On the defense of old Nazis, the leadership of the FRG and the tribunal against Erich Honecker.
Frank Schumann, junge
Welt, 23/7/2022
Translated by John Catalinotto
You will be 100 years old on July 30. Congratulations on this rare anniversary!
Please don’t congratulate me before it happens.
What has always fascinated me about you is your humor - detached, self-deprecating, ambiguous wit.
Conditions in the world are sad enough. You don’t change them by lamenting them or reacting depressively. Or, as Marx says, by putting one’s face into the prescribed creases. No, that was never my thing. One must try to stand above things, otherwise one sinks with one’s nose in every muck.
But this is not from Marx, seems to me to be from Luxemburg.
When she is right, she is right.
I see at present only noses in the muck.
There I will not contradict you.
Friedrich Wolff, born in Berlin-Neukölln in 1922, son of a Jewish doctor and a Protestant mother, joined the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1945. After studying law at the Humboldt University from 1946 to 1949, “judge by order of the court,” from April 1951 trainee in the Justice Department of the Berlin Magistrate’s Office, lawyer since 1953 and chairman of the Berlin Bar Association from 1954 to 1970 and from 1984 to 1988 and 1990. Defense attorney in various political trials, including against Nazi and war criminals, demonstrators on June 17, 1953, and against Erich Honecker and other members of the Politburo. Wolff authored several books published by Edition Ost in Berlin. The most recent was published in 2021, together with Egon Krenz: „Komm mir nicht mit Rechtsstaat. Gespräch zwischen einem fast hundertjährigen Juristen und einem langjährigen DDR-Politiker“ [“Don't talk to me about rule of law. Conversation Between an Almost Centennial Lawyer and a Longtime GDR Politician].”
I don’t know. Well, I can remember phases when I was very emotional.
When, for example?
In the spring of 1960, when I defended Theodor Oberländer, the Federal Minister for Displaced Persons. The Supreme Court of the German Democratic Republic had indicted him for his involvement in war crimes.
As a first lieutenant, Oberländer had been involved in
negotiations with the Ukrainian nationalists under Stepan Bandera on behalf of
the High Command of the Wehrmacht in 1941. He was in the “Nightingale
Battalion” ...
…consisting of Ukrainian nationalists who had become
prisoners of war, and which was under the control of the fascist secret
service.
Oberländer was the liaison officer for the “Abwehr [military intelligence service] .” The unit entered Lviv even before the Wehrmacht and, together with Ukrainian collaborators, massacred “Jewish Bolsheviks.” The exact number of victims could never be determined, but it was in the thousands. So the charge was generally: “for murder.” And I was assigned to the accused “as a public defender.”
So the socialist was supposed to defend a Nazi?!
Even for a suspected war criminal, the presumption of innocence applies first. Every defendant must be treated fairly in court, even if he himself did not act legally. I know that this is sometimes difficult to understand, especially when the facts are conclusive.
Did the Nazi federal minister appear at the court hearing in Berlin?
No, the trial was held in absentia. Together with my Erfurt colleague Gerhard Rinck, I had tried to contact our client beforehand. But our letter came back from Bonn after it had been opened and resealed there. The envelope bore the handwritten note: “Acceptance subsequently refused. Caretaker has no power of attorney for Federal Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War-Affected Persons.”
You said earlier that you had been emotional. Because of the prominence of the client? Because of the international attention?
Well, I was never afraid of big shots. It was the trial as such. Never before had a West German former Nazi, especially one with government responsibility, been indicted by a GDR court for his war crimes. The trial was not only aimed at the specific person, but at the political leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany as a whole. The trial had great symbolic significance.
In the West, people still speak of a “show trial” today.
Of course it was a show trial. The GDR thus proved the continuity of the Nazi dictatorship in the West German state, the ally of the USA and its anti-communist bulwark against the East. So the scope of defense was limited.
Nevertheless, we defense lawyers declared that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction. First, the acts had not been committed on our territory; second, the criminal law of the GDR had not applied to Oberländer when he committed the acts. And thirdly, Oberländer was protected by the immunity of the German Bundestag.
The application was rejected. On April 29, 1960, Oberländer was sentenced to life in prison for the shooting of several thousand Jews and Poles in Lemberg. This did not even take into account the murderous acts he later committed with the German-Caucasian “Sonderverband Bergmann” in the Soviet Union.
Oberländer probably did not spend a day in jail.
No, but he had to resign six days later,although he remained politically active. In 1981, for example, he was one of the co-signers of a “Heidelberg Manifesto” that spoke out against the “infiltration of the German people” and the “alienation” of the German language and culture.
Let me guess: Oberländer was rehabilitated after 1990?
