Desk abuser

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The term desk offender describes a person who does not commit a (criminal) act on his own responsibility, but is indirectly related to the act and thus initially remains in the background.

Origin of the term

The term desk perpetrator came up in reports on the Eichmann trial in 1961 and the first Auschwitz trial from 1963 to 1965. Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem about the “bureaucracy of murder” and “modern, state-employed mass murderers”, translated as “administrative mass murder” and “new administrative mass murderers” in the German edition of 1964. In this respect, the term - according to the matter - goes back to them.

Hannah Arendt is also considered to be the originator of the word. She did not yet use the phrase “desk murderer” in Eichmann in Jerusalem , but - as far as her publications are concerned - for the first time in 1966. In the foreword to the English translation of the book Auschwitz that was published at the time . Report on the criminal case against Mulka et al. a. before the Circuit Court Frankfurt by Bernd Naumann calls Adolf Eichmann a "desk murderer". Even earlier, at the beginning of 1964, the word “desk offender” appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .

Meaning and use

The term includes that the man behind, albeit indirectly, whether deliberately or at least approvingly, is also "active" and thus responsible. This primarily refers to civil servants or politicians who, as it were, issue or initiate orders from the “ green table ” or desk which, if they are implemented by others (vicarious agents, “willing helpers”) normally have or should be considered a criminal offense.

As a rule, the desk offender is someone who uses (state) power structures to have another person commit a crime . It is first a concept of political theory and then a legal term. However, this can also mean people who z. B. have a kind of "intellectual" accomplice or authorship through publications on a later act.

The term is mainly related to the planned at the desk mass murders in the extermination camps of the Nazis used. Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Müller , in France Maurice Papon , are often cited as examples of desk criminals . Those responsible for the shooting orders in the GDR also belong to this group of perpetrators.

Wilhelm Stuckart , who has a doctorate in law and State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior , who also wrote the commentary on the Nuremberg Laws with Hans Globke , was sentenced in one of the follow -up trials to the Nuremberg Trial , the Wilhelmstrasse Trial :

“If the commanders of the death camps ... are punished - and we have no doubt about that - then the men are equally punishable who, in the peaceful quiet of their offices in the ministries, took part in this campaign by drafting the ordinances, edicts and instructions necessary for its implementation to have."

Over the decades, the word became increasingly used and eventually added to the list of 100 words of the century . “Today everyone is considered a desk offender who sat at a desk as a lawyer, doctor, bureaucrat or propagandist during the Nazi era.” In 2014, a conference organized by the Institute for Cultural Studies in Essen on “Desk offenders - concept, history , Typology ".

Legal evaluation

An original perpetrator is not in itself possible in cases in which the person directly acting willfully and culpably. Only an attribution of the act of complicity would be possible, which, however, can cause certain problems in cases of the desk perpetrator . Indirect perpetration would also be conceivable ( Section 25 Paragraph 1 Alt. 2 StGB ). However, this would require a “defect” on the part of the investigator, which cannot be justified in cases of the deliberate and culpable offender. For this, the figure of the perpetrator behind the perpetrator was developed. The decisive factor for this is that the man behind can direct the event freely according to his will by virtue of his organizational rule and that the perpetrator acting directly can be exchanged at will. Thus, on the part of the man behind, there is not just incitement , but their own perpetration.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Christoph Jahr: The perpetrators behind the perpetrators. The term "desk clerk" and the strange career he's had . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of January 17, 2017, p. 36.
  2. ^ The judgment in the Wilhelmstrasse trial. The official wording of the decision in Case No. 11 of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal against von Weizsäcker u. others, with different reasons for the judgment, rectification decisions, d. basic legal provisions, e. Delay d. Court persons u. Witnesses and Introductions by Robert MW Kempner u. Carl Haensel. Edited with co-author from CH Tuerck. (officially recognized. Translated from the English), Bürger Verlag, Schwäbisch Gmünd 1950, p. 169.
  3. ↑ Program of the conference “Writing offenders - Concept, History, Typology” , on hsozkult.de, accessed on February 20, 2017.
  4. ↑ BGHSt 40, 218 ff.
  5. ^ A b Johannes Wessels (greetings) & Werner Beulke : Criminal law general part . 42nd edition. CF Müller, Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8114-9856-3 . Marg. 541.