Roland Freisler was known as the hanging judge. Acting as judge, jury and
prosecution of the First Senate of the People’s Court, he sent thousands of
people to their deaths. He also served as court recorder, so he could compose
of the written grounds for his sentences with his own notions of a National
Socialist criminal court. His style of presiding in his court was to scream and
shout at the defendants, humiliating them, and making them appear as common
criminals.
His
most famous cases were the people accused of complicity in the July 20, 1944,
assassination attempt on Hitler. The accused were unshaven and dressed in
ill-fitting clothes from concentration camp victims. Belts and suspenders were
taken away. One victim had to keep grabbing the trousers so they wouldn’t fall
down. Freisler screamed, “You dirty old man! Why do you keep fiddling with your
trousers?”
How
did such a man arrive at this place?
Born
in 1893, Freisler served in World War I as an officer cadet in 1914, and by
1915, a lieutenant. He won the Iron Cross of both classes. In October 1915, he
was captured by the Russians. As a prisoner in Russia, Freisler learned
Russian, and is said to have developed an interest in Marxism after the Russian
Revolution. He was appointed
as a commissar for the camp’s food supplies.
After
the prisoner camps were dissolved in 1918, Freisler was said to have been a
convinced Communist, although this is unsupported. Freisler denied the accusations,
but he never escaped the stigma of being a Bolshevik.
He became
a Doctor of Law in 1922, and joined the Nazi Party in July 1925, where he
served as defense counsel for Party members who got into trouble with the law.
One person opined that he was “unsuitable for any leadership post, since he is
an unreliable and moody person.” He represented the Reich Ministry of Justice
at the Wannsee Conference in January, 1942, when the plans of the Final
Solution, the murder of all European Jews, were made.
He
was never appointed to cabinet, because he had no influential patron, and his younger
brother, Oswald, appeared as the defense counsel in trials which the Nazis wanted
to use for propaganda purposes. When Goebbels proposed Freisler to replace the Reich
Justice Minister, who had died, Hitler allegedly retorted, “That old Bolshevik?
No!”
In
August, 1942, Hitler promoted named Freisler to serve as president of the
People’s Court. This court, set up outside the frame of law, allowed Freisler
to run roughshod over legal niceties. He had jurisdiction over a broad array of
political offences, like black marketeering, work slowdowns, and defeatism. The
People’s Court almost always agreed with the prosecution. The number of death
sentences rose sharply under Freisler’s tenure. Being brought before it was equivalent
to a death sentence.
One
of his victims was a Catholic priest, Joseph Müller, who told a joke. The joke
itself did not bring about Müller’s conviction. His work with youth raised Nazi
ire. His beliefs contradicted Nazi dogma.
Throughout
the trial, Freisler ranted and raved blasphemously, even helping witnesses find
appropriate words of scorn. He screamed accusations of collusion, hostility,
and intentional undermining the German people’s will to carry on the war. The
only expiation for Müller’s sin: death. Müller was guillotined on September 11,
1944, and his family received a bill for the cost of the execution.
Joseph Müller, 1884-1944 |
On
February 3, 1945, during a Saturday session of the People’s Court, American bombers
attacked Berlin. Government and Nazi Party buildings were hit, including the
People’s Court.
According
to one report, Freisler adjourned court and ordered that day’s prisoners to be
taken to a shelter. He paused to gather that day’s files. Freisler was killed
when a hit on the building caused him to be struck down by a beam in his
courtroom. His body was found crushed beneath a fallen masonry column,
clutching the files.
One
foreign correspondent reported, “Apparently nobody regretted his death.” Luise
Jodl, the widow of General Alfred Jodl, recounted years later that when
Freisler’s body was brought in, a worker commented, “It is God’s verdict.”
Freisler
is buried in his wife’s family’s plot in a Berlin cemetery, but his name is not
shown on the gravestone.
This man sounds like a real peach. No wonder no one mourned his death. Nice research!
ReplyDeleteThe movie White Rose is about Judge Freisler. It is about the trial of a young German girl accused of treason in his court. If i had been before Judge Freisler, I would have had a heart attack anyway.
ReplyDelete