Justus Koch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Justus Koch (born October 5, 1891 in Magdeburg , † May 30, 1962 in Düsseldorf ) was a German lawyer and notary . During the Weimar Republic he specialized in copyright law and played a key role in founding the German Society for the Exploitation of Musical Copyrights (Stagma). During the Nazi era , he sat on the supervisory board of Siebel Flugzeugwerke . He took part as an officer in the Second World War and from 1943 commanded the "Sonderkommando Siebel", later the "Sonderkommando Fähre". After the war he worked as a lawyer again and defended Paul Körner and Paul Pleiger in the Wilhelmstrasse trial .

Life

Koch took part in the First World War. He was initially with the Dragoons , but was transferred to the Airmen after a fall in which he sustained a serious leg injury. He was used as a copilot and observer in the squadron in which Wilhelm Freiherr Marschall von Bieberstein flew and made the acquaintance of the fighter pilot Hermann Göring during the war .

After the war, Koch studied law , received his doctorate in 1923 and founded a law firm in Berlin in 1924 . As a lawyer for copyright law in Berlin and advised the Reich Association of Visual Artists and the Cooperative of German Sound Composers . From 1924 to 1931 he was a member of the DDP . In 1933 he joined the NSDAP . In 1933 he was one of the co-founders of the state-approved Society for the Exploitation of Musical Performance Rights (STAGMA), where he served as in-house counsel from 1933 to 1937. Allegedly, at the behest of the Reich Propaganda Ministry, he was dismissed for dealing with Jews.

Since childhood, Koch had been close friends with the banker Erich Alenfeld , who came from a Jewish banking family and lived in a so-called “ privileged mixed marriage ” under the Nuremberg Laws of National Socialist rule . Koch was Alenfeld's best man and godfather of his son Justus. Alenfeld testified in Koch's court proceedings in 1946 that Koch had campaigned for him with the police during the wave of arrests following the 1938 November pogrom. In 1941, by intervening with Labor Minister Franz Seldte , who, like Koch and Alenfeld , had attended the Magdeburg High School, Koch managed to ensure that Alenfeld and his wife were released from labor until the end of the war. According to Alenfeld, Koch had joined the NSDAP in 1933 in order to strengthen the bourgeois element, but had been disillusioned by the events of the so-called Röhm Putsch . Alenfeld also reports on anti-Semitic remarks by Koch, which were motivated by competition envy.

Koch sat on the supervisory boards of various companies, including Siebel Flugzeugwerke and De Gruyter-Verlag . From 1939 Koch was a member of the Air Force . He was initially deputy commander, from October 1943 in the rank of lieutenant colonel commander of the " Sonderkommando Siebel ", the later "Sonderkommando Fähre" under Friedrich Wilhelm Siebel . The Sonderkommando developed landing vehicles for amphibious warfare , which would initially have been intended for " Operation Sea Lion ", including the Siebelfähre .

Irène Alenfeld reports in her family biography Why didn't you emigrate? (2008), shortly after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , Koch was overheard saying to his friend Friedrich Siebel: “Yes, you have to do everything yourself to make it work.” The two of them face the threat of a court martial evaded by taking a plane to Crete, which was already occupied by the British . There they were first imprisoned as alleged spies in a special prison and then transferred to a POW camp in Schleswig-Holstein , from which Koch was released in the winter of 1946. This presentation is not confirmed by other biographical sources.

In 1949 Koch settled in Düsseldorf as a lawyer. He took over the defense of the defendants Paul Körner and Paul Pleiger in the Wilhelmstrasse Trial . He employed Friedrich Gramsch and Hans Rechenberg as unofficial assistants . Koch also worked with Kurt Hesse as a witness and took legal advice from Carl Schmitt on the question of the war of aggression in relation to the rearmament of Germany. Schmitt agreed with Koch's design of the Tu quoque argument . Koch took the view that the German attack on the Soviet Union was a preventive war. The German armaments served to protect against the threat from the eastern neighbors. In total war, the distinction between combatants and non-combatants in the Hague Land Warfare Regulations no longer applies .

Koch represented Edda Göring in a legal dispute over a painting against the city of Cologne .

Koch belonged to the Heidelberg legal group, but broke away from it in 1950 because the group seemed too pragmatic to him.

Fonts

  • Poems. With pictures by Justus and Werner Koch. Appelhans, Braunschweig 1916.
  • The legal validity of the preferred shares with multiple voting rights. sn], [Sl 1923.

literature

  • Hubert Seliger: Political lawyers? The defenders of the Nuremberg trials . Nomos, Baden-Baden 2016.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Irène Alenfeld: Why didn't you emigrate? Survive in Berlin from 1933 to 1945 . Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 2008, p. 28.
  2. ↑ Irène Alenfeld: Why didn't you emigrate? Survive in Berlin from 1933 to 1945 . Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 2008, pp. 118, 452–453.
  3. ↑ Irène Alenfeld: Why didn't you emigrate? Survive in Berlin from 1933 to 1945 . Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 2008, p. 65.
  4. ^ Hans Joachim Ebert:  Siebel, Friedrich Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , pp. 319-321 ( digitized version ).
  5. ↑ Hubert Seliger: Political Lawyers? The defenders of the Nuremberg trials . Nomos, Baden-Baden 2016, pp. 360–362.
personal data
SURNAME Cook, Jupiter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and notary
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1962
Place of death Dusseldorf