978, that he did not remember Filbinger's involvement; he probably only had an extra role. It is true that the court did not have to follow the instructions of the judge, and there were legal arguments against the death penalty. But the prosecutor could have asked for a lower sentence only with new facts. However, these had already been clarified in Groeger's first case.

On May 8, Rudolf Augstein referred to the War Criminal Procedure Code , which was in effect from 1938 to 1945 , which strictly limited the authority of the court lords and required the prosecutor to present legal concerns about an instruction and to record them in writing if these were not taken into account. Filbinger had refrained from doing this with Gröger because he did not consider the instruction, as he confirmed to Augstein, to be illegal. Because of his anti-Nazi stance, he let hopeless cases “pass without hesitation in order to be able to act successfully in more promising cases”.

On May 12, time editor Theo Sommer asked whether “effort, manliness, perhaps a little cunning could have been enough to avert the apparently inevitable?” Joachim Fest asked in the FAZ on May 26, “whether a little less assiduous mania for dealing with things might not have been enough The lives of the convicted could have been saved ”.

The historian Heinz Hürten said in an essay published in 1980 that Filbinger could only apply for the death penalty because of Gröger's attempts at deception that were uncovered during the trial. As a prosecutor, he was also not allowed to influence the judicial review of a petition for clemency following the judgment. The execution could not be delayed after the judgment was confirmed by the Commander in Chief of the Navy. Hürten mentioned another naval prosecutor who had sent a petition to the Commander-in-Chief after a death sentence and had received an official reprimand for this, but had the sentence reversed.

Golo man

On August 6, 1978, Golo Mann spoke of a "human hunt" against Filbinger. In 1987 he followed Filbinger's memoir: The death sentence against Gröger had been established, his rescue was "impossible from the start". Filbinger was not a supporter of Hitler, but a "free constitutional state" that had resisted his use as a military lawyer. In his office he then behaved as “humanely” “as he was allowed to.” He could well have forgotten two death sentences that were not enforceable anyway. Mann asked whether in 1978 Hochhuth "went through a list of German politicians, studied biographical facts and then decided on the files of a naval judge - or whether he had received hints from elsewhere."

For Filbinger's 90th birthday in 2003, historians re-examined the subject. During research in the Federal Archives, Florian Rohdenburg found that prosecutors and judges of the Nazi military justice were never punished if they made applications or passed judgments that deviated from the instructions of the judge. Following him, Wolfram Wette said that Filbinger could have informed his superiors that he still considered the first instance judgment against Gröger to be sufficient. Because Gröger's military superior had described him in a statement for the second trial as a “hopeless weakling”, “who will never fulfill his military duties”. If there was a lack of “manliness”, under Nazi military law, one could waive the death penalty. Wette attributes the fact that Filbinger did not consider this to his disdain for Gröger: For him, because of his previous military convictions, he was "of no value to the fighting national community". In contrast, Forstmeier's testimony shows that he did have some room for maneuver to avoid a death sentence.

Günther Gillessen, on the other hand, reiterated the circumstances of the trial in November 2003 following Hürten and Franz Neubauer : Filbinger only took over the case after the extenuating circumstances had been investigated, i.e. could not help prepare the indictment and could not contradict the legal instructions of the fleet chief. A request for clemency had only been granted to the defense counsel, only the judge had to present the grounds for clemency to the judge. Criminal charges filed against Filbinger in 2004 for participating in death sentences were not pursued.

Military historian Manfred Messerschmidt said after examining the original files on the Gröger case in April 2007:

"Filbinger shouldn't have called for the death penalty, he still played a part in the proceedings. That was good to secure his position as naval chief magistrate. It is known from other cases that there was no compulsion. Filbinger would not even have had to fear disciplinary proceedings had he decided otherwise ... "

For example, Reich War Judge Hans-Ulrich Rottka was only dismissed for his frequent requests for more detailed examination of the indictment in order to avoid hasty death sentences.

According to Helmut Kramer, Filbinger tried to cover up the fact that he, as a prosecutor, had "demanded an unjust death sentence and thus forced the court to act". He was one of the "terrible lawyers", but only a typical follower among around 2,500 to 2,800 military judges of the Nazi era.

Historical and legal processing of the armed forces justice

Thomas Nicolai: Memorial for the unknown armed forces deserter , Petersberg Fortress , Erfurt, unveiled 1995

After Filbinger's resignation, Franz Josef Strauss opened a Bundestag debate on the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes on August 14, 1978 with the following accusation:

"Collecting material, sniffing, looking for dirt, shooting at, hounding, character assassination, shooting was a popular method of the Nazis, whose docile students are the Reds today."

