Helmut Kramer

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Helmut Kramer (2009)

Fritz Diedrich Helmut Kramer (born March 30, 1930 in Helmstedt ) is a German lawyer and legal historian , who last worked as a judge at the Higher Regional Court of Braunschweig and the Lower Saxony Ministry of Justice when he retired in 1995 . He is a founding member of the “Forum Justizgeschichte e. V. ”, of which he was chairman until 2006, as well as the author of numerous specialist books on the history of justice during the Nazi and post-war period .

Life

Portrait of Helmut Kramer's youth (left) next to his brother in the summer of 1935 on the main beach on the island of Wangerooge in front of a sea of ​​swastika flags.

The son of a farmer attended the Helmstedt “Oberschule für Junge” (high school for boys), today's Julianum high school , where he graduated from high school in 1949 . He then studied history , German and art history at the University of Göttingen and then law at the University of Freiburg . His dissertation from 1967 with Ernst Rudolf Huber is entitled: Fractional ties in the German people's representations 1819–1849 .

Legal career

In 1962, Kramer joined the Lower Saxony judicial service as a court assessor in Hanover . After being seconded to the General Public Prosecutor's Office in Braunschweig , he became a public prosecutor in 1966 , a regional judge in 1967 , presiding judge at the Braunschweig regional court in 1972 and chairman of a chamber for commercial matters and a criminal chamber in 1974. In the same year he resigned from the German Association of Judges and was a founding member of the specialist group “Judges and Public Prosecutors in the ÖTV ”. In 1975 Kramer became a judge at the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court . Between 1984 and 1989 Kramer held a substitute professorship at the University of Bremen .

Coming to terms with the Nazi era and the Nazi justice system and their consequences

The "Erna Wazinski Case"

In 1965 Kramer came into contact with the case of 19-year-old Erna Wazinski in Braunschweig, who had been sentenced to death and executed as a “ pest ” by the Braunschweig Special Court in 1944 . Wilhelmine Wazinski, the mother of those killed, had already tried twice (1952 and 1961) to rehabilitate her daughter through retrial , but failed. Kramer suggested that the mother should be compensated , but this met with incomprehension from his colleagues. Instead of compensation, the 3rd criminal chamber of the Braunschweig Regional Court even justified the death sentence issued in 1944 on October 7, 1965 (file number 12 AR 99/65 [1 Sond. KLs 231/44]).

In 1991, Kramer managed to resume the case . Based on new testimony, the 1944 death sentence was overturned on March 20, 1991 and Erna Wazinski's innocence was confirmed.

The Puvogel Affair

When Ernst Albrecht was first elected Minister-President of Lower Saxony in February 1976 , he appointed Hans Puvogel as Lower Saxony's Minister of Justice . Puvogel (1911-1999) had in 1936 with the work of the senior principles in the emasculation of dangerous sex offenders doctorate and is advocated "... the promotion of healthy race inferior by eradication and criminal elements ...". When the content of the work became known to a broad public in 1978, Puvogel did not distance himself from his statements at the time, but even publicly insisted on them. Kramer then sent excerpts from Puvogel's dissertation to some professional colleagues without comment, which contributed to Puvogel's resignation in March 1978.

Because of the dispatch of the dissertation excerpts, Rudolf Wassermann , President of the OLG Braunschweig, then initiated formal disciplinary proceedings against Kramer on the instructions of Prime Minister Albrecht . Although the proceedings were discontinued, the decision contained the explicit statement that Kramer had committed a breach of duty .

