Existing comment:
[8 Back]
Discrimination by law?
What remained of Nazi law after 1945?
Georg Petersen before the Reich Court, 1940:
"In any case, the (...) general basic idea taken from the racial policy laws must be taken into account to eliminate the Jewish influence from German business."
01 The Federal Court of Justice and the BMJ: Kindred Spirits?
The BMJ and the judiciary were closely linked. The Ministry contributed to the selection of judges at the Federal Court of Justice. Conversely, many BMJ staff had previously worked in the judiciary. There was also a high level of continuity with the Nazi judiciary at the Federal Court of Justice. Of the judges working at the Federal Court of Justice in 1962, 77 per cent had previously worked in the Nazi judiciary. As a result, little distance was created in the BMJ from the jurisprudence of the Reich Court, which closed in 1945. Georg Petersen, the first Director-General for Civil Law at the BMJ, is a striking example.
02 Georg Petersen: From looters' counsel to Director-General at the BMJ
On the opening of the BMJ in 1950, Petersen invoked the "tradition of the Reich court" as a role model. As an example, he stated that even in the Nazi period, the Reich Court's decision-making yardsticks had been "good faith" and "common decency". A problematic resource, since these undefined legal terms enabled Nazi ideology to be superimposed on existing regulations, thereby systematically depriving opponents and persecuted people of their rights.
03 The Federal Court of Justice and the "gypsies"
A residue of Nazi racial ideology is also to be found in the jurisprudence of the Federal Court of Justice in connection with the compensation of Sinti and Roma. In 1956, the Federal Court of Justice rejected such claims because it was said that "Gypsies" were not taken away to the concentration camps purely on racist grounds.
"Since the Gypsies have largely resisted settlement and thus adaptation to the settled population, they are regarded as antisocial. Experience shows that they have a tendency towards crime, particularly theft and fraud, and often lack the moral motivation to respect other people's property because, like primitive prehistoric people, they have an uninhibited inherent urge towards occupation. (...) The purpose of all public authority measures (...) was not to persecute Gypsies specifically on account of their race, but to protect the rest of society from their socially damaging actions based on strange group traits. (...)"
Judgment by the Federal Court of Justice of 7 January 1956
The Federal Court of Justice even justified a circular from Heinrich Himmler, the Head of the SS, of 8 December 1938. In particular, it said, this circular indicated "that in spite of the occurrence of racial ideology aspects, it is not race as such that is the reason for the orders given, but the Gypsies' antisocial characteristics referred to before."
04 The Victim's Concerns: Overlooked and Ignored |