Guido Schmidt (judge)

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Guido Schmidt (born January 19, 1890 in Spremberg , † February 28, 1971 in Karlsruhe ) was a judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe.

life and career

Guido Schmidt was born in Spremberg on January 19, 1890, the son of the businessman Julius Schmidt . He attended both elementary school and high school in Spremberg . He later studied at various universities in Germany Jura .

On May 1, 1926, he was appointed to the District Court Judge in Altona . In 1926 he came to the Schleswig-Holstein Higher Regional Court as an assistant judge . There he was appointed higher regional judge in 1932 , which he remained until 1945. On May 1, 1937, he joined the NSDAP .

After the end of the war he took an active part in the reconstruction of the Schleswig-Holstein judiciary. At the end of February 1946 he became chairman of the 1st civil senate at the Higher Regional Court. In April 1946 he was appointed President of the Senate . At the suggestion of the Schleswig-Holstein Justice Minister Rudolf Katz (SPD), he was elected judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe in 1950 . With regard to Schmidt's NSDAP membership, Katz claimed that he had been hostile to National Socialism and that "just like the vast majority of judges (...) only joined the NSDAP as a member in 1937". His appointment as federal judge took place on January 3, 1951, and in 1953 he was promoted to chairman of the 4th Civil Senate .

He retired in 1958. Due to his extraordinary services, he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany on January 31, 1958 by the then Federal President Theodor Heuss .

Jurisprudence

As presiding judge of the 4th Senate, Schmidt was involved in the judgments of January 7, 1956 (IV ZR 211/55 and IV ZR 273/55), in which Nazi injustice against Sinti and Roma was justified in the period from 1940 to 1943 and which is cited as an example of continued National Socialist or racist thinking in the Federal German judiciary.

“Since the gypsies have to a large extent opposed sedentarism and thus adaptation to the sedentary population, they are considered anti-social. As experience shows, they tend to criminality, especially theft and fraud; they often lack the moral impulses to respect other people's property because, like primitive prehistoric humans, they have an uninhibited instinct of occupation [...]. They were therefore generally perceived by the population as a nuisance. As already mentioned, this has induced the state to take preventive special measures against them and to subject their freedom to special restrictions. ... to fight the gypsy plague ... "

- Federal Court of Justice, BGH, 4th civil senate, judgment of January 7, 1956

In 2015, the BGH President Bettina Limperg spoke of "unjustifiable case law (...) for which one can only be ashamed" in relation to these judgments.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: From denazification to renazification of the judiciary in West Germany. In: forum historiae iuris , June 6, 2001, pp. 14–15, Rn. 59-60.
  2. ↑ Reasons for the judgment full text
  3. ↑ Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: From denazification to renazification of the judiciary in West Germany. In: forum historiae iuris , June 6, 2001, p. 22, Rn. 93.
  4. ↑ President of the Federal Court of Justice Limpert visits Documentation Center , Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma, March 13, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Guido
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German judge at the Federal Court of Justice
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Spremberg
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 1971
Place of death Karlsruhe