Walther Ascher

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Walther Ascher (born June 21, 1900 ; † 1980 ) was a German lawyer . From 1950 to 1967 he was a judge at the Federal Court of Justice .

Career

Ascher passed both legal exams with "good" and was admitted to the district court in Offenbach. He committed himself to the Weimar Republic, was a member of the Hessian Republican Judges ' Association, and in 1932 and 1933 he voted for the Center Party and the SPD. According to the National Socialist race laws, he was considered a “full Jew”; due to the law to restore the civil service , he lost his professional position in June 1933. He then emigrated to Palestine , where he established himself as a lawyer in Tel Aviv .

After the surrender of Nazi Germany, he returned to his homeland, where he was recognized as a racially persecuted person. In July 1947 he was appointed judge at the Darmstadt Regional Court . He enjoyed the support of the lawyer and notary Karl Kanka , who was a member of the state parliament and deputy chairman of the CDU parliamentary group at this time. He asked the then Hessian Minister of Justice (and later Prime Minister) Georg-August Zinn (SPD) to promote Ascher "at least to the position (...) that he would have reached if the damaging event had not occurred", thereby making him the National Socialist Rewrote persecution. Tin was ready for that too.

At Zinn's suggestion, Ascher was appointed judge at the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) on October 2, 1950. In February 1958 he became chairman of the 4th Civil Senate . He held this position until his retirement at the end of 1967, when he resigned as one of the longest serving judges of the BGH.

As deputy chairman of the IV Civil Senate, Walther Ascher was in charge of the BGH judgment of January 7, 1956 (IV ZR 211/55), in which the Nazi injustice against Sinti and Roma in the period from 1940 to 1943 was justified with reasons for the judgment, which speak for a racist or even National Socialist way of thinking and were partly covered with a criminology textbook from the Nazi era. In 2015, the BGH President Bettina Limperg spoke of “unjustifiable case law” in relation to this judgment, for which “one can only be ashamed”. In view of Ascher's résumé, the lawyer Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke considers that he was overruled when the judgment was reached which, however, cannot be determined due to the confidentiality obligation.

literature

  • Karlmann Geiß , Kay Nehm , Hans Erich Brandner, Horst Hagen (eds.): 50 years of the Federal Court of Justice. Festschrift on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Federal Court of Justice, the Federal Prosecutor's Office and the Bar at the Federal Court of Justice. Heymann, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-452-24597-7

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: The Federal Court of Justice. Justice in Germany. Tischler, Berlin 2005, pp. 295-296. Same thing: from denazification to renazification of the judiciary in West Germany. In: forum historiae iuris , June 6, 2001, p. 15, Rn. 61.
  2. ^ Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: The Federal Court of Justice. Justice in Germany. Tischler, Berlin 2005, p. 296. The same: From denazification to renazification of the judiciary in West Germany. 2001, p. 15, Rn. 61-63.
  3. ↑ Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: From denazification to renazification of the judiciary in West Germany. 2001, p. 17, Rn. 71-72.
  4. ^ A b Christian Rath: Symposium in Karlsruhe - BGH is ashamed of antiziganism. In: taz.de , February 18, 2016.
  5. ↑ Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: From denazification to renazification of the judiciary in West Germany. 2001, p. 22, Rn. 93.
  6. ↑ President of the Federal Court of Justice Limpert visits Documentation Center , Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma, March 13, 2015.
  7. ↑ Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: From denazification to renazification of the judiciary in West Germany. 2001, p. 21, Rn. 88-89.
personal data
SURNAME Ascher, Walther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1900
DATE OF DEATH 1980