Gustav Steinbauer

Gustav Steinbauer (born May 30, 1889 in Vienna ; † April 14, 1961 ibid) was an Austrian lawyer who became known as a criminal defense attorney in the Nuremberg trials .

Life

Steinbauer studied in Vienna Law and received his doctorate in 1921, after which he maintained a law firm. Although he was a member of the German Community , he was taken into protective custody for six weeks after the annexation of Austria in March 1938 because of his anti-Nazi attitude . After his release he was again classified as a "political opponent of the system" and was no longer able to work as a lawyer until March 1940. After his re-admission, he worked as a criminal defense lawyer at the Vienna Special Court and in military justice until 1944 . In November 1945 he became chairman of the Vienna Bar Association, and at the request of General Dwight D. Eisenhower , he was appointed defense attorney for the Nuremberg trial of the major war criminals .

Steinbauer was thus the only Austrian lawyer in the Nuremberg trial and defense lawyer for Arthur Seyß-Inquart , one of 24 people accused in the Nuremberg trial before the International Military Court . Seyß-Inquart was found guilty on October 1, 1946, on three of four counts and executed as a war criminal . In the same year, Steinbauer took over the criminal defense of Wilhelm Beiglböck , the chief physician who carried out human experiments with seawater in the Dachau concentration camp, at the Nuremberg medical trial .

He later published several papers about his role as a defender of accused Nazi crimes, such as the book I was a defender in Nuremberg in 1950. From 1954 to 1961 Gustav Steinbauer was chairman of the lawyers' club “Wiener Rechtsanwälte”. He was a member of the Catholic student union K.Ö.HV Franco-Bavaria Vienna in the ÖCV .

Publications

• Genocidium. A new legal term in international law . In: "Österreichische Juristen-Zeitung", vol. 4/1949, issue 18 (23 September 1949), p. 467.
• Euthanasia in the light of the Nuremberg Medical Trial. Vienna. Kapri, 1949
• I was a defense attorney in Nuremberg. A document contribution to the struggle for Austria . Kaiser-Verlag Klagenfurt 1950

Archival material

• The partial estate ( running from 1945 to 1946; scope: 353 folders) is kept at the University of Vienna.
• Part of the estate is in the archive of the Karl von Vogelsang Institute for Research into the History of Christian Democracy in Austria, based in Vienna. This also contains documents on the Nuremberg doctor's trial.

literature

• Hubert Seliger: Political lawyers ?: the defenders of the Nuremberg trials . Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2016 ISBN 978-3-8487-2360-7 , pp. 553f.
• Johannes Koll : Arthur Seyß-Inquart and the German occupation policy in the Netherlands (1940–1945). Böhlau, Vienna [a. a.] 2015, ISBN 978-3-205-79660-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Johannes Koll : Arthur Seyß-Inquart and the German occupation policy in the Netherlands (1940-1945). Böhlau, Vienna 2015, p. 584
2. ^ Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, November 14, 1945 - October 1, 1946 , Vol. 1. Nuremberg 1947, p. 6 . (Volume 1 of the "Blue Series")
3. ↑ "Seyß-Inquart, Dr. Arthur | Biography ” ( Memento of the original from February 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Topography of Terror, viewed September 13, 2009  
4. ^ "Wiener Rechtsanwälte" , Sobranje, viewed on September 13, 2009
5. ↑ "No. 61 Dr. Gustav Steinbauer (DO 648-717) ” , University of Vienna, accessed on September 13, 2009
6. ^ Homepage of the Karl von Vogelsang Institute
7. ↑ Johannes Schönner: Oppressive find: Brown history in the black archive . In: Die Presse, print edition of July 30, 2011. Online at diepresse.com.