Franz Schlegelberger

Louis Rudolph Franz Schlegelberger (born 23 October 1876 in Königsberg, East Prussia, now Kaliningrad, Russia; died 14 December 1970 in Flensburg) was State Secretary in the German Reich Ministry of Justice (RMJ) and served awhile as Justice Minister during the Third Reich. He was the highest-ranking defendant at the Nuremberg Judges' Trial. A commentary on the German Commercial Law Book (Handelsgesetzbuch) published by Schlegelberger is still in use.

Life

Franz Schlegelberger was born into a protestant salesman's family in Königsberg. His father worked in cereal trade sales. His forebears (among them Balthasar Schlögelberger) came originally from Salzburg in 1731-32 to East Prussia.

Schlegelberger went to the old-town Gymnasium in Königsberg, where he did his school-leaving examination in 1894.

He studied law beginning in1894 in Königsberg and from 1895 to 1896 in Berlin. In 1897 he sat the state legal examination scoring fairly well.

At the University of Königsberg – or according to documents from his trial the University of Leipzig – on 1 December 1899 came his graduation to Doctor of Law with the theme "May government representatives be placed at our disposal as officials because of their voting?"

On 9 December 1901 Schlegelberger wrote the great state law examination, passing with a mark of "good". On 21 December 1901 he became a court Assessor at the Königsberg local court, and on 17 March 1902 assistant judge at the Königsberg State Court. On 16 September 1904 he became a judge at the State Court in Lyck (now Ełk). In early May 1908, he went to the Berlin State Court and in the same year was appointed assistant judge at the Berlin Court of Appeals (Kammergericht). In 1914 he was appointed to the Kammergericht Council (Kammergerichtsrat) in Berlin, where he stayed until 1918.

During the First World War, on 1 April 1918, Schlegelberger became an associate at the Reich Justice Office. On 1 October 1918 came his appointment to the Secret Government Court and Executive Council. His appointment as Ministerial Director in the RMJ came in 1927.

Schlegelberger had been teaching in the Faculty of Law at the University of Berlin as an honorary professor since 1922.

On 10 October 1931 Schlegelberger was appointed State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice under Justice Minister Franz Gürtner and kept this job until Gürtner's death in 1941. On 30 January 1938, Schlegelberger joined the Nazi Party on Hitler's orders.

Among Schlegelberger's many works in this time was a bill for the introduction of a new national currency which was supposed to end the hyperinflation to which the Reichsmark was prone. Representing the Justice Minister, Schlegelberger underwrote on 29 March 1939 the Fourth Provision for the carrying out of the Reich Hunting Law (Reichsgesetzblatt Teil I, Seite 643) in which it is laid down in Article 6: "In §24, paragraph 1 acquires the following text: '(1) Jews receive no hunting licence'".

After Franz Gürtner's death in 1941, Franz Schlegelberger became provisional Reich Minister of Justice for the years 1941 and 1942, followed then by Otto Thierack. Upon his retirement from the position on 24 August 1942 Schlegelberger was given an endowment of RM 100,000 by Adolf Hitler, and in 1944, Hitler allowed him the privilege of buying an estate with the money, something that otherwise only agricultural experts were entitled to under the rules in force at the time. This would later weigh against him at Nuremberg, for it showed that Hitler thought highly of Schlegelberger and that therefore, Schlegelberger must have been a loyal Nazi.

From Schlegelberger came the bill for the so-called Poland Penal Law Provision (Polenstrafrechtsverordnung) under which Poles were punished by death for tearing down placards. During his time in office, the number of death sentences rose sharply.

Schlegelberg's attitude towards his job and his adulation of those above him may be best encapsulated in a letter to Reich Minister and Chief of the Reich Chancellery Hans Heinrich Lammers, in which he blithely reported that he had handed someone over to be executed, and which ran thus:

“Most Honoured Mr. Reich Minister Dr. Lammers!

“Upon the Führer-order of 24 October 1941 forwarded to me through Mr. State Minister and Chief of the Führer's and Reich Chancellor's Presidial Chancellery, I have handed the Jew Markus Luftglass, sentenced to 2½ years in prison by the Special Court in Katowice, over to the Gestapo for execution.

Heil Hitler!

Your

most obedient

Schlegelberger”

After 1945

At the Nuremberg Judges' Trial, Schlegelberger was one of the main accused. He was sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy to perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 1950, Schlegelberger was released owing to incapacity (he was 74 by this time). Thereafter for years he drew a yearly pension of DM 2894 (for comparison, the average yearly income in Germany at that time was DM 535). Schlegelberger then lived in Flensburg.

