Robert Hartmann (lawyer)

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Robert Hartmann (born July 1, 1901 in Heilberscheid ; † unknown, after 1961) was a German lawyer. During the Second World War he was a judge at the People's Court and the Special Court in Prague and in this position he was involved in numerous death sentences of the Nazi martial law.

Life and activity

The professional lawyer Hartmann joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 ( membership number 2.303.281).

In April 1936 Hartmann became a judge at the People's Court with the rank of People's Court Council. In this position, for example, on June 8, 1937, Hartmann sentenced the young Erich Honecker - at that time active in the communist underground movement and later for many years Chairman of the State Council of the GDR - to a prison sentence of ten years for "preparing a treasonable company under aggravating circumstances". Honecker's co-defendant Bruno Baum received 13 years.

During the Second World War Hartmann was 1st chairman of the 2nd and 6th Senate of the People's Court and chairman of the 1st criminal chamber (1941) and the fourth criminal chamber (1943/1944) of the special court in Prague. In these positions he was involved in the imposition of numerous death sentences by the Nazi war justice system during the Second World War, for example on August 1, 1941 against the metalworker Karl Anton Wagner and his wife Maria Emma Wagner, on March 31, 1942 against William Otto Bauer (as Chairman of the 6th Senate), on July 21, 1942 against Alfred Kaufmann and Heinrich Will (as Chairman of the 2nd Senate VGH), on August 28, 1942 against Josef Landgraf and Anton Brunner (as Chairman of the 2nd Senate VGH) (judgment not carried out), on September 22, 1942 the death sentence against Erwin Puschmann and 15 years in prison against Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (as chairman of the 2nd Senate), on October 13, 1942 death sentences against Hanno Günther , Wolfgang Pander , Bernhard Sikorski , Emmerich Schaper and Alfred Schmidt-Sas , on November 2, 1942 against Ernst Stoiber (as Chairman of the 2nd Senate VGH), on December 15, 1942 against the seamstress Rosa Hofmann (as Chairman of the 6th Senate VGH), on May 18, 1943 against en Marianne Golz and seventeen other people for favoring enemies of the Reich. Overall, he is said to have been jointly responsible for at least 21 death sentences against Czech opponents of the Nazi regime at the Special Court in Prague alone (i.e. not counting the judgments passed in the context of his work at the People's Court).

After the Second World War, Hartmann was able to continue his career in the Federal Republic of Germany's judicial service: He became head of the Koenigswinter District Court . Around 1960, according to a publication by the Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime, he held the rank of chief magistrate in this city. According to Meckel and Wiehn, Hartmann took advantage of a “well-funded exit opportunity” offered to him in 1961, so he should have retired under favorable conditions at that time.

Individual evidence

  1. Ulrich Völklein : Honecker , 2003, p. 122.
  2. ^ Adolf Hasenöhrl: Struggle, Resistance, Persecution of the Sudeten German Social Democrats: Documentation of the German Social Democrats from Czechoslovakia in the fight against Henlein and Hitler , 1983, p. 531.
  3. Bernward Dörner: "Heimtücke": the law as a weapon: control, deterrence and persecution in Germany 1933-1945 , 1998, p. 280.
  4. Siglinde Boblecher: Narrated story: Catholics, Conservatives, Legitimists , 1992, p. 359.
  5. Willi Weinert: “I want you to always stay close to you -”: Biographies of communist resistance fighters in Austria. With comments on the resistance struggle of the Communist Party of Austria and a list of victims , 2005, p. 97.
  6. ^ Against forgetting entry on Marianne Golz
  7. The unresolved present. A documentation on the role and influence of former leading National Socialists in the Federal Republic of Germany , Frankfurt a. M. 1962, p. 81.
  8. Union des Combattants Antifascistes (Ed.): On les appelle ... juges! [A] ctivités scélérates sur le territoire occupé de la Tchécoslovaquie, de 230 juges et procureurs nazis actuellement au service de la Justice de l'Allemagne de l'Ouest. Orbis, Prague 1960, p. 79 (French, limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed on January 16, 2020]).
  9. Andreas Meckel / Erhard R. Wiehn: To let justice run free. The judicial murders of Oskar Löwenstein and Marianne Golz by the Prague Special Court in 1943 , 2009, p. 110.