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Back into the Unmasterable Past: Southwest Germany and the Judicial Odyssey of Mayor Reinhard Boos, 1947–1949

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Abstract

The article examines a series of trials involving the November 1938 destruction of the synagogue in Lörrach, Germany, held between 1947 and 1949. The alleged ringleader of the pogrom was acquitted, as were some of his codefendants. These acquittals, together with the probationary terms offered to several of the defendants, suggest that the South Baden authorities had found they could censure Nazi violence toward Jews through criminal indictment and conviction, while simultaneously reintegrating compromised individuals – some of them now burdened with a criminal record for crimes of violence against Jews – into the new West German polity. The article examines the case in light of Émil Durkheim’s normative-integrative theory of criminal law/criminal deviance, suggesting that the history of the trials requires qualification of Durkheim’s theory as applied to human rights abuses by agents of the nation-state.

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Notes

  1. Durkheim expounded his “consensus” view of criminal law in two works, The Division of Labor in Society and The Rules of the Sociological Method. See Émil Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. George Simpson (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1960); idem, The Rules of the Sociological Method, trans. Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Muller, ed. Sir George E.G. Carlin (New York: Macmillan, 1964). Although Durkheim’s view of the social-integrative function of law focused primarily on its role within “mechanical” (i.e., premodern) societies, I believe it is also applicable to modern societies, especially those, like postwar Germany, that have experienced political, economic, and normative upheaval, through which traditional self-definitions have become problematic.

  2. Kai Erikson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (Boston & London: Allyn & Bacon, 2005). Although he does not identify it as such, German historian Norbert Frei’s theory of “normative demarcation” as a device used by the Federal Republic after 1949 to dissociate itself from political extremism on the far right and far left invites comparison with Durkheim’s consensus view of criminal legal process. See Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration, trans. Joel Golb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

  3. Erikson, 64.

  4. The “Christmas Amnesty,” passed by the newly established Bundestag in December 1949, freed Nazi convicts sentenced to jail terms of 6 months or less – a decree that affected nearly 700,000 West Germans. The Law for Exemption from Punishment of December 27, 1954, exempted from punishment cases of manslaughter punishable with a prison term of 3 years or less. The law covered crimes committed between October 1, 1944 and July 31, 1945. Michael S. Bryant, Confronting the “Good Death”: Nazi Euthanasia on Trial, 1945–1953 (Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2005), 168, 199.

  5. Uwe Adam, Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag Gmbh, 2003), 144–45; Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000), 136–38.

  6. Urteil in Strafsachen gegen Reinhard Boos u.a., 4 Js 689/46, II AK 25/47, Staatsarchiv Freiburg [hereafter SAF], F 176/4, Nr. 19/11/016.

  7. Ibid.

  8. An effort to create such a law for Freiburg, modeled on the Tübingen occupational statute, was unsuccessful.

  9. Paul Ludwig Weinacht, “Die politische Nachkriegsentwicklung und die Auseinandersetzungen um den Südweststaat,” in Badische Geschichte: Vom Großherzogtum bis zur Gegenwart, edited by the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss Verlag GmbH, 1987), 212–213.

  10. The Reichsgericht, the German Supreme Court before May 1945, was the fourth type of ordinary court in Germany. Dissolved with Germany’s formal surrender in May 1945, the Reichsgericht was reincarnated as the Bundesgerichtshof when the Federal Republic of Germany came into existence in 1949.

  11. Eli E. Nobleman, “The Administration of Justice in the United States Zone of Germany,” Federal Bar Journal 8(1946): 92–94; Karl Loewenstein, “Reconstruction of the Administration of Justice in American-Occupied Germany,” Harvard Law Review 61(1948): 422–428; Bryant, Confronting the “Good Death”; Adalbert Rückerl, The Investigation of Nazi Crimes 1945–1978 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1980), 34.

  12. Loewenstein, 428; Weinacht, 220.

  13. Loewenstein, 434–435; Weinacht, 213–214; F. Roy Willis, The French in Germany 1945–1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), 161–162. Loewenstein mistakenly refers to the first court to try the Tillessen case as the Freiburg state court; it was in fact the Offenburg state court sitting in Freiburg.

