Hans Semler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hans Semler

Hans Semler (born January 7, 1902 in Bielefeld ; † January 30, 1979 ) was a German lawyer and SA Oberführer who was first attorney general and then president of the Hamm Higher Regional Court at the time of National Socialism .

Studies, lawyer and political activity with the NSDAP

Semler was a son of the Bielefeld judiciary Karl Semler. After finishing his school career, he completed a law degree and passed both state law exams. After the assessor exam, he joined his father's legal practice as a lawyer in 1928 and was appointed notary in 1933 .

Politically, he was active since his student days in Munich with the National Socialists. There he joined the NSDAP at the end of 1922 and at the same time became a member of the SA , in which he achieved the rank of SA chief in 1943. Semler appeared for the party as an election speaker. After the ban, he rejoined the party ( membership number 16.148). As early as 1923 he founded the first local group in Bielefeld, where he later led the investigative and arbitration committee (USchlA). From the end of 1930 he was Bielefeld city councilor for the NSDAP parliamentary group and was a member of the city's magistrate in 1932/33. He joined the BNSDJ in 1932 and in 1941 became head of the district headquarters of the Gaurechtsamt. He also became a Gaufführer of the Nazi legal guardian association and was a holder of the Golden Party Badge . From 1940 he was the spell leader of the Hitler Youth . In party circles, he was called the oldest National Socialist in the entire Ravensberger Land , who drummed for National Socialism in more than a thousand meetings .

Attorney General and President of the Hamm Higher Regional Court

Due to his early entry into the party, he belonged to the Old Guard and was considered "the oldest National Socialist fighter among the lawyers". He became attorney general in Hamm at the beginning of August 1936 for reasons of party politics. In the ranks of the experienced and much older public prosecutors and judges, he was therefore only "reluctantly accepted" because he did not have sufficient professional qualifications for this office. Therefore, he reported several times to the Waffen-SS and the Colonial Political Office , but without success. As attorney general, he was entrusted with the supervision of the Papenburg concentration camp. Semler is said to have been a participant in the conference of the highest lawyers of the German Reich on April 23 and 24, 1941 in Berlin , at which Viktor Brack and Werner Heyde informed about the "destruction of life unworthy of life" in the gas chambers of the T4 campaign and within this framework Knowledge of the “pseudo-legalization of the murder of the sick” by Franz Schlegelberger . Semler was considered a supporter of Nazi euthanasia, which he regretted later discontinuation. In his view, the majority of the population showed "understanding of the elimination of the incurably insane out of inner conviction". In addition, he belonged to a small working group of employees of the Reich Ministry of Justice, the RSHA and the Gestapo , who agreed on the modalities of the intensified interrogation .

In December 1942 he was appointed President of the Hamm Higher Regional Court as the successor to Rudolf Schneider and officially remained in this position until the end of the Nazi regime after taking office in March 1943. At his own request, he did military service in the Wehrmacht from September 12, 1944 . Semler's predecessor as Attorney General in Hamm Walter von Steinäcker represented him provisionally as President of the Higher Regional Court during his absence. After the death of the People's Court President Roland Freisler, the NSDAP party leadership is said to have considered enforcing Semler as his successor, but this did not materialize. According to Hans-Eckhard Niermann, Semler went through "one of the most impressive legal careers of the Third Reich".

After the end of the Nazi regime

After the end of World War II , Semler was removed from office and arrested by the British military government due to his Nazi exposure. He was then interned in the UK, from which he was released in 1947. Semler was classified as less burdened after a court hearing in Hamm, which was also confirmed in an appeal procedure in 1949. In this regard, he was declared unacceptable to the judicial service and was not reinstated. He himself untruthfully stated that he had resisted the Nazi regime. In addition, he was a "decent National Socialist". He only found out about the November pogroms the morning after.

He earned his living by doing business. In March 1954, the incumbent Higher Regional Court President Hamm reported to the Justice Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia in the course of administrative law proceedings that Semler only held offices at the Higher Regional Court because of his party membership. From a legal point of view, he was a "failure". At the beginning of the 1960s, former higher regional court presidents and attorneys general were investigated for supporting the systematic murder of sick and handicapped people during the Nazi era, since they had been asked to cover these acts during the conference of the highest lawyers in April 1941. During an initial interrogation, Semler stated that he did not take part in this conference because he had been with a tank corps in Silesia. He did not provide any information as to whether he had received and followed corresponding instructions, although the non-attending lawyers were subsequently mailed the secret circulars after this conference. In March 1961 the case against him was dropped. Proceedings by the Dortmund public prosecutor's office for handing over a prisoner to the SS for the purpose of extermination through work were also discontinued in 1962. As a result of his re-admission, he worked as a lawyer in Weidenau from 1961 .

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Hans-Eckhard Niermann: The implementation of political and politicized criminal justice in the Third Reich, its development shown using the example of the OLG district of Hamm . In: Ministry of Justice of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (Ed.): Legal contemporary history. Vol. 3: Criminal Justice in the Third Reich. Düsseldorf 1995.
  • Christoph Schneider: Servant of law and destruction. The proceedings against the participants in the 1941 conference or: The justice system against Fritz Bauer. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2017, ISBN 978-3-593-50689-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Ulrich F. Sacrificial man: Regional dictionary of persons on National Socialism in the old districts of Siegen and Wittgenstein. Regional actors.
  2. ^ Ernst Becherer: The way of the Bielefeld NSDAP to power 1924-1933. Bielefeld 2007, p. 195 f. Digitized at Bielefeld University
  3. ↑ a b c d e Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 579
  4. ↑ a b c d Christoph Schneider: Servants of law and destruction. The proceedings against the participants in the 1941 conference or: The justice system against Fritz Bauer. Frankfurt am Main 2017, p. 115
  5. ↑ Appointed Attorney General. Party comrade Hans Semler takes up his new office on October 15 . In: Bielefelder Stadtanzeiger, supplement to the Westphalian Latest News. August 14, 1936 Digitized at https://zeitpunkt.nrw Accessed April 4, 2019
  6. ↑ Memorial book for the Nazi victims from Wuppertal
  7. ↑ Hans-Eckhard Niermann: The implementation of political and politicized criminal justice in the Third Reich, its development shown using the example of the OLG district of Hamm . In: Ministry of Justice of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (Ed.): Legal contemporary history. Vol. 3: Criminal Justice in the Third Reich. Düsseldorf 1995, p. 138f.
  8. ↑ Ernst Klee: What they did - What they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews. Frankfurt am Main 2004, p. 345
  9. ↑ Hans-Eckhard Niermann: The implementation of political and politicized criminal justice in the Third Reich, its development shown using the example of the OLG district of Hamm . In: Ministry of Justice of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (Ed.): Legal contemporary history. Vol. 3: Criminal Justice in the Third Reich. Düsseldorf 1995, p. 134
  10. ↑ Christoph Schneider: Servants of the law and destruction. The proceedings against the participants in the 1941 conference or: The justice system against Fritz Bauer. Frankfurt am Main 2017, p. 115 f.
personal data
SURNAME Semler, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and Attorney General von Hamm
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielefeld
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1979