justice
Commemorative plaque at the Federal Court of Justice honors heavily incriminated Nazi lawyers
The controversial commemorative plaque commemorating Nazi lawyers who died in the prison camp after the Second World War hangs in the palace of the Federal Court of Justice. Photo: Uli Deck/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
A historic commemorative plaque for Reich judges and attorneys who died in Soviet camps after 1945 still hangs at the Federal Court of Justice. Would it be best to rip them out of the wall?
Since the 1950s, a memorial plaque at the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has commemorated 34 lawyers who died in Soviet internment camps after the end of the war – scientific studies now show that most of them were heavily involved in Nazi injustice.
Another small part of the Reich Court Councilors and Reich Attorneys was moderately to little burdened, said the Mainz legal historian Andreas Roth at a symposium on how to deal with the controversial panel in Karlsruhe. Only a few were not charged at all.
The marble plaque is embedded in a wall on the first floor of the historic main building, the Hereditary Grand Ducal Palace. It reads: “In memory of the 34 members of the Reich Court and the Reich Prosecutor’s Office who died in the Mühlberg an der Elbe and Buchenwald camps in 1945 and 1946”.
Until 1945, the supreme civil and criminal court was based in Leipzig. Almost 40 lawyers were arrested there by the Soviet secret police after the end of the Second World War and most of them were taken to the former Mühlburg prisoner of war camp and later also to the former Buchenwald concentration camp.
23 loyal NSDAP members
One of the probably only three survivors, the former Reichsgerichtsrat August Schaefer, had written in 1957 for the “Deutsche Richterzeitung” about “The Great Dying” – that’s the title. He described hard work assignments and catastrophic hygienic conditions, which 34 fellow inmates did not survive – a third of all members of the former Reich Court and the Reich Prosecutor’s Office. “A difficult fate, undeserved for the court and for its members,” wrote Schaefer.
When the plaque was unveiled in October 1957, the first BGH President, Hermann Weinkauff, spoke of “innocent victims” and “martyrs of injustice”. For more than 20 years there has been a flowered, altar-like porch and a book of condolence for the bereaved and visitors to the court.
It was not until 1979 that the Stern magazine made it public that 23 of the 34 Reich judges and attorneys were loyal NSDAP members and spoke of a “memorial plaque for Nazi judges”.
Roth said that, particularly among the criminal judges, more or less everyone who was remembered was involved in Nazi injustice. You would have participated in judgments because of “racial defilement” and death sentences. Roth’s assessment of the civil judges was somewhat more differentiated. According to him, there were also individual senates here that could not be proven to have had any incriminating decisions.
Roth’s research colleague, the Mainz historian Michael Kißener, said that at the end of the 1970s there was the first real turning point in the handling of the plaque at the Federal Court of Justice. However, the real political problem has not been solved. To date, no BGH president has been able to decide to open the breach.
“Some people didn’t and don’t go fast enough”
A triangular stele made of gilded brass now stands on the ground floor of the palace as a memorial to the victims of the Nazi judiciary. Since 2018, a plaque with a brief explanation and a reference to the commissioned study has been hanging right next to the plaque. There has also been a large display for about half a year.
Kißener’s and Roth’s research is part of a comprehensive review of the Nazi burdens of the BGH in the years 1950 to 1965. This project is expected to be completed in 2024.
BGH President Bettina Limperg said she was convinced that this embedding in the larger scientific context was important. “For some it didn’t and doesn’t go fast enough.” But there is also a responsibility towards those who suffered and died in the camps. Is it the right way to destroy the tablet or rip it out and take it to another place? And if you decide to do it in the end, what should happen to the hole in the wall? She does not want to answer these questions either alone or in silence.
The symposium was actually supposed to take place in 2020, but had to be postponed twice due to the corona pandemic.