Impunity Act 1954

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Basic data
Title: Law on the remission of penalties and fines and the suppression of criminal and administrative fine proceedings
Short title: Impunity Act 1954
Abbreviation: StFG 1954
Type: Federal law
Scope: Federal Republic of Germany
Legal matter: Procedural law , criminal proceedings , penal execution
Issued on: July 17, 1954 ( BGBl. I p. 203 )
Entry into force on: July 18, 1954
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The Law on Exemption from Punishment of 1954 , officially the law on the waiver of penalties and fines and the suppression of criminal and administrative fine proceedings of July 17, 1954, was an amnesty law to rectify the exceptional circumstances created by "war and post-war events". According to Section 1, penalties and fines that had already been imposed were waived for criminal offenses and administrative offenses that had been committed before January 1, 1953, and pending proceedings were put down.

The law is historically significant because, according to Section 6 also benefited perpetrators of so-called final phase crimes who were committed under the influence of the extraordinary circumstances of the collapse in the period between October 1, 1944 and July 31, 1945 in the acceptance of an official, service or legal obligation, in particular an order were.

prehistory

A first impunity law was passed in 1949 and came into force on January 1, 1950. Crimes committed before September 15, 1949 were exempt from punishment under certain conditions. The law was part of a policy of the past aimed at ending the Allied denazification policy and integrating the many petty criminals and followers into the new German society. It was not necessarily aimed at the impunity of National Socialist perpetrators, but rather in the debates black market deals or property crimes during the post-war period were highlighted. But it could also include more serious offenses, but not homicides from the time of National Socialism.

By 1951, almost 800,000 people had been pardoned. How many of them were National Socialist perpetrators can no longer be determined. Their number should have been in the five-digit range. There is evidence of 2547 discontinuations of proceedings. In addition, there were a further 1000–1500 people who had already been partially or fully waived.

Section 10 of the 1949 Act was of particular socio-political importance, according to which crimes committed for political reasons between May 10, 1945 and the entry into force of the Civil Status Act were exempt from punishment regardless of the amount of the expected punishment if the perpetrator voluntarily revoked his false information by March 31, 1950 at the latest and made up for information that was omitted up to now. Out of an estimated 80,000 people who had gone into hiding under false names after the war ended, 241 then surrendered to the authorities. With Section 7 of the Law on Exemption from Punishment in 1954, the disclosure period was extended to December 31, 1954, and for people abroad to six months after entering the Federal Republic of Germany. By the end of 1954, 954 cases had been recorded.

Various interest groups tried, for a variety of reasons, to advance a new amnesty law. Robert Kempner , a former prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials , was concerned with the amnesty for minor property and economic offenses, for which high sentences were sometimes imposed during the occupation. The Jewish publicist Karl Marx campaigned for Jews who had gotten off the rails after their liberation from the concentration camps. It was primarily about the group of Displaced Persons from Eastern Europe who had not emigrated to Israel and who found it difficult to gain a foothold in the Federal Republic. The Central Council of Jews also campaigned for this group .

Emergence

Like its predecessor law of 1949, the law of 1954 did not primarily serve the amnesty of Nazi perpetrators, but also addressed other political goals. Bonn officials who had supplied Robert Platow's information service and who faced charges of corruption and breach of trust after a first attempt at amnesty had failed due to constitutional concerns should go without penalty. It also amnestied tax offenses and offenses against regulations of interzonal trade . Those who made themselves liable to prosecution by claiming “dishonorable facts” should also benefit from the law. Konrad Adenauer himself was interested in this point , as he had claimed untruths about two SPD functionaries in the last federal election campaign. In addition, there was a general amnesty for minor offenses with a penalty of three months (Section 2).

However, the law was of lasting importance above all with regard to the amnesty of Nazi crimes. Ernst Achenbach , party friend of Justice Minister Thomas Dehler and during the Third Reich head of the political department of the German embassy in Paris, founded a “preparatory committee for bringing about a general amnesty” in 1952. It was about ending the criminal prosecution of Nazi perpetrators at home and abroad. Werner Best , who was working in Achenbach's law firm at the time, wrote a memorandum in which he made a distinction between political crimes and those carried out for private reasons. Achenbach used his considerable political influence - he had the strong regional association of the FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia behind him - for his goals. He submitted a draft for a new law. He put forward other arguments, such as violations in the area of ​​trade with Eastern Europe. But he also clearly indicated his goals with regard to the Nazi perpetrators. Dehler, for whom these demands went too far, tried to block the matter. Achenbach made another attempt in 1953. Best now formulated the goal that the law should grant an amnesty for all “past crimes” that were “not committed for personal reasons”. The tense relationship between Thomas Dehler and Achenbach, especially with a view to his attempt to infiltrate the FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia as a National Socialist, played no discernible role in the further course of the amnesty question. Rather, Dehler had his own draft law drawn up in his house.

