portrait
Today the Federal Council is voting on the new Federal Prosecutor General – it will be Jens Rommel. The experienced public prosecutor and criminal lawyer succeeds Peter Frank, who became a federal constitutional judge. Who is Rommel?
Jens Rommel is 51 years old, comes from Ellwangen in Swabia and studied law in Augsburg, Lund in Sweden, Würzburg and Lyon in France. His career as a lawyer is dominated by criminal law. In Ravensburg he became a public prosecutor and later senior public prosecutor.
Today he is a judge in a criminal division of the Federal Court of Justice. In between there were other uses in the judiciary, but one stands out: Rommel headed the central office for the investigation of National Socialist crimes in Ludwigsburg from 2015 to 2020. His task there was to bring possible criminal proceedings against suspected murderers during the National Socialist era.
Search for Nazi criminals
He routinely encounters a standard question, especially during his time in Ludwigsburg: Rommel? Is he related to Erwin Rommel, the field marshal of the German Wehrmacht in World War II? No, as far as he knows, he is not related, says Jens Rommel. Not more.
But of course he is aware of the associations that this question suggests. Was there someone who was related to Erwin Rommel hunting down the last Nazi criminals? For Jens Rommel, something like that doesn’t matter.
He did the work in Ludwigsburg out of the deep inner conviction that it was legally and morally necessary – but “without persecution and always looking for the best possible justice,” is how she sees it SWR-Journalist Jana Lange, who portrayed Rommel during his time at the central office for the prosecution of Nazi crimes. In particular, Rommel succeeded in bringing the search for the last perpetrators back into public consciousness by repeatedly presenting cabinets full of historical files on possible Nazi perpetrators.
From Ravensburg to Karlsruhe
These are good conditions for the office of Federal Prosecutor General. We hear that Rommel’s contact with the authorities was never broken. He is also a member of the FDP, which would have pleased his party colleague Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann.
As a young public prosecutor in Ravensburg, he received a coveted secondment as a research assistant to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. The fact that he is now coming back as boss is not unique, but rather unusual. So far, only Federal Prosecutor General Kay Nehm, who headed the authority from 1994 to 2006, was a “homegrown” person.
Many employees in the Federal Prosecutor’s Office see this positively. The authority is comparatively small and is considered to be more family-like. Even though the past bosses were always treated loyally from the outside, it was always heard that they were unfamiliar with the “spirit” and customs of the house. Christmas parties included.
The Reuss process is waiting
However, there is much more waiting for Rommel than official customs. The proceedings against suspected members of the putschist group around Prince Reuss will probably begin in the summer. For the Federal Prosecutor General, this means three relatively simultaneous criminal proceedings at the higher regional courts in Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart with two dozen defendants and hundreds of thousands of pages of files. And the problem of having to keep an eye on developments in the different processes and compare them with each other.
A unique challenge at a time when numerous other investigations and main negotiations are already underway in the areas of left-wing and right-wing terrorism, Islamist terrorism, espionage and international criminal law.
Vote in the Federal Council
Efficiently dividing up complex problems in a small team and dealing with them together was Rommel’s reality at the central office in Ludwigsburg. As a judge at the Federal Court of Justice, he currently works in a collegium with four other judges from the 4th Criminal Senate.
In the future, these dimensions will become considerably larger – but the question of his relationship with Erwin Rommel will certainly remain with him, as will the prosecution of Nazi criminals: one day before his personality is up for a vote in the Federal Council, the Federal Court of Justice has held an oral hearing on the matter announced a 98-year-old woman from Itzehoe who has appealed against her conviction as an assistant in the Stutthof concentration camp (5 StR 326/23). On the part of the state, the Federal Prosecutor General represents this appeal.