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The Federal Ministry of Justice's Personnel Policy between 1949 and 1963
01 Nazis or Democrats? Strauss' view of Nazi Civil Servants
Strauss consciously relied on jurists tainted by their Nazi involvement. He passed conspicuously lenient judgement in particular on ministry officials:
"Certificates of good standing (Persilscheine) were unavoidable".
Walter Strauss, 1976.
"It was said that members of the civil service had nothing to set against National Socialism because, for lack of political expertise, they did not have the (...) sense of orientation and because in many cases they were outstanding technicians in their specialist fields - perhaps a specific German quality (...). Nominally, the vast majority in the higher echelons of ministerial bureaucracy maintained (...) their negative attitude towards National Socialism (...). A large majority, however, (...) simply carried on cooperating on the basis of this misguided technical attitude."
Walter Strauss, Parliamentary Council, Main Committee Meeting held on 23 February 1949
Strauss pursued a personnel policy that led to a considerable number of personnel who had been involved with the Nazis being integrated into the BMJ. However, he did not instigate any targeted integration of people persecuted by the Nazis in senior positions, although presumably this would have easily been possible. Thus, in 1949, there were on the one hand 67 planned civil service appointments at the BMJ, and on the other 574 Jewish lawyers who had worked in the judicial system and had been thrown out of office after 1933. In Prussia, another 205 non-Jewish judicial officials had been dismissed on political grounds.
Figures from Lothar Gruchmann, Justiz im Dritten Reich 1933-1940, Munich, 1987
02 How Walter Strauss dealt with people tainted by Nazi involvement: The Gessler Case
"However, tough political vetting took place, particularly at that development stage."
Walter Strauss, Stuttgart 1976
Dr. Ernst Gessler worked in the Reich Ministry of Justice until 1945 and from 1949 in the BMJ.
The "tough vetting" of staff with regard to their Nazi past that Strauss retrospectively claimed had taken place did not take place in the 1950s.
Only after 1965, after Strauss had left the Ministry, was a regular enquiry made to the Berlin Document Center, where the Nazi Party membership file was kept, when new appointments were made. Strauss had already been aware of key biographical data about staff from the personnel files back in 1949, however. The way in which he dealt with these data shows that he felt even extreme Nazi involvement, such as that of Dr. Ernst Gessler, to be unproblematic, and that he even strongly relativised it.
This is shown in his statement on the case of Dr. Ernst Gessler, a senior civil servant at the BMJ. When in 1950, he was to be promoted to the position of Ministerialrat, the Federal Ministry of the Interior expressed its reservations. Gessler had been a member of the Nazi Party since 1933, a Rottenführer in the SA and had held the senior position of Oberregierungsrat in the Reich Ministry of Justice until 1945.
Statements that were to be interpreted as anti-Semitic were also attributed to him. Although Strauss was aware of some of these statements, he attached no great importance to them.
03 The Nazi Involvement of BMJ Staff
53% Members of the Nazi Party
20% Members of the SA
3.5% Members of the SS
The Nazi involvement of 170 senior staff at the BMJ between 1949 and 1973. |