He called for a general amnesty for Nazi perpetrators. Herbert Wehner's counter-initiative to generally abolish the statute of limitations for murder found a cross-party majority in 1979.

The Filbinger affair intensified the empirical research into Wehrmacht justice that began around 1966. The former Luftwaffe judges Otto Peter Schweling and Erich Schwinge had portrayed them in 1977 as an “anti-Nazi enclave of the rule of law” and justified death sentences for young deserters who could even have been acquitted after Hitler's decree. Filbinger has been defending herself with her argumentation models since 1978.

In contrast, Fritz Wüllner and Manfred Messerschmidt from the Military History Research Office in Freiburg / Breisgau demonstrated in detail in 1987 that the Wehrmacht justice system was responsible for more than 30,000 death sentences and tens of thousands of executions in "seamless adaptation to Nazi legal theory". Without Hochhuth's attack on Filbinger, according to the authors, this would hardly have been further investigated. In 1987 Ingo Müller's book Terrible Jurists was published , which dealt with the role of the Nazi judiciary and how the German judiciary dealt with it. In 1988 Heinrich Senfft pointed out in a book on political justice in Germany that the death sentences of Nazi judges after 1945 were not atoned for.

The Federal Court of Justice (BGH), which had largely prevented the prosecution of lawyers from the Nazi era for a long time, stated in an obiter dictum (Latin for "incidentally") on November 16, 1995 : The Nazi judiciary had abused the death penalty unprecedented . Their jurisprudence was "in view of the excessive imposition of the death penalty, not unjustly often referred to as 'blood justice'". A "large number of former Nazi judges" who continued their careers in the Federal Republic "should have been held criminally responsible for perversion of the law in unity with capital crimes ... The fact that this did not happen is a serious failure of the Federal German criminal justice system." Lawyers and military historians as a departure from old ways of looking at things and a “self-critical balance sheet of dealing with the Nazi military justice”.

This change gradually made it possible to rehabilitate the victims of Nazi military justice and to compensate their relatives, which the Evangelical Church in Germany in particular demanded. The law passed on July 23, 2002 to overturn National Socialist judgments in the criminal justice system subsequently rehabilitated all those convicted of deserters in the Wehrmacht. On 8 September 2009, the Bundestag unanimously raised all because of the so-called war treason on Felled Nazi judgments, which until then were left to an individual assessment.

On June 22, 2007, the Berlin Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe opened a touring exhibition in Vienna under the title "What was right then ... - soldiers and civilians before the courts of the Wehrmacht", based on the well-known Filbinger quote. Analogous to the Wehrmacht exhibition in Austria and Germany, it shows the results of two years of research into unjust justice during the Nazi era. Richard von Weizsäcker said:

“The decades of debates about the motives of the accused obscured the judiciary that sentenced them. The Wehrmacht courts were an instrument of the Nazi injustice state. "

Artistic processing

On June 29, 1979, the play Before Retirement , A Comedy of German Soul by Thomas Bernhard , directed by Claus Peymann, premiered in Stuttgart . The main character is a former concentration camp commandant and later president of the court who, as a pensioner, puts on his old uniform every year on Heinrich Himmler's birthday. This was understood as a metaphorical allusion to the Filbinger affair and the lack of turning away from the demon of National Socialism.

In October 1979, Hochhuth's play Juristen was published , which, following his book Eine Liebe zu Deutschland , but more generally, addressed the role of Wehrmacht judges in the Nazi era. It was sometimes criticized as being out of date, bold, gaudy and artistically worthless.

In 2014, the former editor-in-chief of Thüringer Allgemeine , Sergej Lochthofen , reported in his book "Grau" about an interview that he conducted in Thuringia in 1978 with a submarine mate who was stationed and there in Norway during the war Filbinger witnessed two death sentences as a trial observer. In one case, an Alsatian was charged who had stated that he did not feel like a German, but a French, and therefore did not want to take part in the murder. The other case concerned a sailor who had heard "enemy broadcasts" that a comrade had reported from him. According to the witness, both death sentences were carried out shortly afterwards. The newspaper article written by Lochthofen about this was not published in the GDR, allegedly because they did not want to interfere "in the internal affairs of the FRG".

literature

Defensive

  • Hans Karl Filbinger: The reviled generation. Political memories. The truth from the Stasi files. 3rd, supplemented and enlarged edition. Bechtle, Esslingen et al. 1994, ISBN 3-7628-0523-7 .
  • Bruno Heck ( Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung , ed.), Heinz Hürten, Wolfgang Jäger, Hugo Ott : Hans Filbinger - The case and the facts: A historical and political analysis. Hase & Koehler, Mainz 1980, ISBN 3-7758-1002-1 .
  • Franz Neubauer: The public character assassination. 2nd, changed and revised edition. Roderer, Regensburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-89783-589-4 .

