Walter Wohler

Walter Karl Albert Wohler (born January 28, 1893 in Groß-Mierau , Berent district , † August 2, 1968 in Hamburg ) was a German lawyer and during the Second World War President of the Danzig Higher Regional Court .

biography

The son of a manor owner completed his Abitur at the Royal High School in Gdansk from 1911 to 1914 to study law at the universities of Tübingen, Berlin and Königsberg, which he passed in May 1914 with the first state examination in law. After the outbreak of World War I , he interrupted his legal traineeship and took part in the war as a volunteer with the 36th Field Artillery Regiment. Awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class, among other things , he retired from the army in March 1919 as a first lieutenant in the reserve. He then continued his legal clerkship in Danzig and passed the second state examination in November 1921. First he worked as a legal assistant at the Senate of the Free City of Danzig , then from 1922 as a judge at the District Court of Danzig and from 1923 as a councilor in the administration of the Free City of Danzig. From 1927 he was a judge at the Danzig Regional Court , whose director he became in early January 1933.

After the People's Day election in Gdansk on May 28, 1933 , in which the Gdansk NSDAP achieved an absolute majority, Wohler became the head of the interior department at the Gdansk Senate. The NSDAP was he already joined in August 1932 (membership. 1204502). At the end of June 1934 he joined the SS , within which he achieved the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer in 1942. He achieved the same rank in the Waffen SS . For the SS he worked as a legal advisor in SS Section XVI. From June 1935 he was Gauführer in Danzig of the NS-Rechtswahrerbund and became deputy head of the Gaurechtsamt. From mid-February 1937 he was President of the Upper Court and the Regional Court in Danzig. In 1939 he became a member of the Academy for German Law .

After the attack on Poland by the National Socialist German Reich , Wohler took part in a meeting called for by Gauleiter Albert Forster for high-ranking party officials and heads of authorities. During this confidential meeting, Forster informed the participants that “dangerous” Poles, Polish priests and Jews would have to be “removed” in order to prevent a possible uprising. Trustworthy employees of the participants should have lists of names drawn up for persons to be shot. After the creation of the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia , Wohler was appointed President of the newly created Higher Regional Court of Danzig soon after the start of the Second World War in early November 1939 and remained in this position until 1945. During the Second World War he was indispensable and therefore did not have to do any military service. In 1940 Forster awarded him the Danziger Kreuz 1st and 2nd class for his Nazi service. In the same year he received the War Merit Cross II. Class without swords. Wohler was a supporter of the Polish Criminal Law Ordinance and was involved in anti-Polish measures in his sphere of activity. Due to the approaching Red Army , due to the war, he had the evacuation prepared for the jurisdiction in the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia in September 1944.

After the end of the war he was interned by the Allies for three years. In November 1949 he was classified as “less burdened” (category III) after a court proceedings and after an appeal in 1950 he was denazified as a “fellow traveler” . He was granted retirement benefits from a district court director. His subsequent efforts to be accepted into the Hamburg judicial service were unsuccessful.

Preliminary judicial inquiries were initiated in 1967 against the presidents of the higher regional court and attorneys general at the conference of the Reich Ministry of Justice on legal questions relating to euthanasia. Wohler died before the remaining accused were put out of prosecution by the Limburg Regional Court on May 27, 1970 .

literature

• Moritz von Köckritz: The German Higher Regional Court Presidents in National Socialism (1933–1945) (= Legal History Series Bd. 413), Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-61791-5 , pp. 452–459.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ernst Klee : What they did - What they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews , Frankfurt am Main 2004, p. 265