Hans Hofmeyer

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Hans Hofmeyer (born April 12, 1904 in Offenbach am Main , † August 28, 1992 in Bad Vilbel ) was a German lawyer . He led the First Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt am Main .

Life

Hofmeyer lived in Bad Vilbel during the First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial. During the trial, he declined even the most innocuous interview, for example about his love for music, and justified this with the fact that he didn't want to disturb the course of the proceedings.

Studies and career

Hofmeyer studied law at the universities of Munich and Giessen . After the legal traineeship examination in 1928 and the second state examination in 1931, he worked as an assessor until 1936 ; initially in a law firm in Darmstadt , later at local courts in Worms , Darmstadt and Offenbach . In 1936 he became a district judge. Until 1939 he was seconded to the Hereditary Health Court at the Gießen District Court, where he had to decide on the requested forced sterilization of allegedly “hereditary diseases” within the framework of the law for the prevention of hereditary offspring . In the Second World War he began his service as an intelligence officer before he was appointed Chief Staff Judge in the Army Field Justice Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht in 1944.

From 1946 he was chairman of a criminal chamber at the regional court in Frankfurt am Main . In 1954 he became chairman of the civil chamber of the regional court, where he was responsible for press work. In the early 1960s, he returned to the criminal matters department as the district court director . During the First Auschwitz Trial, he was appointed President of the Senate at the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main .

In Frankfurt he conducted several supraregional proceedings, including the trials of the book “Der rote Rufmord” by Kurt Ziesel and the then Schleswig-Holstein Prime Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel against the “Frankfurter Rundschau”. He gained international fame as a judge at the First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial.

First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963–1965)

Hofmeyer's appointment as chairman has so far been viewed as surprising: it was assumed that there was little evidence in his career to date that he would be able to initiate a trial of this magnitude against the original 22 defendants, which would also be observed internationally to direct. However, recent research shows that Hofmeyer, with the jury chairman of the 1st Frankfurt Treblinka trial against Josef Hirtreiter, had to deal with a Nazi trial as early as 1951, i.e. before he was from December 20, 1963 to August 20, 1965 (183 days of trial) Chairing the Auschwitz Trial should definitely be able to fall back on early experience as chairman in the field of Nazi trials.

However, this only happened after the originally entrusted judge Hans Forester was withdrawn from the chair due to concerns about bias , as a result of which Hofmeyer, initially appointed as associate judge, stepped in. The reason for the rejection was a review requested by Forester himself, in which he announced that parts of his relatives had been persecuted by the National Socialists. In the fall of 1963, the judges panel, which dealt with Forester's report, saw sufficient fear of a possible bias, which resulted in Forester's compulsory delivery and ultimately led to the transfer of litigation management to Hofmeyer.

Even before the proceedings began, Hofmeyer was accused of having passed death sentences as a senior staff judge in National Socialist Germany. But even ideological opponents such as the representative of the secondary prosecution Friedrich Karl Kaul found no evidence in this activity to torpedo the process.

Hofmeyer wanted to prevent the "mammoth trial" initiated by the Hessian attorney general Fritz Bauer . In his view, such lawsuits were impractical and violated the rights of the accused. It should be better divided into several small proceedings tailored to the individual defendant. Even after the successful outcome of the process, he resolutely advocated avoiding "such processes (...) under all circumstances". However, he could not prevail against Bauer with his view. For this, the legal processing of the entire crime complex Auschwitz was the focus. He wanted to investigate as many suspects as possible in order to clear up the entirety of the crimes in the camp in one or more large processes. By researching the crime complex, the German public should be confronted with the Nazi atrocities. This different view came up again in the grounds of the judgment. At the beginning of the proclamation, Hofmeyer explained: “This is a normal criminal process, regardless of the background. The court could only judge according to the laws which it conjured up. And these laws require a precise determination of the concrete guilt of a defendant on the subjective and the objective side. ”Furthermore, the trial was not an Auschwitz trial, but a“ trial against Mulka and others ”.

The testimony had left a deep impression on Hofmeyer. So he concluded the pronouncement of the verdict visibly moved with the words: “There will probably be some of us among us who can no longer look into the happy and believing eyes of a child for a long time, without the hollow, questioning and The uncomprehending, fearful eyes of the children appear who made their last journey there in Auschwitz. "

Appreciation and criticism

Hofmeyer was unanimously portrayed by those involved in the Auschwitz trial as well as by the press as a brilliant lawyer and experienced negotiator who was up to the matter in every phase of the proceedings.

Attorney Henry Ormond highlighted the "exemplary conduct of negotiations". According to Eugen Kogon , it is to the merit of the jury that it knew how to defend itself against all pitfalls in its “sovereign legal self-restraint”. Hermann Langbein , inmate in Auschwitz, witness and trial observer, attested to the judge: "He conducted the trial with confidence and knew how to quickly eliminate petty banter and political propaganda."

