Supreme Court for the British Zone

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The Supreme Court for the British Zone (OGHBrZ, common: OGH) was a 1947 by the British military government appointed last instance revision court in the ordinary jurisdiction ( civil and criminal matters ). It existed from March 1948 to September 1950 and had its seat in Cologne . Its president was the lawyer Ernst Wolff .

The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court included roughly the four federal states of Schleswig-Holstein , Hamburg , Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia and the eight OLG districts of Schleswig , Hamburg , Braunschweig , Celle , Oldenburg , Düsseldorf , Hamm and Cologne .

The court acted as a temporal link between the Reichsgericht (RG) and the Federal Supreme Court (BGH) , albeit with limited territorial jurisdiction. There was no comparable Supreme Court in the American and French occupation zones . The Supreme Court was dissolved when the BGH was founded.

Punishment of Nazi crimes

One of the considerations for the establishment of the Supreme Court was that the Allies, and above all the British, were of the opinion that they had to ensure that crimes committed by Germans against Germans during the Nazi era until 1939 were to be punished fairly. The crimes referred to here were explained in Control Council Act No. 10 , Article II 1c. These included "murder, extermination, enslavement, forced displacement, deprivation of liberty, torture, rape or other inhumane acts committed against the civilian population, as well as persecution for political, racial and religious reasons." The British wanted the Germans to carry out these processes , but they feared that the Germans would not seriously conduct these trials. Therefore, they decided to set up a court of appeal in their zone, the composition of which they influenced. As almost the only court in the western zones of occupation, there were no former National Socialists at this court. The judges who were appointed there were either those persecuted by National Socialism, emigrants or people who had been opposition to the Nazi state. What was striking about this model, which differed from all the higher courts in the other military zones, was that the British occupation authorities feared the existing lack of legal competence and sought pragmatic remedy. They did not intend to fill judicial authorities and courts with politically reliable judges (who, for example, were trained in the Soviet-occupied zone within a few months and appointed as so-called people's judges ), but, since they feared a resulting lack of legal basis, to a quota system install, in which a certain number of (politically) incriminated judges and a number of non-incriminated judges together formed the panel . This was done in the expectation that the judges would monitor each other. The success could not be denied. The decision collections of the OHGBrZ are still used today by lawyers.

See also

literature

  • Martin Grieß: "In the name of the law" - The Supreme Court for the British Zone as the highest court in civil matters between tradition and reorganization (=  contributions to the legal history of the 20th century . Volume 86 ). Mohr Siebeck, 2015, ISBN 978-3-16-153980-0 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  • Maik Wogersien (Ed.): Crimes against Humanity - The Supreme Court of the British Zone. (Legal History of North Rhine-Westphalia, Volume 19) Ministry of Justice of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf 2011.
  • Werner Schubert : Supreme Court for the British Zone (1948-1950). Reference work on criminal matters, reference work on civil matters, prejudice book of the civil senates (=  legal historical series . Volume 402 ). Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 978-3-653-00256-0 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  • Ulrike Homann: The Denied Alternative - The Supreme Court for the British Zone. In: Recht und Politik , 37th year 2001, issue 4, p. 210ff.
  • Gerhard Pauli: A High Court - The Supreme Court for the British Zone and its jurisdiction on crimes in the Third Reich. In: Contemporary Legal History NRW, Volume 5: 50 Years of Justice in NRW. 1996, p. 95ff.
  • Hinrich Rüping : The "small imperial court". The Supreme Court for the British Zone as a symbol of legal unity. In: NStZ 2000, p. 355ff.
  • Michael Stolleis : Supreme Court for the British Zone and German Supreme Court for the Bizone - Judicial policy setting in the transition phase. In: Das Parlament , Volume 37, 1987, No. 32 of August 8, 1987.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ordinance No. 98 of the British Military Government of September 1, 1947 ( OJ MR (B) No. 20 p. 572 ) with the Central Justice Office's implementing ordinance of November 17, 1947 ( VOBl.BZ p. 149 )
  2. ↑ Brochure of the Federal Court of Justice. (PDF, 219 KiB) (No longer available online.) P. 8 , archived from the original on February 26, 2018 ; Retrieved January 26, 2012 . 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. (Corrected link; access refers to the original link.) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesgerichtshof.de
  3. ↑ cf. Art. 8 II No. 65 in the law for the restoration of legal unity in the field of court constitution, civil administration of justice, criminal proceedings and law on costs of September 20, 1950 (Federal Law Gazette p. 455 , 508); Draft and reason: BT-Drs. 01/530 , there Art. 8 II No. 59
  4. ↑ Maik Wogersien (Ed.): Crimes against humanity - The Supreme Court of the British Zone. Ed .: Ministry of Justice of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and International Research and Documentation Center for War Crimes Trials at the Philipps University of Marburg, Düsseldorf 2011. pp. 16ff.