Franz Gürtner
Encyclopedia
Franz Gürtner was a German
Minister of Justice in Adolf Hitler
's cabinet, responsible for coordinating jurisprudence
in the Third Reich. Detesting the cruel ways of the Gestapo
and SA
in dealing with prisoners of war
, he protested unsuccessfully to Hitler, nevertheless staying on in the cabinet, hoping to reform the establishment from within. Instead, he found himself providing official sanction and legal grounds for a series of criminal actions under the Hitler administration.
, the son of a locomotive
engineer.
After secondary school in Regensburg, he attended the University of Munich where he studied law
. During World War I
, he served on the western front and in Palestine
, receiving the Iron Cross
(first and second class).
After the war, Gürtner pursued a successful legal career, being appointed Bavaria
n Minister of Justice on 8 November 1922, a position he held until his nomination by Franz von Papen
as Reich Minister of Justice on 2 June 1932. As a Deutschnationale (German national) Party member, Gürtner was sympathetic to right-wing extremists such as Hitler
, seeing to it during his trial in 1924, following the Beer Hall Putsch
that the judiciary was lenient, and that a light sentence was given to the Nazi Party leader. During the trial, Hitler was allowed to interrupt the proceedings as often as he wished, to cross-examine witnesses at will, and to speak on his own behalf at almost any length. Gürtner obtained Hitler's early release from Landsberg Prison
, and later persuaded the Bavarian government to legalize the banned NSDAP, and allow Hitler to speak again in public.
After serving as Minister of Justice in the cabinets of Papen and Kurt von Schleicher
, Gürtner was retained by Hitler in his post, and made responsible for coordinating jurisprudence in the Third Reich. Though a bureaucrat of the old school and a non-Nazi conservative, Gürtner nonetheless merged the association of the German judges with the new National Socialist Lawyers Association, and provided a veil of constitutional legality for the Nazi State.
At first, Gürtner also tried to protect the independence of the judiciary
and a remnant of legal norms, especially against the high-handed, arbitrary and brutal methods of the SA, who in the summer of 1933 came into conflict with the police and the administrative organs of the state. The ill-treatment of prisoners at concentration camps in Wuppertal
, Bredow
and Hohnstein
(Saxony
), under the jurisdiction of local SA leaders, provoked a sharp protest from the Ministry of Justice. Gürtner observed that prisoners were being beaten to the point of unconsciousness with whips and blunt instruments, commenting that such treatment "reveals a brutality and cruelty in the perpetrators which are totally alien to German sentiment and feeling. Such cruelty, reminiscent of oriental sadism cannot be explained or excused by militant bitterness however great." The protest proved to be in vain, for Hitler pardoned all those SA leaders and camp guards who were sentenced in the Hohnstein trial. Gürtner also complained about confessions obtained by the Gestapo under torture, but this practice, too, was upheld by Hitler.
In 1933, Gürtner came into conflict with one of his subordinates, Roland Freisler
, over the issues of Rassenschande
, or sexual relationship between an Aryan and a non-Aryan, which Freisler wanted immediately criminalized. Gürtner, in a meeting, pointed out many practical difficulties with Freisler's proposal. This did not, however, stop the passing of the Nuremberg Laws
two year later, criminalizing it.
Despite these initial efforts to limit the brutality of the Nazi regime, Gürtner also played a role in legitimizing it. In the weeks following the Night of the Long Knives
, a purge of SA officers and conservative critics of the regime that resulted in perhaps hundreds of executions, he demonstrated his loyalty to the Nazi regime by writing a law that added a legal veneer to the purge. Signed into law by both Hitler and Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick
, the "Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense" retrospectively legalized
the murders committed during the purge. It met no opposition in the Reichstag. Gürtner even quashed some initial efforts by local prosecutors to take legal action against those who carried out the murders.
Gürtner thus varied his role as Justice Minister by alternately protecting the regime and protesting against it. By the end of 1935, it was already apparent that neither Gürtner nor Frick would be able to impose limitations on the power of the Gestapo, or control the SS camps where thousands of detainees were being held without judicial review. During World War II
, the feeble resistance of the Ministry of Justice was weakened still further, as alleged criminals were increasingly dealt with by the Gestapo and SA, without recourse to any court of law. Gürtner, who may have been genuinely appalled by the summary justice of shooting prisoners in concentration camps on the instructions of the security police, found his objections brushed aside by Hitler.
