Günther Joël

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the ministerial official of the same name, see Günther Joël (Ministerialbeamter) (1899–1986).

Günther Joël during the Nuremberg Trials

Günther Karl Franz August Hermann Joël , mostly written Günther Joel (born April 19, 1903 in Kassel , † May 12, 1978 in Munich ), was a German lawyer, ministerial official and convicted war criminal.

biography

Youth and education

Joël was the son of the commercial head teacher Karl Joël and his wife Franziska, geb. People. In his youth he attended Realgymnasium I in Kassel, where he passed his school leaving examination at Easter 1923. He then studied law at the University of Göttingen . After seven semesters, he passed the first state examination on May 28, 1927 at the Higher Regional Court in Kassel. On July 24, 1927, he passed the oral doctoral examination with the grade "commendable" at the law and political science faculty of the University of Göttingen. His dissertation , which dealt with the legal relationship to the dead human body , was published in 1930.

Nazi era

After completing his legal internship in Kassel, Joël got a job with the public prosecutor's office in Göttingen . In May 1933, a few months after the National Socialist “ seizure of power ”, he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 3.216.914). He was also a member of the National Socialist Lawyers' Association .

From August 1933 to August 1943 Joël worked in the Reich Ministry of Justice (RJM). From August to November 1933, his area of ​​responsibility included the area of ​​"Amnesty and Suppression Cases". Then he worked together with Werner von Haacke until October 1937 as head of the central public prosecutor's office at the RJM, which was created by Roland Freisler . In addition to cases of corruption , he was involved in rioting by party members, particularly members of the SA . After the Central Prosecutor's Office was dissolved in October 1937, Joël was a consultant in the Department of Criminal Justice of the Ministry of Justice. At the beginning of November 1936 he was appointed senior public prosecutor.

In December 1937 Joël was appointed the RJM's liaison to the SS, Gestapo and SD . In January 1938 he joined the Schutzstaffel for this reason , in which he received a leader's rank. By 1943 he reached the SS rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer . As a civil servant, Joël was appointed Ministerialrat in 1941 and was entrusted with processing the convictions under the Night and Fog Decree . He was also head of the special department for war crimes.

From August 1943 until the end of the war, Joël acted as attorney general in Hamm at the request of Gauleiter Alfred Meyer and Albert Hoffmann , where he continued to deal with night-and-fog cases. In this function he also oversaw all senior public prosecutors at the special courts in Essen and Hamm . Joël was considered a careerist who was committed to the implementation of National Socialist legal ideas.

post war period

In the Nuremberg legal process against 16 senior judicial officials and judges of the Nazi regime , an American military tribunal sentenced him to ten years in prison on December 14, 1947 for his involvement in the night-and-fog jurisdiction. On January 31, 1951, the American High Commissioner John Jay McCloy pardoned him and he was released from Landsberg War Crimes Prison . Joël then worked as a business consultant at Friedrich Flick AG in Düsseldorf . In 1953 he was acquitted by a German court.

In 1956 Joël can be verified as an employee of the Flick Group. In 1969 he lived at Richard-Pietzsch-Weg 12 in Munich . On August 2, 1969, Joël made an affidavit to the Munich Police Headquarters, Criminal Investigation Department III.

Fonts

• The legal relationships on the dead human body. 1930 (dissertation).

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-10-091052-4 .
• Lore Maria Peschel-Gutzeit (ed.): The Nuremberg jurists judgment of 1947: historical context and current references. 1st edition. Nomos-Verlag, Baden-Baden, 1996, ISBN 3-7890-4528-4 .
• Günter Grau, Rüdiger Lautmann: Lexicon on the persecution of homosexuals 1933–1945. Institutions - competencies - fields of activity. In: History (Münster in Westphalia, Germany). Vol. 21. Lit, Berlin, p. 167.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The spelling Joël as the one used by himself can be found in the self-written curriculum vitae in his dissertation.
2. ↑ Life data according to: Günter Grau: Lexicon on homosexual persecution 1933–1945. Institutions - People - Areas of Activity , Berlin 2011, p. 167.
3. ^ Günter Grau: Lexicon on the persecution of homosexuals 1933–1945. Institutions - People - Areas of Activity , Berlin 2011, p. 167.
4. ↑ Markus Aschenbrenner (2006). P. 30 f. (PDF; 691 kB).