Franz Nüßlein

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Franz Roman Nüßlein (born October 12, 1909 in Kassel ; † February 9, 2003 in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe ) was a German lawyer and civil servant who was deployed in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia during the Second World War and in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1955 worked as a diplomat . The obituary for him in the staff newspaper "internAA" of the Foreign Office (AA) in May 2003 triggered the obituary decree in the Foreign Office in 2003, from which the obituary affair developed in early 2005.

Life and activity until 1945

Youth and Studies

Franz Nüßlein was the only child of a middle-class Catholic family, the parental home was close to the Center Party . After attending the state-humanistic Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Kassel , he studied law in Munich, Paris, Berlin and Göttingen. In Munich he became a member of the KStV Saxonia, in Göttingen the K.St.V. Winfridia , both in KV . In February 1933 he passed the state examination, then he was in July 1934 also in Göttingen with a thesis on the topic "The Prussian State Council " to Dr. jur. PhD . In December 1936 he passed his assessor exam in Berlin with the grade “good”. In his clerkship had Nüßlein in spring 1936 in Jüterbog on so-called " communal Hanns Kerrl participate," a then mandatory for all young lawyers, eight-week station of Nazi indoctrination. The camp certificate received states that he was neither a member of the NSDAP nor the SA ; he works as a person with a lot of self-will, but also brittleness, who allows little insight into himself. He was courteous and helpful, but also careful and reserved.

1937/38 - activity as a court assessor, entry into the NSDAP and the Reich Ministry of Justice

In autumn 1937 he applied for admission to the NSDAP , which led him as a candidate from October 15, 1937. It was not until a year later that he was finally accepted into the party (membership number 4,628,997), with the admission being backdated to May 1, 1937. During this time and until the end of 1938, Nüßlein worked as a court assessor at courts and public prosecutors in Kassel and Frankfurt am Main, including for a short time as a judge. He was then sent to the Reich Ministry of Justice in Berlin on January 23, 1939 , where he worked for a few weeks in the legal department of the Reich Commissioner for Pricing , at that time Josef Wagner . His official title was now “Public Prosecutor”, although he was not in the judiciary but in the administration.

Transfer to Prague, work in the protectorate administration

After the establishment of the “ Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ” on March 15, 1939, Nüßlein was assigned to the newly created office of Reich Protector in Prague on April 1, 1939 , initially in the pricing department, from October 1939 in the judicial administration, which he held until Belonged to the end of the war. His superior there was initially Ministerialrat Rudolf Bälz, from 1940 Ministerialrat Helmut Krieser (as head of the “Justice Group” and from 1943 the “Justice Department”). Their superior was Undersecretary Curt von Burgsdorff . Nüßlein was now primarily concerned with the Reich supervision of Czech criminal law, with matters of constitutional and international law as well as with the transfer of German criminal law to the conditions in the occupied Protectorate area. He was also responsible for receiving and assessing requests for clemency and intervening in court judgments in civil criminal matters, including death sentences from the German special courts. The decision on the requests for clemency lay with the Reich Minister of Justice until autumn 1943, then with the Reich Protector (with the exception of the cases that Hitler attracted). On October 20, 1940 Nüßlein was promoted to "First Public Prosecutor". It is controversial what influence Nüßlein’s statements had on the granting or rejection of requests for clemency.

Nüßlein’s concern with questions of constitutional and international law led in the course of 1940 to 1945 to repeated cooperation with the then Swiss Consul General in Prague, Albert Huber . Huber carried out this activity from November 1940 to September 1945, with the Swiss consulate playing a central role for diplomacy and humanitarian affairs in Prague during these years, because many states were no longer represented there and the Berlin embassy of Switzerland took over this position after the establishment of the "Protectorate" as part of the policy of good offices had additionally entrusted the protection of foreign interests. Nüßlein enjoyed Huber's trust, who in 1947/48 and again in 1958, when the AA was researching Nüßlein for the first time while Albert Huber was now the Swiss ambassador in Bonn, emphatically advocated him.

On the other hand, Nüßlein also enjoyed the trust of high-ranking Nazi figures. Although he did not join the NSdAP despite repeated requests, showed no activity in the party and continued to be a practicing Catholic, from the beginning of 1942 prominent NS figures campaigned for his early promotion to senior public prosecutor: Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich praised his “understanding for the Necessity ”of a“ resolute fight ”against“ enemies of the Reich ”and had sought his promotion before his death. After the assassination attempt and Heydrich's death on June 4, 1942, the Deputy Protector Minister of State Karl Hermann Frank turned to the then State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice, Roland Freisler , in July 1942 , in order to obtain Nüßlein's promotion. He justified this wish primarily with Nüßlein's "special political merits" in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Even Martin Bormann worked to the Reich Minister of Justice for the transport. Nüßlein was then promoted to senior public prosecutor at the end of July 1942 , a rank he held until the end of the war. A rise in the hierarchy of the protectorate administration was not associated with this promotion, he remained a consultant in the "Department of Justice" without his own employees.