Die Welt wrote about him: “The chairman of the Auschwitz trial is a sober man, intellectual amusements and legal fireworks are not his thing. If there really is common sense, it has it. Often he asks one or two more questions than someone else would, because he cannot grasp, which is impossible to grasp. ”In the Sunday paper one could read about Hofmeyer:“ This judge, as little gifted as rhetorical eloquence The majority of his peers found words that at the end of the trial again portrayed him and the court, which he presided over for twenty months, as the representatives of a justice whose image with the symbol of the blind goddess would only be insufficiently explained. "

Criticism of the Frankfurt verdict came after the Auschwitz trial through the finding that only concrete personal contributions to murders were decisive for a conviction and not general support for the National Socialist mass murders. Only in three cases, with the defendants Franz Johann Hofmann , Oswald Kaduk and Hans Stark , complicity was recognized because they had adopted the deeds of the criminal government and, according to the judgment, acted in consensus with the so-called main culprits. In all other cases, the Court recognized in command actions to " complicity " and imposed partly extremely lenient sentences: "The result of the Auschwitz judgment, only excess offenders who had committed murder own authority to hold accountable and participants in the mass destruction that routinely had done their murder service to be exempt from prosecution was devastating. "

Significant differences in Hofmeyer's reception to date and his influence on the First Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, on the other hand, arise from Ristic's more recent research, which in this respect shows contradictions to Hofmeyer's previous verdict practice. During the preliminary investigation into the later Auschwitz trial, Hofmeyer rejected further pre-trial detention for the later main defendant, Mulka, for lack of sufficient suspicion, on grounds that were diametrically opposed to the subsequent Auschwitz judgment. In addition, Hofmeyer's early negotiation experience in Nazi proceedings with his chairmanship of the Treblinka Trial against Josef Hirtreiter in Frankfurt in 1951 showed another discrepancy to the Auschwitz verdict: At that time, Hirtreiter was in the Treblinka trial not only because of aiding and abetting murder, but also because of it He was convicted of murder in perpetration / complicity, although his position and service had a smaller scope of responsibility than that of Mulkas. This fine distinction, exonerating the accused (Fritz Bauer called it “atomizing”), had not taken place here, unlike later in the Auschwitz trial. This view is generally rejected today - although the BGH had already given serious indications of the untenability at the time of the Auschwitz judgment, the BGH explicitly moved away from this point of view with the confirmed conviction of Oskar Gröning in 2016.

NS exposure

In 2019, the publication of the first research results by the lawyer Matias Ristic revealed reliable facts about Hofmeyer's involvement in National Socialism and his Nazi past. Ristic, whose dissertation project at the University of Cologne is developing a comprehensive study of Hofmeyer's overall biography for the first time, provided evidence of Hofmeyer's activity as presiding judge at the Gießen Hereditary Health Court and, as part of his doctoral project, also evaluated his judgments and Hofmeyer's correspondence with the Hereditary Health Court. According to Ristic, Hofmeyer's zeal in ordering compulsory sterilizations can be seen in cases of so-called “innate nonsense”, even among young people. Ristic also made known from his biographical study, which was not yet completed, that Hofmeyer, in his post as senior staff judge under General Judge Otto Grünewald, at the end of the Second World War, had sat in the place that was largely responsible for the establishment of the courtship courts .

Ristic's research also made it public that in a conversation with victim attorney Henry Ormond shortly before the start of the Auschwitz trial, Ormond had omitted to mention his work under Grünewald, but instead named an innocent, alleged superior, Karl Sack . On April 9, 1945, he was hanged in the Flossenbürg concentration camp - as a resistance fighter who was part of the July 20th district and sentenced to death for high treason and war treason.