Instead of resigning, Gürtner stayed on. Although this might have been in the vain hope of preventing the worst, in reality it merely lent his prestige as a conservative bureaucrat to the systematic perversion of justice in the Nazi state. He found himself providing official sanction and legal grounds for a series of criminal actions, beginning with the institution of Ständegerichte (drumhead courts-martial
) that tried Poles
and Jews
in the occupied eastern territories, and later for decrees that opened the way for implementing the Final Solution
. A district judge and member of the Confessing Church
, Lothar Kreyssig
, wrote to Gürtner protesting (correctly) that the T4 program
was illegal (since no law or formal decree from Hitler had authorised it); Gürtner replied, "If you cannot recognise the will of the Führer as a source of law, then you cannot remain a judge." and had Kreyssig dismissed.
Gürtner died on 29 January 1941 in Berlin
.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Minister of Justice in Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's cabinet, responsible for coordinating jurisprudence
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions...
in the Third Reich. Detesting the cruel ways of the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
and SA
Sturmabteilung
The Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...
in dealing with prisoners of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
, he protested unsuccessfully to Hitler, nevertheless staying on in the cabinet, hoping to reform the establishment from within. Instead, he found himself providing official sanction and legal grounds for a series of criminal actions under the Hitler administration.
Biography
Gürtner was born in RegensburgRegensburg
Regensburg is a city in Bavaria, Germany, located at the confluence of the Danube and Regen rivers, at the northernmost bend in the Danube. To the east lies the Bavarian Forest. Regensburg is the capital of the Bavarian administrative region Upper Palatinate...
, the son of a locomotive
Locomotive
A locomotive is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. The word originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus, "place" + Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in the early 19th...
engineer.
After secondary school in Regensburg, he attended the University of Munich where he studied law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, he served on the western front and in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
, receiving the Iron Cross
Iron Cross
The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....
(first and second class).
After the war, Gürtner pursued a successful legal career, being appointed Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
n Minister of Justice on 8 November 1922, a position he held until his nomination by Franz von Papen
Franz von Papen
Lieutenant-Colonel Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen zu Köningen was a German nobleman, Roman Catholic monarchist politician, General Staff officer, and diplomat, who served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and as Vice-Chancellor under Adolf Hitler in 1933–1934...
as Reich Minister of Justice on 2 June 1932. As a Deutschnationale (German national) Party member, Gürtner was sympathetic to right-wing extremists such as Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, seeing to it during his trial in 1924, following the Beer Hall Putsch
Beer Hall Putsch
The Beer Hall Putsch was a failed attempt at revolution that occurred between the evening of 8 November and the early afternoon of 9 November 1923, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff, and other heads of the Kampfbund unsuccessfully tried to seize power...
that the judiciary was lenient, and that a light sentence was given to the Nazi Party leader. During the trial, Hitler was allowed to interrupt the proceedings as often as he wished, to cross-examine witnesses at will, and to speak on his own behalf at almost any length. Gürtner obtained Hitler's early release from Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison is a penal facility located in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west of Munich and south of Augsburg....
, and later persuaded the Bavarian government to legalize the banned NSDAP, and allow Hitler to speak again in public.
After serving as Minister of Justice in the cabinets of Papen and Kurt von Schleicher
Kurt von Schleicher
Kurt von Schleicher was a German general and the last Chancellor of Germany during the era of the Weimar Republic. Seventeen months after his resignation, he was assassinated by order of his successor, Adolf Hitler, in the Night of the Long Knives....
, Gürtner was retained by Hitler in his post, and made responsible for coordinating jurisprudence in the Third Reich. Though a bureaucrat of the old school and a non-Nazi conservative, Gürtner nonetheless merged the association of the German judges with the new National Socialist Lawyers Association, and provided a veil of constitutional legality for the Nazi State.
At first, Gürtner also tried to protect the independence of the judiciary
Judiciary
The judiciary is the system of courts that interprets and applies the law in the name of the state. The judiciary also provides a mechanism for the resolution of disputes...
and a remnant of legal norms, especially against the high-handed, arbitrary and brutal methods of the SA, who in the summer of 1933 came into conflict with the police and the administrative organs of the state. The ill-treatment of prisoners at concentration camps in Wuppertal
Wuppertal
Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in and around the Wupper river valley, and is situated east of the city of Düsseldorf and south of the Ruhr area. With a population of approximately 350,000, it is the largest city in the Bergisches Land...
, Bredow
Bredow
Bredow may refer to:* Szczecin-Drzetowo, a suburb of Szczecin, known in German as Stettin-BredowBredow is also a the surname of several people, including:* Reinhard Bredow , East German luger...
and Hohnstein
Hohnstein
Hohnstein is a town in the Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge district, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. It is situated in Saxon Switzerland, 12 km east of Pirna, and 28 km southeast of Dresden . It is dominated by its castle, standing on a sandstone rock....
(Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....
), under the jurisdiction of local SA leaders, provoked a sharp protest from the Ministry of Justice. Gürtner observed that prisoners were being beaten to the point of unconsciousness with whips and blunt instruments, commenting that such treatment "reveals a brutality and cruelty in the perpetrators which are totally alien to German sentiment and feeling. Such cruelty, reminiscent of oriental sadism cannot be explained or excused by militant bitterness however great." The protest proved to be in vain, for Hitler pardoned all those SA leaders and camp guards who were sentenced in the Hohnstein trial. Gürtner also complained about confessions obtained by the Gestapo under torture, but this practice, too, was upheld by Hitler.
In 1933, Gürtner came into conflict with one of his subordinates, Roland Freisler
Roland Freisler
Roland Freisler was a prominent and notorious Nazi lawyer and judge. He was State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice and President of the People's Court , which was set up outside constitutional authority...
, over the issues of Rassenschande
Rassenschande
Rassenschande or Blutschande was the Nazi term for sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans, which was punishable by law...
, or sexual relationship between an Aryan and a non-Aryan, which Freisler wanted immediately criminalized. Gürtner, in a meeting, pointed out many practical difficulties with Freisler's proposal. This did not, however, stop the passing of the Nuremberg Laws
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany introduced at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. After the takeover of power in 1933 by Hitler, Nazism became an official ideology incorporating scientific racism and antisemitism...
two year later, criminalizing it.
Despite these initial efforts to limit the brutality of the Nazi regime, Gürtner also played a role in legitimizing it. In the weeks following the Night of the Long Knives
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives , sometimes called "Operation Hummingbird " or in Germany the "Röhm-Putsch," was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders...
, a purge of SA officers and conservative critics of the regime that resulted in perhaps hundreds of executions, he demonstrated his loyalty to the Nazi regime by writing a law that added a legal veneer to the purge. Signed into law by both Hitler and Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick
Wilhelm Frick
Wilhelm Frick was a prominent German Nazi official serving as Minister of the Interior of the Third Reich. After the end of World War II, he was tried for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials and executed...
, the "Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense" retrospectively legalized
Ex post facto law
An ex post facto law or retroactive law is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences of actions committed or relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law...
the murders committed during the purge. It met no opposition in the Reichstag. Gürtner even quashed some initial efforts by local prosecutors to take legal action against those who carried out the murders.
Gürtner thus varied his role as Justice Minister by alternately protecting the regime and protesting against it. By the end of 1935, it was already apparent that neither Gürtner nor Frick would be able to impose limitations on the power of the Gestapo, or control the SS camps where thousands of detainees were being held without judicial review. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the feeble resistance of the Ministry of Justice was weakened still further, as alleged criminals were increasingly dealt with by the Gestapo and SA, without recourse to any court of law. Gürtner, who may have been genuinely appalled by the summary justice of shooting prisoners in concentration camps on the instructions of the security police, found his objections brushed aside by Hitler.
Instead of resigning, Gürtner stayed on. Although this might have been in the vain hope of preventing the worst, in reality it merely lent his prestige as a conservative bureaucrat to the systematic perversion of justice in the Nazi state. He found himself providing official sanction and legal grounds for a series of criminal actions, beginning with the institution of Ständegerichte (drumhead courts-martial
Drumhead court-martial
A drumhead court-martial is a court-martial held in the field to hear urgent charges of offences committed in action. The term is said to originate from the use of a drumhead as an improvised writing table, altar for religious services, and a traditional gathering point for a regiment for orders...
) that tried Poles
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
and Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
in the occupied eastern territories, and later for decrees that opened the way for implementing the Final Solution
Final Solution
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
. A district judge and member of the Confessing Church
Confessing Church
The Confessing Church was a Protestant schismatic church in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to nazify the German Protestant church.-Demographics:...
, Lothar Kreyssig
Lothar Kreyssig
Lothar Kreyssig was a German judge during the Nazi era. He was the only German judge who attempted to stop the Action T4 euthanasia program, an intervention that cost him his job. After the Second World War, he was again offered a judgeship, but declined...
, wrote to Gürtner protesting (correctly) that the T4 program
Action T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...
was illegal (since no law or formal decree from Hitler had authorised it); Gürtner replied, "If you cannot recognise the will of the Führer as a source of law, then you cannot remain a judge." and had Kreyssig dismissed.
Gürtner died on 29 January 1941 in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
External links
- Franz Gürtner in the files of the Reichskanzlei
- Franz Gürtner in the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte
- Biographie des Deutschen Historischen Museums