Max Güde

Max Güde (born January 6, 1902 in Donaueschingen , Baden , † January 29, 1984 in Werl , North Rhine-Westphalia ) was a German lawyer and politician ( CDU ).

Life

In 1927 Max Güde entered the service of the State of Baden , initially as a court assessor at the Mannheim Regional Court . After three years as a public prosecutor in Mosbach a. N . In 1932 he received a judge's post at the Bruchsal District Court in Baden .

A few weeks after the seizure of power by the Nazis on 30 January 1933, Max Guede expressed in close colleagues critical to the arrest and degrading treatment of the Reichstag Ludwig Marum (SPD). Marum had been brought to the Kislau concentration camp near Bruchsal in violation of parliamentary immunity . Later, in March 1934, SA men murdered him by strangling him. One of the colleagues reported this statement to the Baden Ministry of Justice . This was not yet aligned and prompted the transfer of Max Güde to the remote Wolfach District Court , a court with only one scheduled judge's position.

Max Guede was since 1933 member of the National Socialist People's Welfare and since 1934 the National Socialist Lawyers' League . He joined the NSDAP in 1939, but did not hold any offices there. In Wolfach, Max Güde appeared publicly as a practicing Catholic, despite general pressure from the Nazi state on civil servants to break ties with the church. In 1939, in a secret evaluation by the party, he was described as "ideologically unsound" and "confessionally bound". In 1943 he was drafted as a soldier, most recently as an upper rifleman .

After his return from captivity in 1945, Max Güde initially worked as a public prosecutor until 1947, then as a senior public prosecutor at the Constance district court . In 1950 he became a federal prosecutor at the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) and since 1953 has headed the department for political criminal law. After a brief activity as President of the 4th Criminal Senate of the BGH, he was appointed Chief Public Prosecutor at the BGH on April 1, 1956 with the status of a political officer - from 1957 with the new title of General Public Prosecutor . As such, he came into conflict with Federal Interior Minister Gerhard Schröder , whose statement that you can only survive if you are a degree tougher than the other side, he countered by stating that this principle was comparable to the shock of the rabbit in front of the snake and that it was observing the effect that totalitarian states had on free democracies.

During his term of office, which lasted until October 26, 1961, there were several political trials that caused a sensation in the early days of the Federal Republic of Germany . In November 1957, for example, he was the prosecutor in the trial of the trade unionist and social democrat Viktor Agartz , who was accused of being ringleaders in an anti-constitutional organization and deliberately violating the KPD ban . Agartz was defended by the former Interior Minister Gustav Heinemann . Güde agreed with Heinemann that a conviction of Agartz was possible, but not desirable, as it would be a suspect sentence. Despite the acquittal, Agartz was expelled from the SPD and the DGB canceled his annuity. He was also the prosecutor in the proceedings against Otto John , the former President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , for treasonous conspiracy . His request for punishment was outbid by the court by 100%.

In addition, Güde has rendered outstanding services to coming to terms with the injustice committed by the German judiciary in the Third Reich . As Federal Attorney General, he received a great deal of public attention in his Karlsruhe offices when the SDS activist Reinhard Strecker , the main initiator of the exhibition Unpunished Nazi Justice , was received.

From 1961 to 1969, Max Güde was a member of the German Bundestag for the CDU as a directly elected member of the Karlsruhe-Stadt constituency , where he stood out in particular as chairman of the special committee “Major Criminal Law Reform” (1963–1969). In the statute of limitations debate in 1965 about an extension of the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes, he belonged to the majority of his parliamentary group, which was looking for a solution to prevent unpunished Nazi crimes from becoming statute-barred.

Max Güde took a liberal position on the question of the treatment of extremists in the public service and the ban on K groups discussed in 1977 . His son Fritz (1935–2017) was a current radical decree at that time , he was suspended from work as a teacher because of his membership in the KBW . Max Güde criticized the fact that the administrative bureaucracy "stuck to the traditional conception of the political enemy" and said that "it was able to fight thoughts, ideas and ideologies instead of soberly restricting itself to the pursuit of harmful actions". However, the state is only allowed to repel harmful actions, not opinions or ideologies. Together with Erhard Eppler , Helmut Gollwitzer , Johannes Rau , Eberhard Jäckel and Walter Jens , he was one of the co-founders of the Gustav Heinemann Initiative in 1978 .

Max Güde died of heart failure in 1984 at the age of 82 in Werl- Hilbeck , where he had spent the last years of his life with his daughter.

Works

• Problems of Political Criminal Law Monthly f. German Law 1957
• The case law in the shadow of yesterday Presse- u. Information Office d. Federal Government 1958
• The state's secret sphere and freedom of the press . Bachem 1959
• Justice in the shadow of yesterday's rut 1959
• The state's secret sphere and freedom of the press Quadriga 1959
• Education for law Bonn a. Rh .: Dt. Adult Education Association, 1961
• On the constitution of our democracy: four republican speeches. (with Ludwig Raiser and Helmut Simon ) Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986 ISBN 3-499-14279-1 .

literature

• Walter Henkels : 99 Bonn heads , reviewed and supplemented edition, Fischer-Bücherei, Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 104f.
• Volker Tausch: Max Güde (1902-1984). Attorney General and legal politician. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2002, ISBN 3-7890-7687-2 .
• Michael Kißener : Between dictatorship and democracy, Badische Richter 1919-1952 , UVK, Konstanz 2003 ISBN 3-89669-760-9 .
• Wilhelm Güde: Max Güde (1902-1984). At the same time a small contribution to the history of the Federal Prosecutor's Office in the 1950s. In: Festschrift for Dietrich Pannier on his 65th birthday on June 24, 2010. Carl Heymanns Verlag 1910, pp. 63–73.
• Wilhelm Güde: The ex-libris for Max Güde (1902-1984). In: Mitteilungen der Deutschen Exlibris-Gesellschaft, 2,2011, pp. 40f.
• Wilhelm Güde: Max Güde (1902-1984). A legal life in the 20th century. Karlsruhe 2019. ISBN 978-3-922596-29-5

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Martin Roddewig: Not a "left in disguise" - but ...? About the former federal prosecutor and later CDU legal politician Max Güde. In: Freisendung - Members' newspaper of the criminal defense associations, issue 10, March 2017, pp. 31–32.
2. ^ Manfred Görtemaker / Christoph Safferling: The Rosenburg files. The Federal Ministry of Justice and the Nazi era. Munich 2016.
3. ↑ Plenary minutes of the 175th session of the Bundestag 4. German Bundestag, March 25, 1965, pp. 8760, 8761, 8763, 8780, 8781, 8789 , accessed on March 29, 2018 .  
4. ↑ Sebastian Friedrich : Fight and Learn . Obituary on kritisch-lesen.de, accessed on July 12, 2017.
5. ↑ Sebastian Friedrich: On the death of Fritz Güde: Fighting and learning. trueten.de, July 11, 2017, accessed on September 6, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Retired Federal Attorney General Max Güde died in 1984 . Soester Anzeiger , Werl regional section, from August 6, 2015.
7. ^ Died: Max Güde , Der Spiegel 6/1984 of February 6, 1984

Web links

• Literature by and about Max Güde in the catalog of the German National Library