Critical

  • Wolfram Wette (Ed.): Filbinger. A German career. zu Klampen, Springe 2006, ISBN 3-934920-74-8 .
  • Helmut Kramer: Hans Filbinger. In: Helmut Kramer, Wolfram Wette (Hrsg.): Law is what uses arms: Justice and pacifism in the 20th century. Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-351-02578-5 , p. 43ff.
  • Thomas Ramge: The terrible lawyer. Marine judge Hans Karl Filbinger and his pathologically clear conscience. 1978, In: Thomas Ramge: The great political scandals. Another story of the Federal Republic. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2003, ISBN 3-593-37069-7 (book excerpt online)
  • Rolf Surmann: Filbinger. Nazi military justice and German continuities. In: Dieter Schröder, Rolf Surmann (ed.): The long shadow of the Nazi dictatorship. Unrast, Münster 1999, ISBN 3-89771-801-4 .
  • Heinrich Senfft: Judges and other citizens. 150 years of political justice and new German rule politics. Greno, Nördlingen 1988, ISBN 3-89190-957-8 , pp. 16-37.
  • Rosemarie von dem Knesebeck (ed.): In the matter of Filbinger against Hochhuth. The story of coming to terms with the past. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1983, ISBN 3-499-14545-6 .

Contemporary historical context

  • Jörg Musiol: Coming to terms with the past in the Federal Republic. Continuity and change in the late 1970s. Tectum, Marburg 2006, ISBN 3-8288-9116-0 .
  • Norbert Frei: Careers in the Twilight. Hitler's elites after 1945 [the book for the ARD television series]. Campus, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2001, ISBN 3-593-36790-4 .
  • Michael Schwab-Trapp: Conflict, Culture and Interpretation: A Discourse Analysis of Public Dealing with National Socialism. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1996, ISBN 3-531-12842-6 .

