Karl-Heinz Ottersbach

Karl-Heinz Ottersbach (born June 10, 1912 in Hanover ; †?) Was a German lawyer. During the Nazi era he was a public prosecutor at the special court in Katowice, Upper Silesia . After the war he worked as a representative of the prosecution in the special department "Political Criminal Matters" of the public prosecutor's office at the Lüneburg Regional Court .

Life

Little is known about the life and work of Karl-Heinz Ottersbach up to the end of the 1930s. During his studies he joined the student storm of the SA in 1933 and from 1936 belonged to the Nazi legal guardian association. In 1937 he became a member of the NSDAP . From October 1941, however, his work as a public prosecutor at the Katowice Special Court is guaranteed. There he played a key role in numerous death sentences.

From 1942 he did military service.

Administration in Katowice

Ottersbach stood out through his work at the special court, especially because of his hardship towards Poland.

Vincent Carter

In 1942 Ottersbach filed an indictment against the Polish worker Vincent Fuhrmann with the Katowice Special Court for illegally possessing weapons. He applied for the death penalty, but the court ruled on July 9, 1942, to be acquitted because the confession had been beaten. “Due to the taking of evidence at the main hearing, the accused could not be convicted. The witness, Criminal Secretary Polaczek, has confirmed that the accused had been hit by the calf. The defendant's confessions at the time could therefore not be used as a basis for the judgment. ”Ottersbach then applied for“ release from prison to be made only for the attention of the Gestapo ”. According to a handwritten note by Ottersbach, however, his application was not granted.

Jakob Horowitz and Reisla Gutfreund

In April 1942 Ottersbach filed the indictment against the two Polish Jews Jakob Horowitz and Reisla Gutfreund, also Chrzanow, for illegal barter transactions. (The calorie ration for Jews in Poland was 771 kJ (= 184 kcal) per day in 1941. ) According to the prosecution's request, Horowitz was sentenced to six years in a more stringent prison camp. He was killed after Ottersbach transferred him to the Katowice state police station following the verdict. She had already been transported to Auschwitz by the Gestapo before the main hearing ; it is not known whether she was convicted.

Hilde Michon

In May 1942 Ottersbach applied for a more stringent prison camp for Hilde Michon for ten years. The mother of seven had bought stolen poultry. Her husband Roman Michon had previously been abducted by the German occupation. The court ruled on four years of aggravated prison camp. Hilde Michon was taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp on December 16, 1942. Her death was announced by the Gestapo on May 3, 1943. The request for clemency from one of her children to Ottersbach was unsuccessful.

Participation in death sentences

Ottersbach had applied for the death penalty in 1942 for participating in the black slaughter of a cow against Eduard Rodak. On May 19, 1942, Rodak was sentenced as requested. Bronslawa Cielcielska and Ottilie Wojcikiewicz had sold loaves of bread with no bread stamps and finally forged bread stamps so that the authorities would not notice. In this case, too, Ottersbach applied for the death penalty ; on July 23, 1942, both were executed.

Post-war period: Special Department for Political Criminal Matters Lüneburg

According to the statements of the former director of the Wolfenbüttel memorial site , Wilfried Knauer, a random inspection of the files in state security matters of the 1950s showed a “remarkable parallelism, even linguistic agreement in accusations and reasons for judgments between proceedings before National Socialist special courts under the Deceit Act of 1934 or the People's Pest Ordinance of 1939 and proceedings before state protection chambers in the 1950s. ”Karl-Heinz Ottersbach worked as a public prosecutor in the post-war period and was responsible for such political crimes at the Lüneburg Regional Court.

The district court of Lüneburg was at the forefront of the judicial persecution of communists in the Federal Republic . Here “Ottersbach was able to directly tie in with his views from the Nazi era”. In a criminal hearing on May 13, 1960, he accused a communist of the fact that he "had learned nothing from his prison sentences of 1933 and 1940 because of 'undermining military strength'."

One case is that of journalist and KPD member Walter Timpe, who u. a. wrote for the daily newspaper "The Truth / New Lower Saxony People's Voice". In May 1955, the then 24-year-old journalist had to answer for critical newspaper articles about Konrad Adenauer before the Lüneburg Regional Court. In his articles, Timpe had opposed the rearmament of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past of incumbent ministers and a. Details about the Nazi past published by Federal Minister of Displacement Theodor Oberländer . Ottersbach appeared as prosecutor, as judge Konrad Lenski (* 1901), who passed numerous death sentences both at the Imperial Court Martial and in Strasbourg, a. a. he sentenced a large number of French resistance fighters to death. From Timpe's criticism of the ban on the KPD and the communist youth organization FDJ, Ottersbach, as a prosecutor, led a “ringleadership” in an anti-constitutional association and charged the journalist with aiding and abetting secretive groups with anti-constitutional intent.

In 1965 Ottersbach was prematurely retired because of his activities at the special courts.

Disputes over Ottersbach

When the Brown Book published by the Committee for German Unity in East Berlin appeared, it contained a. the names of Lenski and Ottersbach as acting judicial lawyers in West Germany who were burdened due to their previous activity in the Nazi judicature.

In 1964, the Committee for Legal and Constitutional Issues of the Lower Saxony State Parliament voted on the Ottersbach case and came to the opinion - against the votes of two SPD members - that there was no reason to initiate personnel measures in the Ottersbach case. The dispute over the public prosecutor continued, however. In the spring of 1965 the weekly newspaper " Die Zeit " quotes Richard Schmidt, the former President of the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court, who explains: "This case is the worst and the one that reveals the fewest doubts and mitigating reasons."

literature

• Helmut Kramer: Relief as a system. For the criminal investigation of the judicial and administrative crimes of the Third Reich. In: Martin Benhold (Ed.): Traces of injustice. Law and National Socialism. Contributions to historical continuity. Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, Cologne 1989, pp. 101-130.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 446
2. ↑ ^{a b} Dörte Hinrichs: From Hitler to Adenauer. Die Zeit, November 29, 2007
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Ulrich Vultejus: Golden youth. ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 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. In: Werner Holtfort, Norbert Kandel, Wilfried Köppen, Ulrich Vultejus: Behind the Facades. Stories from a German city. Göttingen 1982, pp. 75-96. 
4. ↑ Braunbuch, 3rd ed. Pp. 107f.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , 2nd edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
6. ↑ Braunbuch, 3rd ed. Pp. 107f.
7. ↑ Braunbuch, 3rd ed. Pp. 107f.
8. ↑ Wilfried Knauer: Political Criminal Justice in the Cold War - The Victims of the "State Protection Jurisprudence" in Wolfenbüttel Prison in the 50s and 60s. ( RTF ; 15 kB)
9. ↑ ^{a b} Ingo Müller : Terrible lawyers . Kindler-Verlag Munich 1987, ISBN 3-463-40038-3 , p. 217.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Helmut Kramer: Relief as a system. For the criminal investigation of the judicial and administrative crimes of the Third Reich. In: Martin Benhold (Ed.): Traces of injustice. Law and National Socialism. Contributions to historical continuity. Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, Cologne 1989, pp. 101–130, here p. 119.
11. ↑ Harsh sentences and quick pardons Deutschlandradio Kultur, February 14, 2007
12. ↑ Hermann G. Abmayr: The forgotten victims of the Cold War. RAV info letter No. 97/2006
13. ↑ Helmut Kramer: Memorial without perpetrators. Ossietzky H. 12/2012
14. ↑ Anon .: protection for Nazi jurists, New Germany, from December 21, 1964
15. ↑ With the dagger under the robe. Die Zeit, March 12, 1965