Participation in death sentences from 1940 to 1945

According to other sources, from the end of 1942 Nüßlein worked in the position of Deputy Public Prosecutor General in Prague and rose to become Prosecutor General and the highest prosecutor in the Protectorate. Nüßlein had authority to issue instructions to the public prosecutor's offices at the special courts in Czechoslovakia.

His overriding role in the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia is made clear by the case of Oskar Löwenstein, which is presented by Andreas Meckel in his book “To let the justice run free”. Oskar Löwenstein (born in 1897 Weleschin) was a Czechoslovakian from a Jewish family. He had an engineering degree from the German-speaking Technical University in Prague and was a highly qualified cinematography specialist. Löwenstein worked as the Czechoslovak representative of the renowned camera and projector manufacturer Bauer in Stuttgart . The contract was terminated towards the end of 1942 because Löwenstein, as a "Jew", was not allowed to perform such an activity. Löwenstein lived with his girlfriend in Prague in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . All 120,000 Jews were particularly exposed to persecution since the beginning of the war in 1939. After the assassination attempt on Heydrich , the persecution of the Jews was intensified. On September 8, 1942 Löwensteins was he separated wife with his son Jan to the Theresienstadt ghetto deported . Löwenstein expected that he, too, would soon be deported. He then decided to flee to Switzerland via Germany. His Swiss friend Marcelle Yung, who lived as a language teacher in Prague, helped him with this. She lent him her passport, which he forged for his own purposes. On November 2, 1942, Löwenstein traveled to Singen in Germany. Entry went well. When he wanted to go from Singen to Switzerland, the German border control caught him. Löwenstein and Yung were imprisoned in Prague. On January 27, legal proceedings were opened before the Prague Special Court. As early as December 12th, the chief public prosecutor Franz Ludwig at the regional court in Prague had the indictment, in which harsh sentences were planned for the Jew Oskar Löwenstein, who had only wanted to flee before his deportation, and his Swiss girlfriend, with the following remark to the general public prosecutor for the German Higher Regional Court sent: "I intend to face the death penalty against Löwenstein, and apply for a high prison sentence against Yung". The attorney general at the Higher Regional Court forwarded this indictment to the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia and the Reich Ministry of Justice with the comment "No objections". On December 22nd, the letter was stamped: “Seen. The Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia. On behalf of Dr. Franz Nüßlein ". On January 27, 1943 Oskar Löwenstein was on the basis of this charge by the III. Chamber of the Special Court in Prague, chaired by Kurt Bellmann, sentenced to death. His girlfriend received three years in prison. The prosecutors Franz Ludwig and Wolfgang von Zeynek wrote the report on the mercy of Löwenstein . In it they refused the petition for clemency. The subsequent pardon decision of the Reich Protector, for which Nüßlein claims to be responsible, can only have contained the confirmation of the death penalty. On July 1, 1943, Oskar Löwenstein was executed in the Prague prison.

In addition, Nüßlein worked on the mercy cases. 95 percent of the appeals for clemency were rejected. Overall, Franz Nüßlein is said to have been involved in around 900 death sentences . In more than 100 cases, he refused a pardon and ordered the enforcement of the death penalty. This information from the Brown Book of 1965, which cites no other sources, is largely correct in the opinion of an independent historians ' commission, but “they helped, as the Nüßlein case also shows [...] because the allegations came from the GDR [...] in the climate of the Of the cold war rather than harming the accused ”. In 1947 Nüßlein wrote a résumé for the trial in Czechoslovakia against him. There he described his work as "ancillary work in receiving part of the appeals for clemency and interventions." "In all cases, of course, nothing could be made worse by my work."

Escape, arrests and extradition to CSR

Nüßlein fled from Prague to the west on the night of 8 to 9 May 1945, but was arrested by the Americans on May 10, interned for a few days in the Rokitzan camp near Pilsen and questioned about his activities in Prague. He was released on May 24th, however, and took a US transport to Bavaria, from where he went to Kassel to see his parents. Since Nüßlein's name was at the top of the list of alleged war criminals that Czechoslovakia had handed over to the Americans with the request for transfer, they arrested him again in September 1946, but delivered him only after more than six months of internment in Ludwigsburg and then in Dachau to the CSR on April 1, 1947. Nüßlein was one of the last of around 4,000 German suspects who were extradited to neighboring countries in Germany by the US authorities.