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ^ Reinhard Mohr: Obituary for Hans Filbinger: Prime Minister, Naval Judge, Follower. In: Der Spiegel. April 2, 2007.
  2. ↑ a b c Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz (Hrsg.): Lexicon of 'coping with the past' in Germany. Debate and discourse history of National Socialism after 1945. 2nd edition, Transcript, 2009, ISBN 978-3-89942-773-8 , p. 203.
  3. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 23.
  4. ↑ "He decomposed male discipline": This is how Hans Filbinger, now Prime Minister of Stuttgart, judged as a naval judge after the end of the war . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 1972, p. 49 ff . ( online ).
  5. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 16f.
  6. ↑ Norbert Haase: Danger to male discipline. On the history of the persecution of non-conformance, refusal and resistance by the German Wehrmacht as reflected in the rulings of naval courts in Wilhelmshaven (1939–1945). Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Bremen 1995, ISBN 3-7752-5844-2 .
  7. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 31, fn. 10.
  8. ^ Filbinger affair: What was legal ... In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1978, p. 23 ff . ( online ).
  9. ↑ Homepage hans-filbinger.de (offline since 2012): statements and letters from Karl-Heinz Möbius ; Affidavit by Guido Forstmeier. ( Memento of February 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 16.
  11. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 21.
  12. ↑ Hans Filbinger: The cleaning of the German name. ( Memento from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (pdf; 79 kB)
  13. ↑ Die Zeit 31/1974: Out of place
  14. ^ Peter Reichel: Black, Red, Gold. A short history of German national symbols after 1945. 1st edition. CH Beck, 2005, ISBN 3-406-53514-3 , pp. 71f.
  15. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 18.
  16. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 22f.
  17. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 37.
  18. ↑ Bernhard Nolz, Wolfgang Popp: memory work. Basis of a culture of peace. Lit, 2000, ISBN 3-8258-4611-3 , pp. 105ff.
  19. ↑ Detlef Garbe: "In each individual case ... up to the death penalty". The military criminal lawyer Erich Schwinge. A German legal life. Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-927106-00-3 , p. 58ff .; Stefan Chr. Saar: "But I am not responsible for it" - Erich Schwinge (1903–1994). In: Stefan Chr. Saar, Andreas Roth, Christian Hattenhauer (eds.): Law as inheritance and task. Heinz Holzhauer on April 21, 2005. Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-503-07945-9 , pp. 332-349.
  20. ↑ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, pp. 18-22.
  21. ^ Wolfram Wette: Filbinger - a German career. 2006, p. 57.
  22. ^ Wolfram Wette: Filbinger - a German career. 2006, p. 75.
  23. ↑ Horst Bieber, Joachim Holtz, Joachim Schilde, Hans Schueler, Theo Sommer: Shoot, Sargen, Transport away. In: The time. May 12, 1978, p. 4/6.
  24. ^ Ricarda Berthold: Filbinger's activity as a naval judge in World War II. P. 61.
  25. ↑ Filbinger: The condemned did not explain anything . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1978, p. 140–144 ( online - Rolf Hochhuth on the death sentence against the marine soldier Walter Gröger).
  26. ↑ Rosemarie von dem Knesebeck: In the matter of Filbinger against Hochhuth. The story of coming to terms with the past. 1983, p. 36.
  27. ↑ Horst Bieber, Joachim Holtz, Joachim Schilde, Hans Schueler, Theo Sommer: Shoot, Sargen, Transport away. In: The time. May 12, 1978.
  28. ^ Filbinger: Last lesson . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 1979, pp. 51 f . ( online ).
  29. ^ Press release of the state government of Baden-Württemberg on May 4, 1978, quoted by Rosemarie von Knesebeck: In the matter of Filbinger against Hochhuth. P. 31; excerpts published In: Hans Filbinger: Therefore I state. In: The time. May 12, 1978.
  30. ↑ quoted from Rosemarie von dem Knesebeck: In the matter of Filbinger against Hochhuth. P. 48.
  31. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 24.
  32. ^ Filbinger affair: What was legal ... In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1978, p. 23-27 ( online ).
  33. ↑ Gerd Bucericus: Executions before the end of the war? In: The time. June 9, 1978.
  34. ^ On the Filbinger case: clarification. In: The time. 25/16. June 1978.
  35. ↑ quoted from Jörg Musiol: Coping with the past in the Federal Republic. 2006, p. 56, note 209.
  36. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 19.
  37. ↑ Bartsch, Matthias; Ludwig, Udo; Pfister, René; Verbeet, Markus: Pathologically clear conscience . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 2007, p. 36-38 ( online ).
  38. ↑ Wolfgang Jäger: The fall of the Baden-Württemberg Prime Minister Hans Filbinger 1978. In: Heinz Hürten, Wolfgang Jäger, Hugo Ott: Hans Filbinger - The case and the facts: A historical and political analysis. Mainz 1980, p. 109 and 168.
  39. ↑ a b Rudolf Augstein: Enlightenment with the keyword Sweden . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1978, p. 132-137 ( online ).