  14. Weinacht, 214.

  15. Urteil in Strafsachen gegen Reinhard Boos u.a., 4 Js 689/46/ II AE 25/47, SAF, F 176/4, Nr. 19/11/022.

  16. Hugo Ott, “Das Land Baden im Dritten Reich,” in Badische Geschichte, 199. The literature on the Third Reich teems with similar observations of a dualism between party formations and the traditional state bureaucracies at the federal level: for one of the earliest treatments of this dichotomy, see Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), xii–xv, 89–91, 205–8. See also Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 85, 121–125; Manfred Lewald, “Das Dritte Reich-Rechtsstaat oder Unrechtsstaat?”, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 37(1964): 1658–1660. On the relationship between the Nazi party and the Baden provincial administration, see Klaus Tellenbach, “Die Badische Innere Verwaltung im Dritten Reich. Von Erlebnissen eines Landrats,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 134 NF 95(1986):377–412; Michael Ruck, “Korpsgeist und Staatsbewußtsein. Beamte im deutschen Südwest 1928 bis 1972,” Nationalsozialismus und Nachkriegszeit in Südwestdeutschland 4(1996): 257–260; Michael Kißener, “Staat und Partei in Baden: Das Beispiel der badischen Justizverwaltung,” in Staat und Gaue in der NS-Zeit: Bayern 1933–1945 (Sonderdruck aus Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte, Beiheft 21 – Reihe B).

  17. The German legal concept signified by the words in Tateinheit mit – translated as “in coincidence with” – exists when an actor’s crime violates several distinct laws or the same law on repeated occasions, and thus bears comparison with the Anglo-American notion of multiplicity. In the Lörrach synagogue trial, the defendants were charged with the most serious crime, a crime against humanity, which simultaneously violated statutes of the German Penal Code (trespass, reviling religion, etc.). Although the defendants could be convicted of each of these crimes, they could only be punished under one of the laws they were convicted of violating – namely, the law that prescribed the most punishment. Thus, the defendants convicted in the Lörrach case could not receive multiple punishments for their numerous violations, but only the maximum prescribed for a crime against humanity – the most severe statutory penalty they faced.

  18. Urteil in Str.S. gegen Reinhard Boos u.a., 4 Js 689/46, II AK 25/47, SAF, F 176/4, Nr. 19/11/022–023.

  19. Ibid., Nr. 19/11/023.

  20. Ibid., Nr. 19/11/023–024.

  21. Ibid., Nr. 19/11/016.

  22. Ibid., Nr. 19/11/017.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Oskar Köpfer’s brother, Leo, was acquitted due to lack of evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

  25. Ibid., Nr. 19/11/017–020.

  26. Ibid., Nr. 19/11/019.

  27. Ibid., Nr. 19/11/020–021.

  28. Ibid., Nr. 19/11/022.

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid., Nr. 19/11/024–025.

  31. Entschließung der Sozialdemokratische Partei – Kreis Lörrach, SAF, F 176/4, Nr. 19/7/060; “‘Der ehemalige Kreisleiter ist Hauptschuldiger’: Protest gegen das Urteil im Lörracher Synagogenschänderprozeß,” Badische Landeszeitung, September 2, 1947, No. 70; “Naziopfer und Synagogenprozeß,” Das Volk, September 3, 1947, No. 70.

  32. “Synagogen-Schänder vor dem Richter,” Unser Tag, 6 August 1947, 4; “Nachklänge zum Synagogenprozeß,” Das Volk, 27 August 1947, No. 68. For a contrary view defending Boos’ acquittal, see “Die Lörracher Synagoge,” Badische Zeitung, 8 August 1947, No. 63.

  33. In contrast to Anglo-American criminal procedure, German law permits the prosecution to appeal a lower court’s finding of acquittal. In Anglo-American law the principle of double jeopardy forbids such an appeal.

  34. Urteil I.Str.S. gegen Reinhard Boos u.a., Ss 44/47, 5 KLs I/47, SAF, F 176/4, Nr. 19/4/073.

  35. Ibid., 19/4/074. The Freiburg state court had expressed the opinion that Boos, as a major local Nazi party functionary and mayor of the city, likely knew of the plan to attack the synagogue beforehand. The fact that the court did not explore Boos’s criminal liability for such knowledge opened the door to the reversal of its verdict on appeal.