The alleged confusion with Franz Ludwig

Nüßlein later stated that the US authorities had contacted Attorney General Dr. Confused Franz Ludwig , who, unlike him, actually worked as a prosecutor in Prague, including dozens of cases with death sentences and executions. Only after Nüßlein was extradited to CSR "it quickly became apparent that I was not who the Americans thought I was despite my protests." During the various investigations into his case in the 1960s, Nüßlein’s assertion was neither checked by the public prosecutor nor by the Foreign Office on the basis of American files. The historian Heinz Schneppen considers it plausible, also because "one apparently never looked for Nüßlein's superior department head [Helmut Krieser]", from whom 1960/61 a. a. through the testimony of Willy Greuels made it clear that he had more influence than Nüßlein on the decision about requests for mercy. The extradition of Franz Ludwig, in turn, was requested by Prague, but he was able to work as a public prosecutor in Düsseldorf from 1945 until his retirement in 1961 under his real name.

Trial in Prague

Investigations until the end of 1947

The investigation against Nüßlein fell into the final phase of Prokop Drtina's time as Minister of Justice. In this short phase, between the official conclusion of the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans in December 1946 and the communist revolution in February 1948, the rule of law standards were higher than in the years before and after. The investigation, led by examining magistrate Ludvík Engelmann , was slow at first. Although Prague newspapers had called in reports with the picture of Nüßlein to report incriminating evidence about him, no Czech witnesses were found. From his former colleagues Erich Blackert and Dr. Kurt Blaschtowitschka , both indicted by a Czechoslovak People's Court, were given statements that vaguely incriminated Nüßlein. On the other hand, in addition to the aforementioned Swiss diplomat Albert Huber , the Czech lawyer Dr. Lankaš, who defended numerous persecuted resistance fighters during the protectorate until he was sentenced to three years by the German special court in Prague for alleged " sabotage ". The Gestapo was too lenient with the verdict; they applied for a "revocation objection" in order to be able to sentence Lankaš more severely - possibly to death. It was Nüßlein who prevented this, which Lankaš found out, while Nüßlein Lankaš was “unknown” when he “immediately” reported against him after the opening of the preliminary investigation and offered him to defend himself free of charge. On October 6, 1947, Nüßlein formally commissioned Lankaš to look after his interests. “At the end of 1947, Lankaš told me, as did the examining magistrate Engel […], that I could not prove any individual wrongdoing. My proceedings will therefore be discontinued shortly and I would be expelled from the CSR. ”In this sense, reports were also made to the Ministry of Justice and to the International Red Cross , which had intervened on behalf of Nüßlein. While no charges were initially brought against Nüßlein after the investigation was over, the expected release did not materialize.

Indictment and trial in April / May 1948

Even before Nüßlein was released, the communist overturn of February 25, 1948 , followed by a new wave of repression with show trials against Germans and Czechs under the new Justice Minister Alexej Čepička . The newly created Extraordinary People's Court revoked Dr. Lankaš granted the mandate and forbade him to have any further contact with Nüßlein, who has since had no lawyer. As a non-communist, Lankaš later lost his lawyer license. On April 16, 1948, the public prosecutor applied to the Extraordinary People's Court to reopen the case against Nüßlein. As a result, charges were brought against him on May 5, 1948, before the XIV Chamber of the People's Court, and a four-hour trial was carried out without a lawyer or interpreter. Nüßlein had not been given a formal indictment. The verdict on the same day was 20 years of heavy dungeon , tightened "with a hard camp for three months" (= sleeping on the floor). Nüßlein was not given the judgment either; he only received the 20-page text in 1965 after it became known as a result of research by the Süddeutscher Rundfunk . The judgment describes it as Nüßlein 's task "to' organize 'various criminal proceedings pending at the German special court in Prague".

Early release and entry into the Foreign Office in 1955

In the course of the release of prisoners of war, Nüßlein was deported from Czechoslovakia to the Federal Republic of Germany on June 29, 1955 as a "non- amnesty war criminal". His last place of detention in the CSR was the Kartouzy Prison in Valdice (Karthaus Walditz) near Jičín . In Germany Nüßlein was treated as a late returnee without checking his information and received compensation from his detention . Nüßlein was also recognized as an “expellee”, although he was based in Kassel and had only been transferred to Prague as part of the Nazi occupation policy. He initially applied for admission to the judicial administration in Kassel, where it was revealed to him in August that he could initially only be hired for a limited period as an “accommodation case” and that he could only be employed “under-valued” for three years. His application to the Foreign Office, which hired him a little later, was more successful. Here he held the title of “Senior Public Prosecutor z. Wv. "(= For further use), then from the end of August 1956 the title" Legation Councilor I. Class ".