  40. ^ Ricarda Berthold: Filbinger's activity as a naval judge in World War II. P. 46f. and 60; Matthias Bartsch, Udo Ludwig, René Pfister, Markus Verbeet: Pathologically clear conscience . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 2007, p. 37 ( online ).
  41. ↑ p. 203
  42. ↑ Heinz Boberach: archivist between files and topicality. 1st edition. Books on Demand, 2004, ISBN 3-8334-0607-0 , pp. 106f.
  43. ^ Filbinger: furnace off . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1978, p. 29-31 ( online ).
  44. ^ Siegfried Weischenberg: Journalism. Theory and practice of current media communication. Volume 2: Media technology, media functions, media actors. Vs-Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-531-12378-5 , p. 232.
  45. ↑ a b c Theo Sommer: The burden of the past. In: The time. May 12, 1978.
  46. ↑ Wolfgang Jäger: The fall of the Baden-Württemberg Prime Minister Hans Filbinger 1978. In: Hans Filbinger - The case and the facts. P. 113.
  47. ↑ How much longer with your head held high? In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1978, p. 28 f . ( online - press reviews on the Filbinger affair).
  48. ↑ Hans Filbinger. In the currents of time. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. April 13, 2007, p. 2.
  49. ↑ Norbert Blüm, Member of the Bundestag: The time of the innocent is utopia . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1978, p. 32 f . ( online ).
  50. ^ Theo Sommer: Unreasonable to the end: Filbinger becomes a burden on the CDU. In: The time. July 14, 1978.
  51. ↑ Before the fall? In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1978, p. 26-29 ( online ).
  52. ^ Franz Josef Strauss in words and pictures: Quotations ( Memento from August 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ); on this Gerhard Strauss, Ulrike Haß, Gisela Harras: explosive words from agitation to zeitgeist. A lexicon for public usage. 1st edition. Walter de Gruyter, 1989, ISBN 3-11-012078-X , p. 663f.
  53. ^ Paul Ludwig Christmas (ed.): The CDU in Baden-Württemberg and its history. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 1978, pp. 23f and notes 40, 41.
  54. ↑ quoted from Thomas Ramge: The great political scandals. Another story of the Federal Republic. P. 137.
  55. ↑ Hans Filbinger: The reviled generation. 3. Edition. 1994, p. 130, etc.
  56. ^ Reginald Rudorf: The fourth power. The left media cartel. Ullstein, 1995, ISBN 3-548-36635-X , p. 25; Rainer Zitelmann : Where is our republic going? Ullstein, 1995, ISBN 3-548-36641-4 , p. 111; Barbara Junge, Julia Naumann, Holger Stark: right scribe. Espresso Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-88520-621-8 , p. 83 u. a.
  57. ^ Hans Mathias Kepplinger: Political mediation. 1st edition. Vs Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-531-16421-2 , p. 24.
  58. ^ Knud Andresen, lecture at the conference on history policy and collective memory (Kiel, October 16-18, 2008); reviewed by Friederike Steiner, Institute for Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary and Regional History
  59. ^ Klaus Kamps: Political Communication Management. Basics and professionalization of modern policy communication. Vs-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-13280-8 , p. 243.
  60. ↑ quoted from Hugo Ott: Hans Filbinger 1933–1940. In: Hürten, Jäger, Ott: Hans Filbinger - The 'case' and the facts , p. 30.
  61. ↑ Hans Karl Filbinger: The reviled generation. Munich 1987, p. 58.
  62. ^ Letter published for the first time by Lothar Bossle (ed.) In: Hans Filbinger, a man in our time: Festschrift for the 70th birthday? 1983, p. 17.
  63. ↑ Wolfgang Frühwald: "The Inner Liberation". Reinhold Schneider and the internal German resistance against Hitler and National Socialism. In: Reinhold Schneider 1903-1958. Reinhold Schneider Foundation, Issue 35, Hamburg 1988, pp. 66–77
  64. ^ Jürgen Frölich: Opposition and resistance on a liberal basis. In: Peter Steinbach, Johannes Tuchel (Hrsg.): Resistance against the National Socialist dictatorship 1933–1945. Bonn 2004, pp. 167-184; Ernst Schulin u. a .: The 'Freiburg Circle'. Resistance and post-war planning 1933–1945. Catalog of an exhibition. Ploetz, Freiburg 2001, ISBN 3-87640-425-8 .
  65. ^ Gerhard Hammerstein: Letter to the editor April 4, 1995 to the Badische Zeitung , quoted by Wolfram Wette: Filbinger, a German career. 2006, p. 25ff.
  66. ^ Günter Bohnsack, Herbert Brehmer: Order of misdirection. How the Stasi made politics in the West. Edited by Christian von Dithfurth, Hamburg 1992.
  67. ↑ quoted from Marlis Prinzing: Lothar Späth: Wandlungen einer Rastlosen. Orell Füssli, 2006, ISBN 3280052033 , p. 306; Source: Hans Filbinger: The reviled generation: Political memories. The truth from the Stasi files. Bechtle, 3rd edition 1994, ISBN 3762805237 (Appendix)
  68. ↑ Hartmut Palmer: Terrible lawyers: "Clean in the urn" . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1995, p. 26th f . ( online ).
  69. ↑ Netzeitung, April 12, 2007: How Filbinger has embellished its past. ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
