Gerhard Caemmerer

Gerhard Caemmerer (born August 12, 1905 in Durlach ; † January 8, 1961 in Karlsruhe ) was a German lawyer and Nazi opponent.

He campaigned for human and civil rights. A resistance group similar to the Reinhold Franks group arose around him during the Nazi era . During his career as a lawyer, Gerhard Caemmerer defended Otto John , among others , whose case caused a sensation in the FRG and the GDR .

Live and act

Gerhard Caemmerer was born on August 12, 1905 as the first son of Erasmus and Christina Caemmerer. His father, Erasmus Caemmerer, was a professor at the State Technical College in Karlsruhe and an engineer by profession. Gerhard Caemmerer spent his childhood in Durlach and was raised strictly Catholic. After attending elementary school , he switched to the Markgrafen Gymnasium in 1915 . On March 20, 1924, he received his secondary school leaving certificate and began studying law in Cologne and Heidelberg . Since 1924 he was a member of the Catholic student association KDStV Arminia Heidelberg . During this time he met his widow, who was ten years his senior, and his future wife, Grete Meier, who brought a son, Hans Meier, with her from her first marriage. In 1928 he passed his legal traineeship exam , then worked on his dissertation , which he completed in 1931. In 1931 his daughter Margred Caemmerer was born. In 1932 he finished his studies with the assessor examination, followed by a position as assessor in the Ministry of Justice in Baden . In October 1932 he married Grete Meier. After the takeover of the Nazi party in 1933 was Caemmerer was released from the Ministry of Justice and the Durlach district court added. In 1933 and 1934 two more daughters were born.

In 1933 his friend and work colleague Karl Eisemann lost his job as a Jew in the district court. Eisemann got into financial difficulties. From 1933 Gerhard Caemmerer provided him and other Jews with food, and from 1939 also with food stamps .

With the outbreak of war in 1939, a resistance group around Caemmerer emerged. Information about the events in the concentration camps , at the front and politics in their own country were exchanged and ideas about the restoration of the country after the end of the Nazi regime were played out. In the same year Gerhard Caemmerer joined the NSDAP in order to maintain the appearance of a loyal citizen and not to harm himself or his family.

A raid in Eisemann's residential area was planned on February 10, 1945, during which the remaining Jews of Karlsruhe were to be deported. Caemmerer then hid his friend Eisemann with him in order to save him from deportation . Eisemann took two more Jews with him from his block of flats in Karlsruhe, who were hiding in a garden shed on the Turmberg. Caemmerer's children took care of the food. They hid the food packages in their collecting baskets for herbs and deposited them under predetermined bushes near the hiding place. They received the food for these three other people from the Rittnert and the Lamprechtshof. Furthermore, a council clerk from Weingarten (Baden) stole food stamps for them. The three remained hidden in the garden shed for two months until the French took Durlach on April 7, 1945.

With the division of Germany, Durlach fell under American occupation . This checked the population for their cooperation with the Nazi regime, whereupon Caemmerer was dismissed from his office as a Nazi and imprisoned. After a large number of personalities from Karlsruhe, including the Jews hidden by him and his family, Caemmerer was exonerated, released and reinstated in the judicial service.

Founding a law firm

On October 2, 1947, Caemmerer founded his own law firm, which expanded rapidly and now operates under the name Caemmerer Lenz . In 1954 the firm took over the John case. Otto John was President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and was charged with treason . John, who was suspected of spying for East Berlin, was imprisoned in the FRG after returning from a trip to the GDR. After almost a year in prison, the trial at the Federal Court of Justice began . John was defended by Gerhard Caemmerer and his stepson Hans Caemmerer. Gerhard Caemmerer had also defended Richard Schmid , President of the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court, who was sued by Spiegel for insult . Der Spiegel later recognized Gerhard Caemmerer as a "Southwest German celebrity lawyer".

literature

• Detlev Fischer : Lawyers in the resistance against the Nazi regime . RuP 2002, 181.
• Klaus and Reinhold Frank: A victim of the 3rd Reich. In: Local history supplement to the communiqué ball of the community of Ostrach 5th year (1984), no. 3, pp. 1–6, no. 4, pp. 1–6.
• Detlev Fischer: Legal history tours through Karlsruhe . Karlsruhe: Ges. For cultural historical documentation. 2nd edition 2011.
• Detlev Fischer: 150 Years of Baden Local Courts History of the Baden Local Courts; 2010.
• Frank Engehausen: 1933 . Karlsruhe and the beginning of the Third Reich. Karlsruhe: Braun 2008. ISBN 3-765085049 .
• Lacker, Erich: Destination Karlsruhe, the air raids in World War II . Heidelberg: Ubstadt-Weiher 2005. ISBN 3-89735-408-X .
• Josef Werner: Swastika and Star of David the fate of the Karlsruhe Jews in the Third Reich . 1988.
• Josef Werner: Karlsruhe 1945. Under swastika, tricolor and stars and stripes . Karlsruhe: Braun 1985. ISBN 3-7650-8046-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Gerhard Caemmerer in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

• Generallandesarchiv : holdings 507; Order number 11942,11919; Caemmerer's case files 1956/57
• In Memomoriam Gerhard Caemmerer, Der Spiegel 4/1961, p. 63