The head of the justice department, Ministerialdirektor Hans Berger , opened the way to the Foreign Office, knowing Nüßlein's personal file from the Reich Ministry of Justice. Like Nüßlein, Berger was a Catholic, but unlike Nüßlein, he was never a member of the NSDAP. Nüßlein was then employed as a speaker in various departments until he finally became head of department in the central department (fundamental issues, organization, public law). In 1959 he was promoted to lecturing councilor first class , with the Foreign Office assigning him the time of his imprisonment in Czechoslovakia as "period of service". He was then Consul General in Barcelona from 1962 to 1974 . In 1959 Nüßlein was - knowing his past until 1955 - honorary philistine of the K.St.V. Arminia in Bonn , whom he had joined as a bachelor in his spare time. According to the obituary for Nüßlein published by the Foreign Office after his death in 2003, he was also the recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class. The obituary does not contain any information on when and for what services Nüßlein was awarded this honor and the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon that had apparently previously been awarded to him.

1958 - First investigations against Nüßlein by the AA

As early as the late 1950s, the AA was researching Nüßlein’s activities in Prague, especially since his imprisonment in the CSR with early release was considered a certain security risk, as there were cases in which detainees had bought their release with an obligation to work as an agent. Nüßlein, who did not serve in the Foreign Office before 1945 and did not complete an attaché training, was also considered a career changer. In the course of these first internal AA investigations, the then Swiss ambassador in Bonn, Albert Huber , told State Secretary Hilger van Scherpenberg that he had seen "how Nüßlein had repeatedly stood up in a courageous and self-sacrificing manner" in which Swiss citizens of Nazis had been persecuted in a life-threatening manner. In Scherpenberg's note of May 13, 1958, Huber is quoted as follows: “I have been able to carefully observe Nüßlein’s activities during the five years and can say without reservation that Mr Nüßlein is an oasis of legal feeling in the otherwise unlawful atmosphere of the Protectorate has built up. ”The research at the AA on Nüßlein was discontinued, but started again in 1960.

May 1960 - Nüßlein hit the headlines for the first time

On May 5, 1960, the Frankfurter Rundschau reported , citing a brochure from the “Committee for German Unity” in East Berlin and an article in the National-Zeitung , also published in East Berlin, that the GDR was accusing Nüßlein of being part of the NS - During the time at the German State Ministry in Prague I was responsible for “approving and rejecting” requests for clemency for Czechs sentenced to death. Specifically, it was said, citing the "National-Zeitung", that Nüßlein had made the final decision on the execution of 918 political opponents of the Nazi regime in 1943/44. Most German daily newspapers reported these allegations, many with reservations, others with big headlines that the AA employed a Nazi lawyer who had participated in 1,000 death penalty cases.

1960/61 - Investigations by the Cologne public prosecutor's office and renewed investigation by the AA

In response to a complaint from the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime , the Cologne Public Prosecutor's Office started investigations against Nüßlein in May 1960 because of the allegations that had recently been made publicly against him from Prague and East Berlin. It was discontinued on June 6, 1961, on the grounds that “there were no indications of a criminal and prosecutable act by the accused”. However, the Cologne public prosecutor's office was not able to access the files on Nüßlein in Prague or the judgment of May 5, 1948 imposed on him there.

In parallel with the Cologne Public Prosecutor's Office, the Foreign Office itself again meticulously examined Nüßlein’s activities in Prague from 1939 to 1945 between July 1960 and December 1961. The reason for this was that Nüßlein, who was also responsible for personnel issues at the Foreign Office at the time, was at the turn of the year 1959/60 rejected the application of a diplomat who had been dismissed in the Third Reich to be reinstated in the service of the Foreign Office because the latter had concealed a minor conviction after the end of the war in his application. The rejected member (former Legation Councilor Walter Staudacher ), who had already joined the NSDAP in 1933, defended himself by bringing charges against Nüßlein for his work in occupied Prague. As a result, the permanent representative of State Secretary van Scherpenberg, Heinrich Knappstein, commissioned Hans Berger in July 1960 with a comprehensive review of the Nüßlein case. Berger's own past in the Third Reich was beyond all doubt, however, it is unclear whether Knappstein was aware that Berger himself had opened the way for Nüßlein to the AA in 1955 and could therefore have been biased in his favor. All available information about Nüßlein’s actual activities in Prague has now been compiled, Nüßlein himself was questioned in detail. Strong exculpatory statements were Secretary Walther gases , which during the Protectorate constant contact with Nüßlein had and details about the commitment of Albert Huber and Dr. Lankaš named in favor of Nüßlein during his pre-trial detention in Prague in 1947/48, which Nüßlein himself could not have known at the time. The accusations, which were already massively raised from East Berlin and Prague at the time, that Nüßlein had decided on pardons himself, had the authority to issue instructions to the special courts or acted as a prosecutor himself, were made by the AA's internal investigators because of the lack of evidence and because of what would certainly be expected in this case Execution of Nüßlein in Prague in 1948 not taken seriously. However, they were interested in the blatant contradiction between Heydrich , Frank and Bormann's hymns of praise for Nüßlein from February to July 1942 on the one hand and Walther Gases' descriptions, but above all Huber and Lankaš's commitment to Nüßlein after 1945, on the other. A former colleague of Nüßlein in the Protectorate Administration, Ministerialrat Greuel, gave a plausible explanation for this from Berger's point of view. He explained that the head of the justice department, Krieser (“a pure specialist”) would have wanted to get his employee Nüßleins promoted. This was rejected in January 1942 by the Reich Ministry of the Interior, in particular with the argument that Nüßlein had been a party member since 1937 "but without becoming involved in the party or belonging to one of its branches". Greuel now told Berger that for this reason Nüßlein’s political stance had been deliberately and massively exaggerated in order to enforce the promotion. The praise of Nüßlein 's "special political merits" signed by Frank, later followed by Heydrich and Bormann in very similar formulations, actually came from Krieser and was "a pure lie in the interests of achieving the goal" of the promotion. Hans Berger accepted this explanation as plausible, as the AA-internal, 43-page “Berger Report” from December 1961 shows. The Foreign Office consequently stuck to Nüßlein’s employment and rejected the accusations made in Prague and East Berlin in the following years. However, Nüßlein was transferred to the politically calm position of the German Consul General in Barcelona in 1962, where he remained until his retirement in 1974.