  70. ↑ Helmut Kohl: Memoirs 1990–1994. Droemer Knaur, 2007, ISBN 978-3-426-27408-8 , p. 495.
  71. ↑ German Bundestag: Plenary Protocol 13/175 of May 15, 1997, p. 15833. (Wolfgang von Stetten in the debate about the law to repeal Nazi unjust justice)
  72. ↑ Klaus D. Voss (Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung No. 15, April 14, 2007): Victims of agitation. On Filbinger's death.
  73. ^ Looking to the right, April 24, 2007: Filbinger's key witness. (chargeable for non-members)
  74. ^ Arian Fariborz: Filbinger's resignation. In: Calendar sheet, DW-WORLD.DE, August 7, 2009.
  75. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 12, 2007: Oettinger's speech at the state act on April 11, 2007
  76. ↑ Filbinger an "Nazi opponent"? Oettinger: "Do not keep my formulation upright". ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: FAZ. April 16, 2007.
  77. ↑ Keep the blood community pure . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1978, p. 33 ( online - excerpt from an essay by law student Hans Filbinger on the tasks of Nazi criminal law).
  78. ^ Clemens Heni: Hans Filbinger was a Nazi. Little known sources of the Catholic Federation of New Germany. (pdf; 193 kB)
  79. ↑ Frank Roeser: Such lies must not stand still. In: The world. April 16, 2007.
  80. ↑ a b Helmut Kramer: Hans Filbinger - a terrible lawyer. May 2007.
  81. ↑ a b Wolfram Wette: The Filbinger case. ( Memento from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Lecture in Freiburg im Breisgau, September 14, 2003, PDF
  82. ^ Werner Schön: Spontaneous wrong answer on the phone. In: The time. No. 32, May 4, 1978.
  83. ↑ quoted from Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 23.
  84. ^ Heinz Hürten: Hans Filbinger's activity as a naval judge. In: Heinz Hürten, Wolfgang Jäger, Hugo Ott: Hans Filbinger - The case and the facts: A historical and political analysis. Mainz 1980, p. 78ff.
  85. ↑ Golo Mann: "I read the book in five hours of the night" (reprint from "Welt am Sonntag", July 26, 1987)
  86. ↑ Heinz Hürten, Wolfgang Jäger, Hugo Ott: Hans Filbinger - The case and the facts. P. 79.
  87. ^ Günther Gillessen: The Filbinger case. A look back at the campaign and the historical facts. In: The Political Opinion. No. 408 / November 2003, pp. 67-74.
  88. ^ Criminal charges against Filbinger. ( Memento from April 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) In: Netzeitung. May 21, 2004.
  89. ↑ Manfred Messerschmidt: He could have done otherwise. Interview with Spiegel, April 12, 2007.
  90. ↑ quoted from Marc von Miquel: Ahnden or amnesty? West German Justice and Politics of the Past in the Sixties. Wallstein, 1997, ISBN 3-89244-748-9 , p. 363f.
  91. ↑ Otto Peter Schweling: The German military justice in the time of National Socialism. Revised, introduced and edited by Erich Schwinge. Elwert, Marburg 1977, ISBN 3-7708-0590-9 , u. a. Pp. 48, 243 and 347.
  92. ^ Kristina Brümmer-Pauly: Desertion in the Law of National Socialism. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-8305-1208-2 , p. 10f.
  93. ↑ Manfred Messerschmidt, Fritz Wüllner: The Wehrmacht Justice in the Service of National Socialism. Destroying a legend. Nomos, 1987, ISBN 3-7890-1466-4 , p. 16; Manfred Messerschmidt: What was law back then ... Nazi military and criminal justice in the war of extermination. Klartext-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1996, ISBN 3-88474-487-9 .
  94. ^ Heinrich Senfft: Richter and other citizens , Nördlingen 1988, p. 10.
  95. ↑ Federal Court of Justice, judgment of November 16, 1995, Az. 5 StR 747/94; BGHSt 41, 317-347
  96. ^ Wolfram Wette: Filbinger - a German career. P. 163. Wette refers to: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift. 1996, p. 857ff .; Otto Gritschneder: Perversion of the law. The late confession of the Federal Court of Justice. In: New legal weekly. 1996, p. 1239ff.
  97. ↑ Nazi justice: Bundestag rehabilitates so-called war traitors. In: The world. September 8, 2009.
  98. ↑ Ulrich Baumann, Magnus Koch (ed.): "What was right then ...": Soldiers and civilians before the courts of the Wehrmacht. Be.bra-Verlag, Berlin-Brandenburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-89809-079-7 (exhibition catalog); (Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe)
  99. ^ Richard von Weizsäcker: Commentary on the exhibition: "What was right then ..." ( Memento from September 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  100. ↑ From happy SS days . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1979, pp. 154 f . ( online - Thomas Bernhard's “Before Retirement” in Stuttgart).
  101. ^ Benjamin Henrichs: Portrait of a hunter. In: The time. February 22, 1980; Hellmuth Karasek: The piece about the Filbinger fall . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1979, pp. 237, 239 ( online ).
  102. ^ Sergej Lochthofen: Gray. A life story from a lost country . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2014 ISBN 978-3-498-03944-8 , pp. 351–355
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on September 21, 2009 in this version .