literature

  • Raphael Gross / Werner Renz (eds.), The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963–1965). Annotated source edition. Scientific series of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Volume 22 (2 partial volumes). Frankfurt am Main 2013.
  • Hermann Langbein , The Auschwitz Trial. A documentation. 2 volumes. Frankfurt am Main 1995. Unchanged reprint of the edition published in 1965 by Europa-Verlag, Vienna. ISBN 3-8015-0283-X .
  • Devin O. Pendas : The Auschwitz Trial. Genocide in court . Siedler, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-8275-0007-6 . (= German translation of the American original edition from 2006).
  • Matias Ristic: Hans Hofmeyer - contradictions of a judge of stature or: A look at the chairman of the Auschwitz trial in the light of previously disregarded case law (=  critical justice ). Nomos, 2020, ISSN  0023-4834 , p. 98-113 , doi : 10.5771 / 0023-4834-2020-1-98 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ziegler 1965.
  2. ^ Gerhard Ziegler: Fanatiker der Sachlichkeit Hans Hofmeyer - the chairman in the Auschwitz trial . In: The time of August 27, 1965
  3. ↑ a b c d Alexander Haneke: The judge and his secret: The chairman of the Auschwitz trial was himself involved in National Socialism , Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, March 31, 2019.
  4. ↑ a b Gross / Renz 2013, 7.
  5. ^ A b c Matias Ristic: Hans Hofmeyer - contradictions of a judge “of format” or: a look at the Auschwitz trial chairman in the light of previously unconsidered case law . In: Critical Justice . tape 53 , no. 1 , 2020, ISSN  0023-4834 , p. 98–113 , doi : 10.5771 / 0023-4834-2020-1-98 ( nomos-elibrary.de [accessed on May 13, 2020]).
  6. ↑ a b Regional Court Frankfurt am Main , judgment of March 3, 1951, Az. 53 Ks 1/50 - legally binding through BGH judgment of March 1, 1952, see also https://doi.org/10.5771/0023-4834-2020- 1-98
  7. ^ A b c Matias Ristic: Hans Hofmeyer - contradictions of a judge “of format” or: a look at the Auschwitz trial chairman in the light of previously unconsidered case law . In: Critical Justice . tape 53 , no. 1 , 2020, ISSN  0023-4834 , p. 98–113 , doi : 10.5771 / 0023-4834-2020-1-98 ( nomos-elibrary.de [accessed on May 13, 2020]).
  8. ^ Trial against SS executioners at Auschwitz . In: Neues Deutschland from December 21, 1963, pp. 1, 10
  9. ↑ Ulrich Renz : Lauter dutiful people: Scenes from Nazi trials , Bund-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1989 ISBN 978-3-76633160-1 , p. 136
  10. ↑ Renz 2003.
  11. ↑ Pendas 2013, 90 f.
  12. ↑ Tape recording of the 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, available at www.auschwitz-prozess.de/
  13. ↑ According to Renz 2003.
  14. ↑ Langbein 1995 Volume 1, 46.
  15. ↑ Die Welt March 21, 1964. Quoted from Pendas 2013, 90.
  16. ↑ Sunday newspaper, August 29, 1965. Quoted from Pendas 2013, 90.
  17. ^ Nestler, Cornelius: Plea Prof. Dr. Cornelius Nestler of July 8, 2015. In: Auschwitz secondary suit. July 8, 2015, accessed on May 24, 2019 (German).
  18. ↑ Werner Renz : Frankfurter Auschwitz Trial: Silent and devastating and devastatingly mild , Frankfurter Rundschau, August 18, 2015.
  19. ↑ a b Matias Ristic. May 24, 2019, accessed May 24, 2019 .
  20. ↑ Matias Ristic: Hans Hofmeyer - contradictions of a judge “of format” or: a look at the chairman of the Auschwitz trial in the light of previously unconsidered case law . In: Critical Justice . tape 53 , no. 1 , 2020, ISSN  0023-4834 , p. 98–113 , doi : 10.5771 / 0023-4834-2020-1-98 ( nomos-elibrary.de [accessed on May 13, 2020]).
  21. ↑ Matias Ristic: Hans Hofmeyer - contradictions of a judge “of format” or: a look at the chairman of the Auschwitz trial in the light of previously unconsidered case law . In: Critical Justice . tape 53 , no. 1 , 2020, ISSN  0023-4834 , p. 98–113 , doi : 10.5771 / 0023-4834-2020-1-98 ( nomos-elibrary.de [accessed on May 13, 2020]).
  22. ↑ Fritz Bauer: To the Nazi criminal trials . In: Joachim Perels, Irmtrud Wojak (ed.): Fritz Bauer: The humanity of the legal order. Selected Writings. Campus, Frankfurt am Main, New York 1998, ISBN 3-593-35841-7 , pp. 110 .
  23. ↑ Excerpt from the original verdict in the 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial regarding the Angekl. Mulka. Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, archived from the original ; accessed on April 30, 2020 .
  24. ^ Matias Ristic: Hans Hofmeyer - contradictions of a judge of format . In: Critical Justice . Nomos, 2020, ISSN  0023-4834 , p. especially 102 ff ., doi : 10.5771 / 0023-4834-2020-1-98 .
  25. ↑ BGH , judgment of September 20, 2016, Az. 3 StR 49/116 = NStZ 2017, 158
  26. ^ Institute for Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law, Chair of Cornelius Nester
personal data
SURNAME Hofmeyer, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH April 12, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Offenbach am Main
DATE OF DEATH August 28, 1992
Place of death Bad Vilbel , Germany