1965 - Nüßlein hit the headlines again; the 1948 verdict becomes known

On March 15, 1965, the television magazine Report des Süddeutschen Rundfunks (SDR) broadcast a report (lead author Robert Röntgen) in which Nüßlein was massively incriminated and cast as judge and prosecutor in German, closely following the allegations made in Prague and East Berlin Prague was depicted. The Federal Foreign Office protested and took legal action; it specifically contradicted the allegation that Nüßlein was a prosecutor or a judge in Prague. The then Federal Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder (CDU) endorsed this denial in a statement on March 18, which was published two days later in the Federal Government's bulletin. SDR director Hans Bausch apologized in a letter to Nüßlein with the words: "I am sorry that claims have been made in this broadcast that you are able to refute." However, Roentgen succeeded in doing his research in Prague to receive for the first time the text of the judgment against Nüßlein from 1948, the lack of which both the Bonn public prosecutor and the Foreign Office regretted in their 1960/61 investigations. The important find was not evaluated for the report broadcast, the translation in the files of the Foreign Office bears the note “Stuttgart 20.4.1965”.

In no individual case does the judgment assign Nüßlein causal responsibility for a conviction and designates Nüßlein neither as a prosecutor nor as a judge. It also does not contain the accusation that he was authorized to issue instructions to courts or public prosecutors, but argues that Nüßlein "played a major role in the 'organization' of the proceedings before the German special court in Prague". To this end, “it must be taken into account that the accused exercised his function in the 'Justice' department without interruption during the entire time of the Protectorate and that he belonged to the inner circle around KH Frank. From this it can be clearly seen that he must have performed useful services ... ". The court took Nüßlein credit for the fact that he did not belong to any organization of the NSDAP and found him free of the suspicion of having been a “confederate of the SD”. It mentions several Czech witnesses and the "good deeds" Nüßlein demonstrated by them. After weighing up all the circumstances, Nüßlein was finally sentenced to 20 years of heavy imprisonment. This judgment was also seen by the Foreign Office as confirmation of its own research in 1958 and 1960/61, because Nüßlein’s conviction was justified not with Section 7 but with Section 3 of the Retribution Decree of June 19, 1945. While Section 7 (3) stipulated the death penalty for “[t] he causing death or serious bodily harm or bringing about deportation through a judicial and administrative decision” , Section 3 stated that “the promotion and support of fascist or National Socialist Movement or the Occupation Rule "should be punished with five to 20 years imprisonment. This paragraph applies in the literature on Czechoslovak retribution justice after the Second World War as a clause with which almost every German public employee in the territory of Czechoslovakia within the borders before 1938 could be sentenced to a long prison term.

