Heidelberger Juristenkreis
The Heidelberger Juristenkreis (also Heidelberger Kreis ) is a loose association of lawyers, judges, officials from the Ministry of Justice and administrative experts from the Protestant and Catholic Church, who campaigned for the release and rehabilitation of German convicts from war crimes and Nazi trials . The legal circle was founded in the spring of 1949, and its center was formed by the Bundestag member Eduard Wahl , Heidelberg law professor and head of the Heidelberg document archive , and Hodo von Hodenberg , President of the Higher Regional Court in Celle.
In the spring of 1949 the Nuremberg trials were over. With the dissolution of the Defense Center in Nuremberg, the defenders of the now convicted threatened to lose contact with colleagues. Eduard Wahl , who had defended the IG Farben trial and held a law professorship in Heidelberg, offered to set up a coordination office at his university, to collect and distribute documents and to create conference facilities. From now on, the Heidelberg Juristenkreis met every three months to do coordination work and to prepare joint papers. Adenauer's proposal for a mixed German-Allied grace committee was based on the idea of the circle expressed in 1951 .
Members of the circle
Members of the Heidelberg Circle included defenders from the Nuremberg trials:
- Rudolf Aschenauer , defender of Otto Ohlendorf in the Einsatzgruppen trial ,
- Hellmut Becker , defender of Ernst von Weizsäcker in the Wilhelmstrasse trial ,
- Georg Fröschmann , defender of Viktor Brack in the doctors trial , Gottlob Berger in the Wilhelmstrasse trial, Karl Mummenthey in the business and administrative main office trial of the SS
- Justus Koch , defense attorney in the Wilhelmstrasse trial ,
- Otto Kranzbühler , defender of Karl Dönitz in the main war criminal trial,
- Hans Laternser , defender of Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb in the OKW trial ,
Officials and judges:
- Hans Gawlik , former defender in the Nuremberg Trials, now Head of the Central Legal Protection Office (ZRS),
- Bruno Heusinger , President of the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court ,
- Hodo von Hodenberg , President of the Higher Regional Court of Celle ,
- The President of the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court ,
- Alfons Wahl , Senior Councilor in the Federal Ministry of Justice ,
Professors:
- Karl Geiler , law professor in Heidelberg
- Erich Kaufmann , law professor in Munich, then legal advisor for international law matters at the Federal Chancellery
- Gustav Radbruch , law professor in Heidelberg, for a short time until his death in late 1949
- Eduard Wahl , member of the Bundestag and law professor in Heidelberg
As well as officials of the Protestant and Catholic Church:
- Heribert Knott , Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Cologne and envoy of the chairman of the Fulda Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Frings ,
- Rudolf Weeber , Protestant senior church councilor in Stuttgart,
- Hansjürg Ranke , representative of the EKD church chancellery in Bonn,
- Fritz Flitner , legal protection office of the Evangelical Aid Organization in Stuttgart.
literature
- Norbert Frei : Politics of the past: the beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past . Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-41310-2 .
- Frank M. Buscher: Punish and educate . In: Norbert Frei (Ed.): "Transnational politics of the past - Dealing with German war crimes in Europe after the Second World War". Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-89244-940-6 , pp. 94-139.
- Robert Sigel: The Dachau Trials and the German Public . In: Ludwig Eiber and Robert Sigel: “Dachau Trials: Nazi Crimes before American Military Courts in Dachau 1945–1948. Procedure, results, aftermath ”. Wallstein Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-8353-0167-5 .
- Philipp Glahé: The Heidelberg Circle of Jurists and Its Struggle against Allied Jurisdiction: Amnesty-Lobbyism and Impunity-Demands for National Socialist War Criminals (1949–1955) , in: Journal of the History of International Law (2019), Volume 21, p 1-44, publisher Brill / Nijhoff, Leiden, ISSN: 15718050-12340125.