In the reasons given for the judgment, it says: " … that Schlegelberger supported the pretension of Hitler in his assumption of power to deal with life and death in disregard of even the pretense of judicial process. By his exhortations and directives, Schlegelberger contributed to the destruction of judicial independence. It was his signature on the decree of 7 February 1942 which imposed upon the Ministry of Justice and the courts the burden of the prosecution, trial, and disposal of the victims of Hitler’s Night and Fog. For this he must be charged with primary responsibility.

"He was guilty of instituting and supporting procedures for the wholesale persecution of Jews and Poles. Concerning Jews, his ideas were less brutal than those of his associates, but they can scarcely be called humane. When the “final solution of the Jewish question” was under discussion, the question arose as to the disposition of half-Jews. The deportation of full Jews to the East was then in full swing throughout Germany. Schlegelberger was unwilling to extend the system to half-Jews."[1]

To spare the half-Jews deportation to the concentration and death camps, he suggested in a letter on 5 April 1942 to Hans Heinrich Lammers that half-Jews be given a choice between deportation or sterilization. The letter ran thus:

“The measures for the final solution of the Jewish question should extend only to full Jews and descendants of mixed marriages of the first degree, but should not apply to descendants of mixed marriages of the second degree.

“With regard to the treatment of Jewish descendants of mixed marriages of the first degree, I agree with the conception of the Reich Minister of the Interior which he expressed in his letter of 16 February 1942, to the effect that the prevention of propagation of these descendants of mixed marriages is to be preferred to their being thrown in with the Jews and evacuated. It follows therefrom that the evacuation of those half-Jews who are no more capable of propagation is obviated from the beginning. There is no national interest in dissolving the marriage between such half-Jews and a full-blooded German.

“Those half-Jews who are capable of propagation should be given the choice to submit to sterilization or to be evacuated in the same manner as Jews.”[2]

Works

Das Landarbeiterrecht. Darstellung des privaten und öffentlichen Rechts der Landarbeiter in Preußen., Berlin., C. Heymann 1907.
Kriegsbuch. Die Kriegsgesetze mit der amtlichen Begründung und der gesamten Rechtsprechung und Rechtslehre -Berlin, Vahlen 1918 (with Georg Güthe)
Freiwillige Gerichtsbarkeit, Heft 43, Berlin 1935 Industrieverlag Spaeth & Linde
Gesetz über die Aufwertung von Hypotheken und anderen Ansprüchen vom 16. Juli 1925, Berlin, Dahlen, 1925. (co-author: Rudolf Harmening)
Zur Rationalisierung der Gesetzgebung., Berlin, Vlg. Franz Vahlen, 1928
Jahrbuch des Deutschen Rechtes., with Leo Sternberg, 26th volume, report about the year 1927, Vahlen, Berlin, 1928
Das Recht der Neuzeit. Ein Führer durch das geltende Recht des Reichs und Preußens seit 1914 with Werner Hoche, Berlin: Franz Vahlen 1932.
Rechtsvergleichendes Handwörterbuch für das Zivil- und Handelsrecht des In- und Auslandes - 4. Bd.: Gütergemeinschaft auf Todesfall - Kindschaftsrecht, Berlin Franz Vahlen, 1933
Die Zinssenkung nach der Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten vom 8. Dezember 1931, with an introduction and brief comments by Dr. Dr. F. Schlegelberger, State Secretary in the Reich Justice Ministry, Franz von Dahlen, Berlin 1932
Das Recht der Neuzeit. Vom Weltkrieg zum nationalsozialistischen Staat. Ein Führer durch das geltende Recht des Reichs und Preußens von 1914 bis 1934., Berlin: Franz Vahlen 1934.
Gesetz über die Angelegenheiten der freiwilligen Gerichtsbarkeit, Köln, Heymanns 1952.
Das Recht der Gegenwart. Ein Führer durch das in Deutschland geltende Recht as publisher, Berlin and Frankfurt a. M., Franz Vahlen Verlag 1955
Seehandelsrecht. Zugleich Ergänzungsband zu Schlegelberger, Kommentar zum Handelsgesetzbuch, Berlin, Vahlen, 1959.(with Rudolf Liesecke)
Kommentar zum Handelsgesetzbuch in der seit dem 1. Oktober 1937 geltenden Fassung (ohne Seerecht). Annotated by Ernst Geßler, Wolfgang Hefermehl, Wolfgang Hildebrandt, Georg Schröder, Berlin, Vahlen, 1960; 1965; 1966.

Literature

Michael Förster, Jurist im Dienst des Unrechts: Leben und Werk des ehemaligen Staatssekretärs im Reichsjustizministerium, Franz Schlegelberger, 1876-1970, Baden-Baden 1995
Eli Nathans, Franz Schlegelberger, Baden-Baden 1990
Arne Wulff, Staatssekretär Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Franz Schlegelberger, 1876-1970, Frankfurt am Main 1991

External links