  36. In addition to his role in the pogrom, Herz was charged with a crime against humanity for denouncing a woman to the criminal police in September 1938 for opining that, if “things went wrong” in the Nazis’ foreign policy initiatives, Hitler and his government would have to flee the country “like the Kaiser.” Urteil i.Str.S. gegen Karl Herz u.a., 1 Ks 1/49, IV AK 1/49, SAF, F 176/22, Nr. 3/2/110.

  37. Ibid., Nr. 3/2/108–109. According to the court’s findings of fact, Oldenboerhuis entered the synagogue with Glünkin and Hofer and, in the midst of 20–30 SA men already at work on demolishing the interior, hurled a lectern onto the floor from the synagogue gallery.

  38. Ibid., Nr. 3/2/114–117.

  39. In addition, Oldenboerhuis was found guilty of aggravated breach of public peace, revilement of religion, damaging property, and partial destruction of a building.

  40. Ibid., Nrs. 3/2/110, 3/2/113.

  41. On October 17, 1951, the Baden state prosecutor’s office remitted Herz’s punishment in its entirety. Notice to Karl Herz of Remission of Punishment, 17 October 1951, SAF, F 176/22, Nr. 3/2/166.

  42. Notice from Baden Ministry of Justice to Karl Herz Granting Probation, 27 September 1949, SAF, F 176/22, Nr. 3/2/159; Notice from Baden Prosecutor’s Office to Karl Herz Abrogating Punishment, 17 October 1951, ibid., Nr. 3/2/166; Notice from Baden Ministry of Justice to the Freiburg Prosecutor’s Office Granting Probation to Geritt Oldenboerhuis, 23 June 1955, ibid., Nr. 3/6/026; Notice from the Higher Prosecutor’s Office to Geritt Oldenboerhuis Abrogating Punishment, 11 July 1959, ibid., Nr. 3/2/171.

  43. SAF, F 176/4, Nr. 19/17/917 ff.

  44. As much as the human lampshade story sounds like a grotesque and unfounded rumor, documentation from the US Army Buchenwald trial (April 11–14, 1947) specifically refers to eyewitness testimony regarding the conversion of human skin into photo albums and lampshades on behalf of Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp. See the Review and Recommendation of the Deputy Judge Advocate in the Buchenwald “Parent Case” (U.S. v. Josias Prince zu Waldeck et al.), National Archives College Park, Roll 5, RG 549, 63–54.

  45. See discussion of Kai Erikson and Émil Durkheim, supra, 2.

  46. The records of the November pogrom trials contained in the Freiburg State Archive in Freiburg, Germany, are replete with favorable actions taken by the Baden Ministry of Justice on convicted perpetrators’ petitions for clemency (Anträge auf Strafaussetzung): see, for example, the Bodersweier synagogue trials (SAF, F 179/8; SAF, F 175/2, Lfd. Nr. 676; and F 175/2, Lfd. Nr. 677); the Rastatt synagogue arson trial (SAF, F 175/2); the trial of five defendants for crimes against German Jews in Kuppenheim and Malsch (SAF, F 175/2); the Emmendingen pogrom trial (F 176/22, Film-Nr. 08/2004); the Müllheim pogrom trial (SAF, 176/22); and the consolidated trials of perpetrators involved in the Ihringen, Breisach, and Eichstettin pogroms (SAF, 176/22).

  47. See, e.g., Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past; Aleida Assmann and Ute Frevert, Geschichtsvergessenheit/Geschichtsversessenheit: Vom Umgang mit deutschen Vergangenheiten nach 1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999); Michael S. Bryant, Confronting the “Good Death passim;” idem, “Justice and National Socialist Medicalized Killing: Postwar ‘Euthanasia’ Trials and the Spirit of Nuremberg, 1945–53,” in Staatsverbrechen vor Gericht: Festschrift für Christiaan Frederik Rüter zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Dick de Mildt (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003), 9–23; Dick de Mildt, In the Name of the People: Perpetrators of Genocide in the Reflection of their Post-War Prosecution in West Germany (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1998).

  48. “Successor government,” because rarely if ever will the state authorities that ordered human rights abuses place their own agents on trial.

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    Michael S. Bryant

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Bryant, M.S. Back into the Unmasterable Past: Southwest Germany and the Judicial Odyssey of Mayor Reinhard Boos, 1947–1949. Hum Rights Rev 8, 199–219 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-007-0006-6

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