Judges' letters

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In the Third Reich, the so-called judges' letters were a publication organ of the Reich Ministry of Justice for the ideological instrumentalization of the administration of justice in the interests of the party and the state .

Appropriation of justice

As a totalitarian regime , National Socialism strove to subordinate legal life in Germany to its fascist , ethnic and militaristic ideology. In line with its revolutionary self -image , the Nazi regime also systematically and radically restructured the administration of justice in line with the Führer principle .

The law to remedy the plight of the people and the Reich ( Enabling Act ) of March 24, 1933 enabled the Reich government to issue ordinances with content that deviated from the constitution .

Section 1 of the Courts Constitution Act ( GVG ) - its version has been in force since 1877 - nevertheless remained unchanged. Accordingly, the judges were still "independent and only subject to the law."

According to the National Socialist legal and state conception, which was propagated from 1933 in countless publications that were brought into line, e.g. For example, those of Carl Schmitt , Otto Koellreutter , Georg Dahm , Ernst Forsthoff , Roland Freisler , Hans Frank or Karl Larenz , the Nazi judges were the “executors of the will of the Führer”, because from 1933 onwards “law” was synonymous with the political will of the state leadership , that is, Adolf Hitler's . The judges were now "independent" in particular of the strict legal positivism , which had already been no longer generally recognized in the Weimar Republic . This gave the judges a certain amount of leeway in applying the law and an increase in power that was quite desirable. Indefinite legal terms and their unlimited interpretation as well as an oath of service no longer to the Weimar Constitution, but an obligation to obey Adolf Hitler as the "supreme court lord" and the "healthy public sentiment" embodied by him conveyed the Nazi ideology into all existing areas of law and court proceedings .

The new National Socialist legislation was preceded by so-called "guiding principles", which clarified the ideological objectives of individual regulations and should make it easier for the courts to make politically compliant decisions when applying the law.

The Nazi propaganda paper Der Stürmer manipulated public opinion and agitated against judgments and named judges who were not regarded as "National Socialist" enough.

Due to the compulsory professional organization of all lawyers in the Nazi Legal Guardian Association and the concentration of legal “science” in the party-affiliated Academy for German Law , the entire administration of justice should be subjected to the NSDAP's claim to total power.

The lawyer Sebastian Haffner (1907–1999) described in his memoirs the political appropriation of the students at the time. Sections 47 and 48 of the Judicial Training Regulations of July 22, 1934, provided not only technical training but also ideological indoctrination in the working group of a staunch National Socialist and paramilitary drill in a two-month “community camp”.

These and other measures, which were no longer implemented because of the course of the war, should in the long term have produced a politically reliable, "instinct-safe judge corps" for the "unreserved" implementation of the National Socialist worldview and a folk community order.

Justice control by the Reich Ministry of Justice

The law on the restoration of the civil service of 7 April 1933 abolished the judges' personal independence and enabled the judiciary to retire judges who were not “racially” but also politically undesirable. In addition, on January 1, 1935, as a result of the so-called implementation of the justice system (dissolution of the German states and the state ministries of justice), the Reich Ministry of Justice in Berlin had become the sole administrative body for the entire German justice system. By having a say in the appointment and promotion of judges as well as in the distribution of business at the courts, the ministry was able to centrally control and discipline the more than 14,000 judges at the 2,500 local, regional and higher regional courts.

General and circular directives from the Reich Ministry of Justice to the address of the higher regional courts were intended to ensure uniform jurisdiction in the 1930s, in particular for the imposition of maximum sentences. So should z. For example, prior to the pronouncement of the judgment, secret agreements are made between the public prosecutor's office, which is bound by instructions from the Reich Ministry of Justice, and the court about the sentence to be imposed. Failure to follow such “recommendations” also threatened judges with legal consequences, including dismissal from service.

Judges' letters

Judges' Letters No. 4, January 1, 1943, front page; Archive of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial

In 1942, State Secretary Curt Rothenberger in the Reich Ministry of Justice introduced the so-called previews (internally: "steering conferences"), with which judgments had to be discussed in advance by the judging court with the court presidium loyal to the line and representatives of the prosecution and justified there afterwards. As an example, reference is made to the criminal proceedings against Walerian Wróbel before the Bremen Special Court .

On the basis of the Fuehrer's decree on special powers of the Reich Minister of Justice of August 20, 1942 to establish a National Socialist administration of justice and - also in deviation from existing law - to take all necessary measures, then appeared next to the official organ of the Reich Ministry of Justice , the " German Justice ”(DJ) - shortly after the Reich Minister of Justice and NSDAP member Otto Georg Thierack took office as the successor to Franz Gürtner , who died in 1941, the confidential newsletter“ RICHTERBRIEFE - Communications from the Reich Minister of Justice ”. In addition to discussions of judgments, it also contained statements by the minister on the interpretation and application of individual laws according to the National Socialist understanding. It should have a general impact on the judges' political position and also influence the decision-making process in individual cases. The “judges' letters” effectively abolished the factual independence of the judges (freedom of instruction).

Thierack himself commented euphemistically on the judges' letters and wrote that he could not order the judge to adopt a certain legal opinion, but could only convince him of how a judge should help the national community.