Shortly after the 1953 federal election , Dehler announced that his ministry was working on a bill for general impunity. He lost his post to Fritz Neumayer in October . In the Ministry, the preparatory work for such a law had meanwhile progressed. But other bodies such as representatives of the Federal Prosecutor's Office , in particular Max Güde , also contributed ideas. The concept of a command emergency was emphasized. Güde saw the limit of what was worthy of amnesty where acts of cruelty or low convictions had occurred. Only murder was not included in the draft. As an alternative, it was suggested that the amnesty should be limited to acts for which no longer than three years' imprisonment could be expected. A crime period for the time of the collapse of the National Socialist regime was also envisaged. The state justice ministers were skeptical about including the emergency order in the law, because there is a risk of promoting "bad deeds". Ultimately, the countries proposed a compromise. Only Berlin stuck to its "reluctance to cover (National Socialist) acts of violence with the cloak of love".

The Ministry of Justice followed Güde's suggestions and worked them into the draft bill. For the most part, former employees of the Reich Ministry of Justice such as Franz Massfeller as well as war judges and special judges were involved in drafting the draft law . Justice Minister Fritz Neumayer wanted to "draw a line under the criminal offenses that were directly or indirectly related to the circumstances of a chaotic time". A central passage was the so-called collapse paragraph. It was about "crimes that were committed under the influence of the extraordinary circumstances of the collapse in the period between October 1, 1944 and July 31, 1945 in the acceptance of an official, service or legal obligation, in particular an order ". In these cases, too, impunity should apply, but only for acts that were threatened with less than three years imprisonment.

Legislative process

This very obvious attempt to allow Nazi perpetrators to go unpunished was the subject of intense debate in the legislative process. Criticism came from the SPD, for example, from Otto Heinrich Greve , but also from the governing parties such as Hermann Höcherl (CSU). An amendment by the SPD, which wanted to reduce the amnesty sentence to one year for the collapse paragraph, found a majority in the legal committee, but was rejected at the third reading of the law in the Bundestag. In the final vote, the majority of the SPD voted against it. Among the supporters, however, was the parliamentary group leader Erich Ollenhauer . There were also some left-wing liberals from the FDP and a CDU MP. After the Federal Council appealed to the mediation committee , the law had to be discussed again in the Bundestag. Ultimately, most of the SPD parliamentary group also agreed. In view of the widespread line-of-mouth mentality, the SPD was also ready to accommodate the “little Nazi perpetrators”. This law was passed by a large majority.

It was clearly visible that the collapse paragraph could also exempt more serious Nazi crimes from punishment. Incidentally, the law also deleted all entries in the criminal records (Section 20 (1) No. 2) that came from convictions by the ruling chambers from the time before the founding of the Federal Republic. From the law of 1949 the so-called illegal paragraph (§ 7) "for the disguise of the civil status" was taken over. This meant that Nazi perpetrators in hiding could go unpunished.

meaning

400,000 people benefited from the law. The bulk of this was due to the general amnesty. The number of beneficiaries of Nazi perpetrators was very small. The controversial collapse paragraph was only applied 77 times in the first few years. One case was one of the defendants in the trial of the massacre in the Arnsberg Forest . The Impunity Act was particularly important in terms of political culture. The collapse paragraph allowed the perpetrators to withdraw to an emergency of command. The law demonstratively put a line under the denazification efforts of the victorious powers and was part of the self-rehabilitation and legitimation of the young Federal Republic. In this respect, the law of 1954 was even more important than that of 1949. It is probably no coincidence that the number of new investigative proceedings against Nazi perpetrators fell significantly. In 1955, only 21 people were convicted of acts with a Nazi background.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas Eichmüller: No general amnesty . Munich 2012, p. 39 f.
  2. ↑ Illegal to the Dead, Der Spiegel , April 13, 1998
  3. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. Munich 1996, pp. 103-106.
  4. ^ Collision in Karlsruhe Der Spiegel , January 12, 1955
  5. ↑ Grandmother's principles, Der Spiegel , December 23, 1959
  6. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. Munich 1996, p. 108.
  7. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. Munich 1996, pp. 106-111.
  8. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. Munich 1996, pp. 111-115.
  9. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. Munich 1996, p. 102.
  10. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. Munich 1996, pp. 121-125.
  11. ↑ Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. Munich 1996, p. 101.