Obituary Decree 2003 and Obituary Affair 2005

After his death, an obituary notice for the deceased Nüßlein was published in the staff newspaper AA-Intern of the Foreign Office in May 2003 . There was u. a. Nüßlein’s career path is briefly described. After completing his studies, Nüßlein first worked as a judge in Kassel and after “10 years internment in Czechoslovakia” he joined the Foreign Office in 1955, in fact he was detained there for a little over eight years. Until his retirement he headed the Consulate General in Barcelona for twelve years. In the further text of the obituary, Nüßlein’s commitment and enthusiasm and the award of the Federal Cross of Merit were emphasized. Nüßlein is "highly valued for his human qualities". This text closed with the traditional closing phrase “The Foreign Office will honor him in his memory”. The retired translator Marga Henseler (born 1918), who knew about Nüßlein's activities in Prague, then complained to Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's obituary . After the letter from Henseler failed to reach them, she complained to Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder about Fischer. This made the matter a top priority. The memorial practice of the Federal Foreign Office for its deceased diplomats, who were former NSDAP members, was changed for the first time in autumn 2003. Fischer initially decreed that they would no longer receive an honorable obituary in the office's employee newspaper, although this decree was not published and only became known after more than a year. In February 2005 there was a public protest against this, including diplomats in active service at the Foreign Office, the only public uprising of retired and active diplomats in the history of the Foreign Office. In addition, the rules of the new obituary practice also affect Walter Scheel and Hans-Dietrich Genscher , two former foreign ministers of the social-liberal and the Christian-liberal government coalition, who would therefore not receive an obituary after their death.

Establishment of the Independent Commission of Historians

Foreign Minister Fischer announced a commission of historians to justify his decree , which was to investigate personal continuity after 1945 and the internal and external handling of the ministry's own past. In the spring of 2005, the commission made up of the Germans Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei and Klaus Hildebrand , who had to retire due to illness, the American Peter Hayes (Illinois) and the Jerusalem teaching Moshe Zimmermann . The research results of the Independent Commission of Historians are in October 2010 under the title The Office and the Past. German diplomats appeared in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . The book caused violent reactions. For it is demonstrated how active and decisive, the Foreign Office in the murder of German and European Jewry was involved during the Second World War, as these diplomats each other after the war Persil certificates exhibited, prevented prosecution of offenders and the old esprit de corps unloaded newcomers displaced.

Controversy

The verdict on Nüßlein is inconsistent. From 1959, three years after his appointment in the Foreign Office, until his retirement, he was the object of campaigns directed against him. In 1969, high school graduates from the German School in Barcelona protested against the past of the consul general who had signed their high school diplomas. Other historians point out that Nüßlein advocated petitions for clemency during his work in Prague. When he was convicted in Czechoslovakia he was acquitted of any membership in the SS and SD . According to the historian Daniel Koerfer , the conviction of Nüßlein under the conditions of the Stalin era and in view of the resentment of the Czechs against Germans in the immediate post-war period was “almost an acquittal” - the judgment reads: “[…] is the court believes that the injustice caused by the defendant by his involvement in the work of this German special court far outweighs the good deeds he demonstrated in the above-mentioned cases confirmed by the witnesses. "

In the opinion of Rainer Blasius , the Nüßleins personal file does not support the assessment as a terrible lawyer . "Joschka Fischer and Marga Henseler are wrong , according to Daniel Koerfer in an interview with FAZ, when they see him as a death lawyer, 'responsible for hundreds of death sentences', [...] If that had been him, Nüßlein would have been hung in Prague in 1948."

The motives of Marga Henseler, who sees herself as a “born rebel”, who complained about Nüßlein's obituary, are also viewed critically. On the one hand, when she was appointed to the Foreign Office, she gave Nüßlein as a reputation, on the other hand she later revealed personal resentment against Nüßlein, whom she had already met with relatives during his time in Prague. “The slim, good-looking man was at best uncomfortable for her. 'There was something condescending, cynical about it'. But above all, she found it - boring. 'You have to imagine: I was a pretty young girl and Prague was a great city. Well, listen, I'm not being sat down with a nut! ' " That did not prevent her from visiting Nüßlein in his office in 1960 - according to the information" at the request of her uncle ". Henseler justified the fact that, despite knowing the circumstances for decades, she only protested after Nüßlein’s death, when she had already been retired for almost thirty years, by saying that “no one would have listened to a little number like me” anyway. In addition, the official channels should have been followed.

In 2012, Heinz Schneppen accused the Commission of Historians of not having dealt with all of the files exonerating Nüßlein. Despite the critical information, she did not carry out a review and did not correct her incorrect assessment in the second edition of the book.

Before that, in 2007 the retired higher regional judge and historian Helmut Kramer had at a conference on the "National Socialist Special Jurisdiction" with a report about a colleague at that time Franz Nüßleins, the chairman of a chamber of the Prague Special Court, the judge Kurt Bellmann , who in 1947 in Prague to a lifelong difficult Dungeon had been sentenced, some injustice convictions Bellmanns presented. Kramer said that Nüßlein, as head of the justice department of Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich, had confirmed the vast majority of the more than 900 death sentences of the special courts in Prague and Brno through his predominantly dismissive pardon practice. Kramer described the activities of the special courts in the Protectorate as criminal as a whole. The protest of the 128 retired and active officials of the Foreign Office against the decree of Foreign Minister Fischer made it clear that the assessment of the crimes of the Third Reich by the judiciary in the Third Reich had not yet been clarified. Kramer considered it remarkable that the leader of the protest action, the former ambassador Ernst Friedrich Jung , had turned against the investigation of the involvement of the judiciary in the murders of the sick (Action T4) with great commitment in the 1980s .

