Hans Luther (lawyer)

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Hans Luther ( listening ? / I ) (born February 26, 1909 in Halle (Saale) ; † March 11, 1970 in Mainz ) was a German lawyer who worked as a war administrator in Paris and commander of the security police and in German-occupied France during World War II des SD (KdS) was deployed in Bordeaux . Audio file / audio sample

Life

Luther completed his school career in 1927 with the Abitur at a high school in his hometown. He then studied law at the universities of Munich , Graz , Halle / Saale and passed the first state examination in law in 1931. After completing his legal clerkship and two years as a faculty assistant at the University of Halle / Saale, he finished his law studies in 1936 with the second state examination. From 1935 to 1936 he was also employed as a laborer in the Reich Ministry of Justice and then as a government assessor in the Reich Presidential Chancellery in Berlin . Since 1936 he was married to Eva, nee Pilger. From 1937 he was a judge at the Frankfurt am Main regional court .

Luther, a member of the NSDAP since the summer of 1937 , was assigned to the German military commander in Paris for one year immediately after the campaign in the West during the Second World War as a war administrator of Group V (police) . From June 1942 to October 1943, he succeeded Herbert Hagen as the commander of the security police and the SD in Bordeaux . Luther did not belong to the SS , but was entitled to wear an SS uniform (uniform carrier). Under his command as KdS Bordeaux, hostage shootings were also carried out as part of the " fight against gangs " and Jews were deported . In November 1943 he was drafted into the army and reached the rank of lieutenant . After a serious war injury at the beginning of August 1944, hospital stays followed until the end of the war.

After the war he was interned in Limburg , Butzbach , Darmstadt , Dachau and Reutlingen . From 1947 to 1953 he was imprisoned in Bordeaux and was charged there before a French military court. The Central Legal Protection Agency (ZRS) supported Luther financially and with legal counsel, in particular from its director Hans Gawlik , in order to defuse the "hostage problem". Affidavits and exonerating statements were organized for Luther by high-ranking people, some of whom were considered incriminated during the German occupation of France. The juridically savvy Luther brought together the exonerating statements and materials into a defense strategy with which he could avert accusations regarding the shooting of hostages against himself. On May 5, 1953, in Bordeaux, Luther was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for arrests, arbitrary seizures, torture and deportations, which were deemed to have been served with internment .

After his return, Luther was in the course of 131er scheme as a judge at the District Court Limburg worked and received his doctorate in 1956 in Marburg Dr. jur . Luther's dissertation topic was the resistance against the German occupation in France, which appeared as part of the studies of the Institute for Occupation Issues in Tübingen in 1957. In this monograph he presented the hostage shootings as legitimate under international law in order to protect soldiers of the Wehrmacht preventively or reactively against actions by the Resistance . He only mentioned the deportations of Jews in passing. Investigations against Luther initiated by Fritz Bauer were discontinued in 1961. Luther retired in 1969.

Fonts

  • The French resistance to the German occupying power and its fight: A contribution to research into international law practice during the Second World War. Diss. Marburg 1956 (studies by the Institute for Occupation Issues in Tübingen on the German occupations in World War II, No. 11, Tübingen 1957).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich Herbert (Ed.): Change processes in West Germany. Burden, integration, liberalization, 1945 to 1980. Göttingen 2002, p. 217.
  2. ^ A b Peter Lieb: Conventional War or Nazi Weltanschauungskrieg - Warfare and Fight against Partisans in France 1943/44 , Munich 2007, p. 4.
  3. ^ A b Bernhard Brunner: Life paths of the German Sipo bosses in France after 1945 . In: Ulrich Herbert (Ed.): Change processes in West Germany. Burden, integration, liberalization, 1945 to 1980. Göttingen 2002, p. 225.
  4. ^ Bernhard Brunner: Life paths of the German Sipo bosses in France after 1945 . In: Ulrich Herbert (Ed.): Change processes in West Germany. Burden, integration, liberalization, 1945 to 1980. Göttingen 2002, s. 223f.
  5. ^ Bernhard Brunner: The France Complex. The National Socialist Crimes in France and the Justice of the Federal Republic of Germany . Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, p. 130.
personal data
SURNAME Luther, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, KdS and war administrator
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Halle (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1970
Place of death Mainz