Johannes Block (lawyer)

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Johannes Martensen Block (born December 29, 1881 in Flensburg , † declared dead on December 31, 1945 ) was a German lawyer and President of the Court of Justice .

Life

Block was born in 1881 as the son of the farm owner Johannes Hinrich Block and his wife Margarethe Dorothea Martensen . He first attended the commercial school in Flensburg before switching to grammar school in 1892. After graduating from high school , he studied law at the University of Tübingen from the 1901 summer semester . In Tübingen he became a member of the Tübingen fraternity Derendingia . From the winter semester of 1902/1903 he studied in Berlin before moving to the University of Kiel . He successfully passed the first state examination in 1904. In 1905, Block became a Dr. iur. PhD. After stints in the OLG district of Kiel and among others at the district courts of Sønderborg and Alsen , he passed the second state examination in January 1909. He then worked in Dirschau until 1912 , then in Flensburg and was appointed magistrate in Schleswig in 1914 . He took part in the First World War as an officer and was wounded twice. In 1920 he was appointed to the district court advisor in Kiel and on August 11, 1923 as director of the district court Altona . In Altona in the autumn of 1930 he led the Great Bombing Trial against the defendants Claus Heim and others.

After the beginning of the Nazi era , Block joined the NSDAP on March 1, 1933 . During the first trial of the Altona Blood Sunday , he sat before the newly established special court at the Altona district court and was thus “ largely responsible for the death sentences against four communists for the alleged murder of two SA men - and thus for the first political death sentences ever in the Third Reich . ”On June 3, 1933, one day after the four death sentences were pronounced, he was appointed president of the district court at Berlin-Mitte. From June 1941 to May 1943 he was President of the Katowice Higher Regional Court . He was introduced to this office by the State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice, Roland Freisler , and assured him "that he would lead his office as a lawyer and champion of Germanness in cooperation with the party, its organizations and authorities as well as in a spirit of loyal camaraderie with his followers". He was appointed President of the Chamber Court in Berlin in May 1943, where he worked until the end of the war. When he was introduced to this office, he affirmed that he wanted to participate in the spirit of a “strong National Socialist administration of justice”. In December 1944, in his situation report to the Reich Minister of Justice, he demanded that the number of criminal panels should be increased from five to seven. According to the historian Johannes Tuchel, "an unmistakable sign that the killing machine was in full swing".

After the collapse of the Third Reich , he was arrested by Soviet agents and sentenced to death by a Soviet military tribunal . First, he was briefly taken to special prison No. 7 of the NKVD in Frankfurt / Oder and on July 8, 1945 to Brest , where the death sentence was probably carried out on November 25, 1945. Block was pronounced dead on December 31, 1945.

literature

  • Stephan Weichbrodt: The History of the Court of Appeal from 1913–1945 . Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2009.
  • Jürgen Kipp : One hundred years. On the history of a building 1913–2013. 100 years of the High Court at Kleistpark . Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8305-3226-2 , pp. 219–228.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Johannes Tuchel : The death sentences of the chamber court 1943-1945. A documentation published by the German Resistance Memorial Center , Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86732-229-4 .
  • Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). A historical-biographical study . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 .
  • Maximilian Becker: fellow campaigners in the popular struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Territories 1939–1945 , Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-77837-3 .
  • Moritz von Köckritz: The German Higher Regional Court Presidents in National Socialism (1933-1945) (= Legal History Series 413), Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-61791-5 , pp. 58ff. (not evaluated)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Jürgen Kipp: One hundred years. On the history of a building 1913–2013. 100 years of the Kammergericht am Kleistpark , Berlin 2013, p. 220
  2. ↑ Membership directory of the Derendingia fraternity in Tübingen. 1967, master roll no. 320.
  3. ↑ a b c Jürgen Kipp: One hundred years. On the history of a building 1913–2013. 100 years of the Kammergericht am Kleistpark , Berlin 2013, p. 221
  4. ^ A b Maximilian Becker: Fellow campaigners in the national struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Territories 1939–1945 , Munich 2014, p. 86
  5. ↑ Jürgen Kipp: One hundred years. On the history of a building 1913–2013. 100 years of the Kammergericht am Kleistpark , Berlin 2013, p. 222
  6. ↑ Jürgen Kipp: One hundred years. On the history of a building 1913–2013. 100 years of the Kammergericht am Kleistpark , Berlin 2013, p. 226
  7. ↑ Johannes Tuchel: The death sentences of the Chamber Court 1943-1945. A documentation published by the German Resistance Memorial Center , Berlin 2016, p. 6
  8. ^ Klaus-Dieter Müller: Criminal enforcement and occupation policy. On the role and significance of the death sentences by Soviet military tribunals . In: Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). A historical-biographical study , Göttingen 2015, p. 55
  9. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 53
personal data
SURNAME Block, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Block, Johannes Martensen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and President of the Court of Justice
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Flensburg
DATE OF DEATH at December 31, 1945