See also

Literature and archive sources

Books and essays

  • Committee for German Unity (Ed.): Heavily burdened Hitler diplomats in the service of the aggressive foreign policy of German militarism , 31 p., East Berlin 1959.
  • Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic , Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .
  • Michael F. Feldkamp : The "Nazi blood lawyer" of Foreign Minister Fischer - Or: Who was Franz Nüßlein? In: Academic monthly sheets vol. 125 (2013), issue 2, p. 57 f. Online .
  • Michael F. Feldkamp: Franz Roman Nüßlein (1909–2003) and the so-called "Obituary affair of the Foreign Office in 2005" . In: 1863-2013. Festschrift for the 150th Foundation Festival of the Catholic Student Association Arminia , Bonn 2013, pp. 74–101, ISBN 978-3-00-041979-9 Online: [1] .
  • Daniel Koerfer : The "Franz Nüßlein file" , in: Diplomatic hunt . Strauss Edition, Potsdam 2013, pp. 327–378, ISBN 978-3-943713-15-2 .
  • Wolfgang Koppel: Justice in Twilight , Karlsruhe 1963.
  • Andreas Meckel: "To let justice run free": The judicial murders of Oskar Löwenstein and Marianne Golz by the Prague Special Court in 1943 . Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn, Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz 2009, ISBN 978-3-86628-240-7 . Wolfram bet review .
  • National Council of the National Front (Ed.): Braunbuch - War and Nazi Criminals in the Federal Republic , 3rd edition Berlin 1968.
  • Franz Nüßlein: The Prussian Council of State , University of Göttingen, Trute Publishing House, Quakenbrück 1934 (50 pages; dissertation).
  • Heinz Schneppen : The case of the retired consul general Franz Nüßlein. A reconstruction , in: ZfG , 2012, pp. 1007-1037.
  • Wolfgang Schultheiss : escalation. Notes on “The Office and the Past” . Lit Verlag, Münster 2013, ISBN 978-3-643-12275-9 .
  • Association of Antifascist Resistance Fighters: Criminals in Judge's Robes - Documents on the criminal activities of 230 Nazi judges and prosecutors on the occupied territory of the Czechoslovak Republic who are currently serving in the West German judiciary . Orbis Publishing House, Prague 1960.
  • Marion Papi: One out of office. Walter Staudacher (1900–1968). A documented biography. Metropol Publishing House. Berlin 2018. ISBN 978-3-86331-391-3 .