Works (selection)

  • Dissertation: Fractional ties in the German people's representations 1819–1849 (cf. Writings on the History of the Constitution, Vol. 7), 1968
  • Helmut Kramer: Piggyback into office. Lower Saxony justice under Hitler and afterwards. In: Wolfgang Bittner , Rainer Butenschön, Eckart Spoo (eds.): Before the door swept. New stories from Lower Saxony. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 1986, ISBN 3-88243-059-1 , pp. 70-76.
  • Helmut Kramer (ed.): Braunschweig under the swastika. Bourgeoisie, Justice and Church - A series of lectures and their echo. Magni-Buchladen, Braunschweig 1981, ISBN 3-922571-03-4 .
  • Helmut Kramer: The Braunschweig coarse scribe. As before, the Voigt family ensures right awareness. In: Jürgen Hogrefe , Eckart Spoo (ed.): Lower Saxony scandal chronicle from Albrecht to Vajen. Pp. 214-220. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 1990, ISBN 3-88243-152-0 .
  • Helmut Kramer: “Holding a court day about yourself” - Fritz Bauer's procedure for the involvement of the judiciary in institutional murder. In: Hanno Loewy and Bettina Winter: Nazi euthanasia in court: Fritz Bauer and the limits of legal coping. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1996, ISBN 3-593-35442-X .
  • Helmut Kramer: Higher Regional Court presidents and attorneys general as assistants in Nazi "euthanasia". In: Kritische Justiz, Heft 1, 1984, pp. 25–43, PDF online
  • Helmut Kramer: Plea for a forum on contemporary legal history. Forum Justice History 1998, ISBN 3-929542-12-9 .
  • Helmut Kramer, Wolfram Wette (ed.): Law is what uses arms: Justice and pacifism in the 20th century. Construction Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-351-02578-5 .
  • Helmut Kramer: judge in court. In: National Socialist Special Jurisdiction. Volume 15 of the series of legal contemporary history North Rhine-Westphalia. 2007.
  • Helmut Kramer, Karsten Uhl, Jens-Christian Wagner (eds.): Forced labor under National Socialism and the role of the judiciary. Perpetration, post-war trials and the dispute over compensation payments. Nordhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-9809391-9-5 .
  • Wolfram Wette , Detlef Vogel (eds.), Collaboration with Ricarda Berthold and Helmut Kramer: The last taboo - Nazi military justice and war treason . Construction Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-351-02654-7 .

Honors

literature

  • Peter Derleder , Joachim Perels : Between Weidenbusch and Donnersberg. For Helmut Kramer's 70th birthday. In: Critical Justice . Issue 2/2000, pp. 276-283.
  • Ingo Müller : Holding up a mirror to German judges, tribute to Helmut Kramer for the award of the Hans Litten Prize of the Association of Democratic Jurists on November 26, 1994 in Hamburg.
  • Ingo Müller: Helmut Kramer - a lawyer from Helmstedt. in: Landkreis Helmstedt (ed.): Kreisbuch 2007. Helmstedt 2006, pp. 109–111.
  • Frauke Höbermann: An indomitable one. A portrait on the occasion of the 80th birthday ( online )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Excerpt from the decision of the Regional Court of Braunschweig of October 7, 1965, file number 12 AR 99/65 (1 special KLs 231/44) ( Memento of the original from September 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.forumjustizgeschichte.de
  2. ↑ Hans Puvogel : The leading basic ideas in the emasculation of dangerous morality criminals , quoted from Gerhard Henschel : Scherzende Sittenpolizisten. Humiliation, truncheons on the genitals, boot kicks in the abdomen, sterilization, castration, mutilation. Insights into the sexual anti-Semitism of the National Socialists. In: jungle world , Dossier supplement, October 30, 2008, p. 19 f.
  3. ↑ Review (1970)
  4. ↑ Helmut Kramer: Plea for a forum on contemporary legal history ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 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. (PDF file for download; 749 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.forumjustizgeschichte.de
  5. ↑ Kramer, Uhl, Wagner (ed.): Forced labor under National Socialism and the role of the judiciary. Perpetration, post-war trials and the dispute over compensation payments. Nordhausen 2007 as a PDF file
  6. ↑ Hold up the mirror to German judges. Laudation given by Ingo Müller on the award of the Hans Litten Prize
  7. ↑ See HU notifications  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. No. 208 (1 + 2/2010), p. 17, as well as HU-Mitteilungen (PDF; 2.0 MB) No. 209/210 (3/2010), p. 3.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.humanistische-union.de  
  8. ↑ Invitation to the film premiere (PDF; 27 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Kramer, Helmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kramer, Fritz Diedrich Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and legal historian
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Helmstedt