In the preface to the first judge's letter, he writes:

“ German judges!
According to the old Germanic legal conception, the leader of the people was always its chief judge. So if the Führer entrusts another with the office of judge, this means that the latter not only derives his judicial power from the Führer and is responsible to him, but also that leadership and judiciary are essentially related.
The judge is therefore the 'bearer of national self-preservation'. He is the protector of the values ​​of a people and the annihilator of the unworthy. He is the recorder of life processes that are diseases in the life of the people's body. A strong judiciary is essential for the maintenance of a true national community.
[…] The outlined view of the judge's task has already largely prevailed among German legal protectors. However, their practical effects on the administration of justice have not yet been fully realized. [The judges' letters] should [...] give an idea of ​​how the judiciary thinks the National Socialist application of law and in this way give the judge the internal security and freedom to make the right decision. "

The total of 21 “judges' letters” appeared in a print run of around 11,000 copies and related to various areas of law, but in particular to criminal law. In addition to the judges and public prosecutors, to whom the judges' letters were handed out by the head of the authorities in return for a receipt, the addressees were also authorities subordinate to the Reich Ministry of Justice, other Reich ministries and party cadres.

The following issues were published between October 1942 and December 1944:

  • No. 1: People's pests, especially blackout criminals; Moral crimes against children and young people; Caf (f) e-registration by Jews; Foreign exchange crime of labeling Jews
  • No. 2: Protection of women in war; Community robberies; Withdrawal of custody; Custody regulation for a divorced child whose father is in the field
  • No. 3: Honor protection of fallen soldiers; Incest and rape with one's own children; Indecent act of a youth; Refusal of the German greeting by a school child
  • No. 4: Combating anti-social issues; Criminal judgment and mercy, with a statement by the Reich Minister of Justice Thierack on the "fight against anti-social"
  • No. 5: Form and content of the judgments; Determination of descent among Jews and Jewish mongrels; Appointment of the guardian for the children of a fallen soldier
  • No. 6: Prohibited handling of prisoners of war
  • No. 7: Pests in air raids
  • No. 8: Adultery with Warrior Wives
  • No. 9: death sentence with grace proposals; Joke with the heroic death of a soldier; Testament of a Jew
  • No. 10: Anonymous fieldpost letters that were insulting to honor; Gross misleading relatives about the fate of a soldier
  • No. 11: Refusal to accept bomb victims; False allegations
  • No. 12: Divorce from soldiers' marriages; Private law claims and price law; Cancellation of a tenancy
  • No. 13: Law and healthy public sentiment; Law of the Altreich and the Alps and Donaureichsgaue in cases of entertainment lawsuits by illegitimate children; Doctor's fee and statute of limitations
  • No. 14: Juvenile Criminal Law
  • No. 15: Popular version of charges and verdicts
  • No. 16: War economic criminal law
  • No. 17: Looters and pests in enemy air raids
  • No. 18: Discontinuation of criminal proceedings with conditions
  • No. 19: Securing clauses in documents and contracts; Dishonorable or immoral lifestyle of a divorced woman; Dispute over the inheritance of fallen soldiers
  • No. 20: Report a spouse against the other to authorities and party offices as a reason for divorce
  • No. 21: Divorce in total war

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joseph Goebbels: From the Imperial Court to the Reich Chancellery. Munich 20th edition 1937, p. 8 ff.
  2. ↑ Horst Möller: The National Socialist Seizure of Power: Counterrevolution or Revolution? Quarterly issues for contemporary history 1983, issue 1, p. 25 ff.
  3. ↑ Bernd Rüthers : The unlimited interpretation. On the change in the private legal system under National Socialism. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 7th edition 2012
  4. ^ Siegfried Zelnhefer: The striker. German weekly paper on the fight for truth. In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria
  5. ↑ Sebastian Haffner: History of a German. The memories 1914–1933. Munich dtv 2002
  6. ↑ Deulig Tonwoche No. 083 of August 2, 1933: Community camp of court trainees in Jüterbog, State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice Dr. Roland Freisler gives a speech. Youtube. Retrieved October 8, 2014.
  7. ↑ “Here Walerjan Wrobel was sentenced to death before his trial. In the preview of June 26, 1942, the gentlemen stated: No concerns about the death penalty for this 17-year-old boy. The verdict was then also for death - the court failed to make use of any of the legal options indicated by the defense attorney to come to a different verdict. In the follow-up on July 10, 1942, the court and the public prosecutor's office then recommended a pardon to a long-term prison camp. However, the attorney general was against it and 'Mr Senator' Rothenberger considered a pardon to be very dangerous for a Pole who had infected a German barn. So: execution. ”Hans Wrobel: On the theory and practice of the special courts - using the example of the Bremen special court (1940–1945). Lecture on the occasion of the traveling exhibition "Justice under National Socialism - About Crimes in the Name of the German People" in the Oldenburg Regional Court on June 28, 2001
  8. ^ Reichsgesetzbl. 1942 I, p. 535
  9. ↑ Federal Minister of Justice (ed.): In the name of the German people - Justice and National Socialism. Berlin 1989, p. 299, ISBN 3-8046-8731-8 .
  10. ^ Susanne Schott: Curt Rothenberger - a political biography. Univ.-Diss. Halle (Saale) 2001, Annex 15, p. 210 f. (completely online)
  11. ↑ RICHTER LETTERS: CONFIDENTIAL Circulars FROM THE REICH MINISTRY OF JUSTICE, 1942-1944, The Wiener Library London, Document 527
  12. ^ Judges' letters: Communications from the Reich Minister of Justice, No. 4, January 1, 1943, p. 26