Walter Müller (lawyer, 1889)

Walter Müller (born 25. April 1889 in Poppelsdorf , died after 1953) was a German jurist and Cologne regional court president in the era of National Socialism .

Life

Studies and legal activity until 1933

Walter Müller comes from a family of lawyers. His father Ottomar Müller was a senior judge at the Cologne Higher Regional Court and in 1907 a member of the Reichstag for the Liberal People's Party . He raised his six children in a national and obedient spirit. Müller attended the Apostle High School in Cologne and studied law in Tübingen, Berlin and Bonn. He joined the Borussia student union . However, his achievements were only moderate, he only passed the 1911 exam, when retaken, only just barely. He was a one-year volunteer in 1911 , began his legal clerkship, but took part in the First World War as a soldier from 1914 to 1918 . He was dismissed with the rank of first lieutenant and worked from 1920 to 1928 as a public prosecutor at the Cologne Regional Court . He then became a judge at the Cologne District Court , where he received no special assessments. Müller compensated for his lack of specialist knowledge with a soldier appearance.

Müller was active in the Kyffhäuserbund , was a member of the Bückeburger Jäger corps and held an honorary position in the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge . He wanted to join the NSDAP in 1929 , but was stopped by the Cologne NSDAP leader Josef Grohé so as not to endanger his position as a civil servant. But he was connected to the party as a legal advisor.

President of the Regional Court of Cologne during National Socialism

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933, Müller became a member of the NSDAP and on December 1, 1933 (almost against his will) was appointed the successor of Alfred Kuttenkeuler, who had retired early, as president of the regional court . He was the superior of 900 employees, 130 to 150 of them judges. He was a member of the Gaufführung of the NSRB and, at least formally, the head of the Gaurechtsamt of the Gauleitung Cologne , which entitled him to wear a uniform.

After the Cologne Special Court, which was under his jurisdiction, was reprimanded by the party in 1936 for allegedly too lenient judgments, he turned personally to the judges of the special court to encourage them to take a tougher course. During the war, for example, he reprimanded a district court judge for a too mild judgment in the case of a German who had given a prisoner of war a (rationed) sandwich, and established the maxim: "One sandwich - one year in prison, one kiss - two years in prison, Sexual intercourse - head off ”.

Prosecution after 1945

At the end of the war, a district judge accused Müller of interfering with the administration of justice and was arrested by the American military on April 25, 1945. He was then taken over by the British occupying forces, held in solitary confinement in "Klingelpütz" for three months and then transferred to the Recklinghausen internment camp, from which he was released in October 1946. The Arbitration Chamber proceedings have been suspended because of the legal proceedings that have now begun. In 1948 he was charged with crimes against humanity and for perverting the law before the Bonn Regional Court.

Specifically, Müller was accused of having pressured judges of the Cologne Special Court to impose harsher sentences, especially the death penalty , during ongoing proceedings . During the trial against a Jewish textile merchant and other defendants for war crimes , he is said to have demanded several death sentences from the assessors with the words: "Whatever you may object - there is no discussion here - the turnip has to go down, the Gauleiter wants it" . The Bonn jury, however, lacked evidence that Müller intentionally wanted to make the judges submissive and against their convictions. It was also uncertain who the death penalty should hit. On appeal by the prosecution, the Supreme Court for the British Zone overturned the judgment on May 10, 1949, recalling that if a judge was tempted to bend the law, it was not necessary to provide evidence that a judge should be induced to act contrary to his convictions . Already the reference that the Gauleiter expected a severed "turnip" is a clear case that Müller wanted to get the judges to be guided by legally inadmissible considerations. On March 14, 1950, the Bonn Regional Court sentenced Müller to one year in prison in this case . In other cases, the court found the many death sentences of the Cologne Special Court to be justified by the fact that the judges addressed had only followed their own convictions.

Both Müller and the public prosecutor's office appealed against the judgment. The Federal Court of Justice overturned the conviction due to a formal error in the appointment of the jury, but confirmed the acquittals in the other cases. The Bonn Regional Court finally acquitted Müller on June 17, 1953 for lack of evidence regarding the internal facts of the matter, because it declared the saying, "The turnip must go down," as not credible. It certified Müller to appear as a "straight, upright, soldierly and comradely nature, as a person and as a judge without any particular sensitivity". With his lower legal education he only tried “to 'harden' the judges subordinate to him in their formation of convictions and conscience for the tasks of the war, so that they could judge conscientiously and at the same time harshly from the hardship they had gained.” It justified his acquittal, so the former OLG judge Helmut Kramer , insofar with Müller's "notoriously low professional qualification and political delusion."

literature

• LG Bonn, June 17, 1953 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XI, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1974, No. 360 pp. 1–93 Influence on the administration of justice as well as inducement to perverse the law and to breach the confidentiality of advice by the President of the Regional Court of Cologne, in that he u. a. Judges, especially at the special court, were inappropriately instructed about their duties and the necessity of harsh punishments during the war, sharply criticized judgments deemed to be too mild at judges' meetings and in individual discussions with judges, received information about the chamber's vote and called judges to speak because of 'too mild' votes and arranged for the judge to impose the (death) sentences requested by the Gauleiter , also contains the previous judgments
• Matthias Herbers: Organizations at war: the administration of justice in the higher regional court district of Cologne 1939–1945 . Tübingen: Mohr, 2012. Köln, Univ., Diss., 2010 ISBN 978-3-16-151887-4 , p. 177, fn. 433 (not viewed)
• Barbara Manthe: Judges in the National Socialist War Society: Everyday professional and private life of judges in the Cologne Higher Regional Court, 1939–1945 . Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013 (not viewed)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biographical information and assessments based on the court judgments in 1950 and 1953
2. ^ Judgment, p. 23
3. ↑ There is no literature on the classification of Müller by the Spruchkammer (n).
4. ↑ ^{a b} Helmut Kramer: Judge in front of the court. The legal processing of the special jurisdiction . In: Contemporary legal history NRW 15: National Socialist special jurisdiction. A conference proceedings (2007), pp. 122–172, here p. 128.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Helmut Kramer: Judge in front of the court. The legal processing of the special jurisdiction . In: Contemporary legal history NRW 15: National Socialist special jurisdiction. A conference proceedings (2007), p. 129.
6. ^ Helmut Kramer: Judge in front of the court. The legal processing of the special jurisdiction . In: Contemporary legal history NRW 15: National Socialist special jurisdiction. A conference proceedings (2007), p. 130.