Kurt Albrecht (judge)

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Kurt Albrecht (* 1885 ; † 1962 ) was a judge and president of the fifth senate at the People's Court in Berlin .

career

Albrecht joined the judiciary in 1915 as a court assessor. In 1927 he moved to the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main, where in 1932 he was also appointed as a senior civil servant at the civil service criminal chamber and in early August 1933 regional court director. In 1936 he moved to the People's Court, where he became President of the Senate. His superiors were Otto Georg Thierack and Roland Freisler . Only selected National Socialists were appointed to the People's Court, from whom an unbiased “finding of the law” could not be expected, also because the accused were often marked by the torture of the Gestapo.

From May 1, 1933 , Kurt Albrecht was a member of the NSDAP with membership number 2,655,431.

Activity at the People's Court

Albrecht was the presiding judge in the People's Court proceedings with the death sentences against the members of the resistance group around Heinrich Maier , Walter Caldonazzi and Franz Josef Messner . In this trial, the verdict with regard to the defendants' objections to their torture stated that, according to credible statements by the Gestapo officials, no unlawful means of coercion were used against any prisoner to obtain evidence. In the proceedings against the Christian monarchist resistance fighters Franz Schönfeld and Marie Schönfeld , Albrecht imposed the death penalty on both of them for producing and distributing numerous anti-Nazi pamphlets. In the astonishing judgment in this regard, Albrecht states that the Schönfelds are known as eager churchgoers, that they wish for the defeat of the German Empire and the rebuilding of the Habsburg monarchy, that they stabbed the national community, and that they can hardly be surpassed in spite, Franz Schönfeld a psychopath be and “there is no place for such people in the German national community. In the proceedings against Marie Eckert, an old, seriously ill and frail woman according to the verdict, he was sentenced to four years in prison, mainly because of the possession of a self-written note found in his wallet with the Text “We want an emperor by God's grace and not a blood murderer from Berchtesgaden”.

Albrecht was also the presiding judge in the proceedings against nun Maria Restituta Kafka , in which she was sentenced to death for duplicating a soldier's song or reading this song in front of two other nuns and a surgical assistant. During the interrogation, during which the monastery sister asserted in vain that she had not taken the poem as high treason, but only as a harmless joke, Albrecht scornfully demanded: "Well, sister, you are musical, sing us the song!" the nun refused, he pronounced the death sentence. In the proceedings against the nunnery, Albrecht deliberately did not exclude the public “in order to publicly denounce the inflammatory activity of clerical circles”. Albrecht also passed the death sentences against the resistance fighters Rudolf Masl, Elfriede Hartmann and Friedrich Mastny. On August 11, 1944, Albrecht sentenced the resistance fighters Anton Granig, Wenzel Primosch, Karl Krumpl, Franz Bernthaler, Angelus Steinwender, Capistran Peller, Ernst Ortner and Georg Kofler to death. Albrecht noted about Pastor Granig: “Granig makes the worst impression imaginable among the defendants. It took a long time before he settled down to tell the truth. "When Granig interjected:" Please, Mr. Chairman, to be allowed to say that I have been standing on a block for 17 hours without a break ... ", whereupon the judge interrupted him:" Be silent, there is not a priest in you, but the devil. "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Wolfgang Stadler: ... I cannot be captured legally. The proceedings of the Vienna People's Court against judges and public prosecutors 1945–1955 (2007), p. 41.
  2. ↑ See list of judges at the People's Court
  3. ↑ See judgment of the People's Court GZ 5H 96/44 et al
  4. ↑ See judgment of the People's Court GZ 5H 96/44 et al., P. 21 ff.
  5. ↑ See Johannes Schönner: Catholics in Resistance and Persecution. Record of names of victims of political persecution 1938–1945 . DÖW, p. 7; Judgment of the People's Court GZ 5H 18/44 et al
  6. ↑ See judgment of the People's Court GZ 5H 18/44 u. 8 J 203/43.
  7. ↑ See judgment of the People's Court GZ 5H 94/42.
  8. ↑ Hellmut Butterweck: National Socialists before the People's Court of Vienna (2016), p. 512.
personal data
SURNAME Albrecht, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Judge of the People's Court
DATE OF BIRTH 1885
DATE OF DEATH 1962