Archives about Franz Nüßlein

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael F. Feldkamp: Franz Roman Nüßlein ..., p. 77.
  2. ↑ a b Der Spiegel No. 41/1962, p. 26
  3. ^ Daniel Koerfer: The 'Nüßlein files' , p. 328f.
  4. ↑ Heinz Schneppen: The case of the former consul general Franz Nüßlein , in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft (ZfG) 12/2012, p. 1011
  5. ^ Association of Antifascist Resistance Fighters: Criminals in Judge's Robes - Documents on the criminal activities of 230 Nazi judges and prosecutors on the occupied territory of the Czechoslovak Republic, who are currently serving in the West German judiciary . Orbis Verlag, Prague 1960, illustration of the letter on the 14th page in the document attachment.
  6. ↑ Der Spiegel No. 41/1962, p. 28
  7. ↑ On the obituary affair in the Foreign Office and especially on the case of Dr. Franz Nüßlein. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; Retrieved June 29, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Andreas Meckel: “To let justice run free”: The judicial murders of Oskar Löwenstein and Marianne Golz by the Prague Special Court in 1943 . Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn, Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz 2009, ISBN 978-3-86628-240-7 .
  9. ↑ All three quotes from Andreas Meckel: "To let justice run free": The judicial murders of Oskar Löwenstein and Marianne Golz by the Prague Special Court in 1943 . Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn, Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz 2009, ISBN 978-3-86628-240-7 , p. 36.
  10. ↑ Andreas Meckel: “To let justice run free”: The judicial murders of Oskar Löwenstein and Marianne Golz by the Prague Special Court in 1943 . Edited by Erhard Roy Wiehn, Hartung-Gorre, Konstanz 2009, ISBN 978-3-86628-240-7 , p. 71.
  11. ↑ Norbert Podewin (Ed.): "Brown Book". War and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and in West Berlin. State, economy, administration, army, justice, science. Edition Ost, Berlin 2002. ISBN 3-360-01033-7 (reprint of the 3rd edition from 1968), p. 254 and p. 271.
  12. ↑ Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann: The office and the past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic . Munich 2010, p. 18.
  13. ↑ a b Foreign Office PA AA, special files D 1, vol. 14, statement by F. Nüßlein from June 16, 1965
  14. ↑ Heinz Schneppen: The case of the consul general retired ..., p. 1014
  15. ↑ District archive Prague, process file Nüßlein, quoted from: Heinz Schneppen: Der Fall des Consul General a. D. Franz Nüßlein. A reconstruction, in: ZfG, 2012, p. 1031f.
  16. ↑ correct: Engelmann; Original prescription
  17. ↑ Archives of the Foreign Office: Report on the allegations against the lecturer, Legation Councilor 1st class, Dr. Franz Nüßlein, section testimony, p. 22f.
  18. ↑ Heinz Schneppen: The case of the former consul general Franz Nüßlein , in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft (ZfG) 12/2012, p. 1015f.
  19. ↑ PA AA, special files D 1, volume 14
  20. ^ Daniel Körfer: Case study: The 'Franz Nüßlein files' , p. 359f.
  21. ↑ Foreign Office: 54513 PA Nüßlein, judgment of May 5, 1945, Extraordinary People's Court, p. 1f
  22. ↑ Foreign Office: 54513, PA Nüßlein
  23. ↑ Committee for German Unity (Ed.): Heavily burdened Hitler diplomats in the service of the aggressive foreign policy of German militarism , 31 pages, East Berlin 1959.
  24. ↑ Michael F. Feldkamp: Franz Roman Nüßlein ..., p. 84f.
  25. ↑ Heinz Schneppen: The case of the former consul general Franz Nüßlein , in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft (ZfG) 12/2012, p. 1021
  26. ^ Daniel Koerfer: The 'Franz Nüßlein files' , p. 358
  27. ^ Federal Foreign Office: PA AA, reference files D1, vol. 14
  28. ^ Daniel Koerfer: The 'Franz Nüßlein files' , p. 373f.
  29. ^ PA AA, special file D 1, vol. 14, text of the judgment in the certified translation by a court-appointed and sworn translator, Stuttgart April 20, 1965.
  30. ↑ Foreign Office: 54513, PA Nüßlein, judgment of May 5, 1948, Extraordinary People's Court
  31. ↑ cf. u. a. Katerina Kocová / Jaroslav Kucera: They judge instead of ours and that's why they judge hard. The settlement with German war criminals in Czechoslovakia, in: Norbert Frei, Transnational Past Policy. Göttingen 2006, pp. 438-473.
  32. ↑ Martin Sabrow and Christian Mentel (eds.): The Foreign Office and its controversial past. A German debate . Fischer paperback, Frankfurt a. M. 2014, ISBN 978-3-596-19602-9 , p. 14.
  33. ^ Independent Commission of Historians. Federal Foreign Office, October 28, 2010, accessed on March 22, 2011 .
  34. ↑ International reactions to "The Office" - The long shadow of the criminal mummies ; Westerwelle's speech “You could account for murder as an official business” ; The end of the Weizsäcker legend - A conversation with Norbert Frei, a member of the historians' commission, about how the office sees itself .
  35. ↑ Conze, Das Amt, p. 583 f.
  36. ^ Conze, Das Amt, p. 664.
  37. ↑ a b Frank Schirrmacher in conversation with the historian Daniel Koerfer: Does the 'office' make it too easy? in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from November 28, 2010, p. 31.
  38. ^ Rainer Blasius, The Consul General and the Foreign Office , October 26, 2010 in: Joseph Fischer and the Nüßlein obituary affair - The Consul General and the Foreign Office www.faz.net .
  39. ↑ a b Joachim Frank, Marga Henseler and the Foreign Office , November 3, 2010, in: www.fr-online.de .
  40. ↑ Heinz Schneppen: “The case of the Consul General a. D. Franz Nüßlein A reconstruction. “In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 60 (2012), no. 12, p. 1024.
  41. ↑ Helmut Kramer: Judge in front of court - The legal processing of special jurisdiction (p. 133). in Contemporary Legal History in RW Volume 15: … zealous servant and protector of law, national socialist law… published by the State Ministry of Justice of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf 2007. The article is online (pdf, last accessed on February 1, 2017).
  42. ↑ for the context see also Critical Justice : NS — Justice and institutional murder in the mirror of public opinion (pdf)
  43. ↑ Wolfram Wette: Under the Prague guillotine. The Freiburg author Andreas Meckel works on two Nazi judicial murders in 1943 on a review of the book by Andreas Meckel: Let the justice run free: The judicial murders of Oskar Löwenstein and Marianne Golz by the Prague Special Court in 1943. In: Badische Zeitung of 23 June 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Nüßlein, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nüßlein, Franz Roman (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Nazi criminal, diplomat and public prosecutor
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 2003
Place of death unsure: Bad Honnef