Werner Lueben

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Werner Lueben (born March 23, 1894 in Breslau , † July 28, 1944 in Torgau ) was a German chief staff judge with the rank of lieutenant general .

Life

Werner Lueben was the son of a Protestant civil servant family. His father was a steward in the Prussian army and in the military administration. After graduating from high school, Lueben studied law in Halle . He interrupted his studies in 1914 when the First World War broke out when he volunteered . In August 1914 he was assigned to the Mansfeld Field Artillery Regiment No. 75 . In March 1915 he was promoted to sergeant and in January 1916 to lieutenant of the reserve . During the First World War he was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class. He was released from military service in February 1919, joined the Freikorps Freiwilliges Landesjägerkorps and was involved in the fight against workers' uprisings. He then resumed his studies and passed the first state examination in May 1920 .

From 1920 to 1923 Lueben was a trainee lawyer at the Naumburg Higher Regional Court . The second state examination took place in September 1923. Then he joined the judicial service in Bartenstein . In May 1925 he married Klara von Scholten. The couple later had a son and two daughters. From June 1928 he was deployed in Königsberg . As a district judge , he was transferred to the Berlin district court .

On November 1, 1933, at his own request, he switched to the Army Attorney's Office in Military District III at the branch in Breslau on a trial basis . After the takeover of the Nazi party , he apparently came to party offices of the NSDAP in conflict and now joined the newly established military justice of the Reichswehr . Lueben was appointed judge-martial at military district court III in March 1934. In January 1935 he came to the court of the army service in Breslau. On March 8, 1935, he was appointed senior war judge. At the beginning of 1936 he became Ministerialrat of the Army Legal Department in the Reich Ministry of War in Berlin. After the establishment of the Reich Court Martial (RKG) in October 1936, Lueben was appointed as Reich war attorney there. In September 1939 he became a Reich judicial judge. In August 1937 he was appointed a legally qualified member of the Wehrmacht Service Criminal Police Office .

Senate President at the Reich Court Martial

On January 1, 1944, Werner Lueben was appointed Senate President at the RKG. As President of the Senate, Lueben approved hundreds of death sentences. He made full use of the penal framework of the Reich Court Martial and systematically imposed the death penalty . "Lueb's decision-making practice" also included Jehovah's Witnesses who were convicted of conscientious objection for "decomposing military strength", as well as several people from the resistance movement in the occupied countries.

Suicide

The grave of Werner Luebens and other family members in the southern cemetery in Halle

Werner Lueben committed suicide on July 28, 1944 in his apartment in Torgau. He was found by his driver with his service pistol next to him. The surviving death certificate, however, notes “suddenly died” and a “mental exhaustion” was present. The Wehrmacht disguised the suicide of one of their Senate presidents and officially announced that Lueben had died in an air raid. A funeral parade was held in Torgau before Lueben was transferred to Halle. The President of the Reich Court Martial, Admiral Max Bastian , laid a wreath on behalf of all employees of the Reich Court Martial. Lueben's grave is in the Halle Südfriedhof .

The exact reasons for the suicide are unclear. Statements that Lueben's suicide had something to do with the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 against Adolf Hitler remain, according to the historian Norbert Haase, mere “assumptions” for which there is no evidence: “50 years after the events, relatives are involved in the assassination plans for excluded ". Other suspicions are that the suicide happened out of conscience, as three priests were to be sentenced to death on Lueben's death. In the proceedings against the Szczecin clergy provicer Carl Lampert , Father Friedrich Lorenz and chaplain Herbert Simoleit , Lueben, in a letter to the President of the Reich Court Martial on May 27, 1944, criticized the interrogation protocols obtained by Gestapo methods as alleged evidence, as this, according to Lueben literally "do not constitute a suitable basis for a confession". The trial was scheduled for July 28th - the day Lueben took his own life.

But “a 'justice martyr'”, says Haase, “is probably not Lueben. Because the hesitation in the trial against the Szczecin clergy was preceded by a hundredfold approval of death sentences. "

Cinematic representation

Werner Lueben was played by the Swiss actor Bruno Ganz in the feature film A Hidden Life , which was published in 2019 and deals with the fate of the Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter .

literature

  • Norbert Haase : General Staff Judge Werner Lueben. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. 68 CVs (2 volumes in one). Primus, 2nd, through. and bilbiogr. updated edition, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-89678-727-9 , pp. 402-406.
  • Benedicta Maria Kempner : Priest before Hitler's tribunals. Rütten u. Loening, Munich 1966.
  • Benedicta Maria Kempner: General staff judge Lueben. A justice martyr. In: Publik No. 12/1970, p. 21.
  • Wolfgang Knauft: "The Stettin Case" remote-controlled . Editor of the Episcopal Ordinariate, Berlin 1994.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Norbert Haase: General Staff Judge Werner Lueben. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. 68 CVs . Darmstadt 2011, p. 403.
  2. ^ Norbert Haase: General Staff Judge Werner Lueben. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. 68 CVs . Darmstadt 2011, p. 404f.
  3. ↑ Silvia Zöller: The judge who doubted . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . January 30, 2020. Halle (Saale), p. 10 .
  4. ^ Norbert Haase: General Staff Judge Werner Lueben. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. 68 CVs . Darmstadt 2011, p. 405.
  5. ↑ Also on the following Wolfgang Knauft: "The Stettin case" remote controlled. Editor Bischöfliches Ordinariat, Berlin 1994, p. 52.
  6. ^ Norbert Haase: General Staff Judge Werner Lueben. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. 68 CVs . Darmstadt 2011, p. 404.
  7. ^ Manfred Messerschmidt : The Wehrmacht Justice 1933-1945 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2005, ISBN 3-506-71349-3 , p. 128.
  8. ^ Norbert Haase: General Staff Judge Werner Lueben. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. 68 CVs . Darmstadt 2011, p. 405.
personal data
SURNAME Lueben, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and general staff judge
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH July 28, 1944
Place of death Torgau