Otto Stahmer

Otto Franz Walter Stahmer (born October 5, 1879 in Altona (Elbe) , † August 13, 1968 in Kiel ) was a German lawyer. He was best known as the defender of Hermann Göring during the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals from November 1945 to September 1946.

Live and act

After attending school, which he graduated from high school Christianeum in Hamburg at Easter 1899 , Stahmer studied law at the universities of Tübingen , Berlin and Kiel from the summer semester of 1899 to the summer semester of 1902 . In June 1902 he passed the trainee examination in Kiel. He then completed the legal preparatory service as a trainee lawyer in the district of the Higher Regional Court of Kiel from June / July 1902 to June 1906 . In addition , he did his doctorate at the University of Rostock with a thesis on The good faith at the property meeting according to Roman and common law to the Dr. jur. (Examination date June 1903). He finally passed the major state examination in law (Assessorexamen) in January 1907 in Berlin.

In March 1907, Stahmer settled down as a lawyer in Kiel, where he was particularly admitted to the local Higher Regional Court. Since November 1923 he also practiced as a notary . He also served as a member of the State Legal Examination Office from 1929.

In the autumn of 1945, Stahmer was appointed as defender of the former Prussian Prime Minister and Reich Aviation Minister Hermann Göring in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals before the tribunal of the four main victorious powers of the Second World War . Goering had previously been presented with a list of the names of attorneys the court deemed suitable for his defense. He chose Stahmer because he was the only lawyer whose name he knew. Stahmer's client, who was considered to be the “second man in the Third Reich” and thus the most important of the twenty-two defendants, was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to death.

Since 1945 Stahmer President of the Bar Association of Schleswig-Holstein .

Today Stahmer's estate is stored as N 1583 in the Federal Archives in Koblenz. It consists of 31 volumes that Stahmer's grandchildren handed over to the Federal Archives in 2006 and 2008, as well as 92 files that were transferred in 2010 as part of the re-signing from the "Nuremberg Trials: Referee files of lawyers and defendants".

Fonts

• Good faith at the property meeting according to Roman and common law, as well as according to the rights of the civil code , 1903, dissertation

Web links

• Description of Stahmer's estate with a short biography