Karl Roland Freisler (30 October 1893 – 3 February 1945) was a German jurist, judge, and politician who served as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1935 to 1942 and as president of the People's Court from 1942 to 1945. During this time, Freisler became known for his histrionics, attempts to humiliate defendants, and his frequent use of the death penalty.
A law student at Kiel University, Freisler joined the Imperial German Army on the outbreak of the First World War and saw action on the Eastern Front, where he was wounded and taken prisoner of war by the Imperial Russian Army. On his return to Germany, he completed his law studies at the University of Jena and was awarded a Doctorate of Law in 1922. Freisler joined the Nazi Party in 1925, upon which he began defending Party members in court for acts of political violence.
After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Freisler was appointed State Secretary of the Prussian Ministry of Justice; two years later he became State Secretary in the unified Reich Ministry of Justice. In 1942, representing Acting Reichsminister of Justice Franz Schlegelberger, Freisler attended the Wannsee Conference.
In August 1942, Freisler succeeded Otto Georg Thierack as president of the People's Court. Under Freisler, the number of death sentences imposed by the court rose dramatically, and he presided over, amongst others, the show trials of the White Rose resistance group and those involved in the 20 July plot. Freisler handed out over 5,000 death sentences during his three-year tenure before being killed in February 1945 during an American bombing raid on Berlin.
Early life Roland Freisler was born on 30 October 1893 in Celle, Lower Saxony, the son of Julius Freisler (b. 1862 in Klantendorf, Moravia), an engineer and teacher, and Charlotte Auguste Florentine Schwerdtfeger (1863–1932). He was baptized as a Protestant on 13 December 1893. He had a younger brother, Oswald, who became a lawyer, and another brother who became a doctor.Nazisternas sista dagar, SVT dokumentär He attended the and received his Abitur in 1912, graduating at the top of his class.
World War I Freisler was attending law school at Kiel University upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, which interrupted his studies.Hitlers Helfer - Ronald Freisler der Hinrichter [Hitler's Henchmen - Roland Freisler, the Executioner], ZDF (1998), television documentary series, by Guido Knopp. He saw active service in the German Imperial Army during the war after enlisting as a Fahnenjunker (officer cadet) in 1914 with the 167th Infantry Regiment (1st Upper Alsatian) in Kassel,Hitler's Helfer by Guido Knopp (Pub. Goldmann, 1998). and by 1915 he was a Leutnant. While serving on the front-line with the 22nd Division, he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class, for heroism in action.Roland Freisler biography in the Reichstag database In October 1915, he was wounded in action on the Eastern Front and taken as a prisoner of war by Imperial Russian forces.Richter in Roter Robe - Freisler, Präsident des Volksgerichtshofes (Judge in a Red Robe - Freisler, President of the People's Court) by Gert Buchheit (Pub. Paul List, 1968).
While a prisoner, Freisler learned to speak Russian and developed an interest in Marxism after the Russian Revolution had commenced. The Bolshevik provisional authority which took over responsibility for Freisler's prisoner of war camp made use of him as a camp "Commissar" (as he was described by them in his repatriated prisoner of war paperwork in 1918) administratively organizing the camp's food supplies from 1917 to 1918.Knopp, Guido, Hitler's Hitmen, Sutton Publishing, 2000, pp. 216, 220-22, 228, 250.
According to Nazi apologist historian Georg Franz–Willig's Ursprung der Hitlerbewegung 3-volume set published by Schütz/Pr. Oldendorf in 1974, the SPD newspaper Vorwärts of 3 May 1924 ran an article titled "SPIRITUAL KINSHIP: JEWISH–COMMUNIST, POPULAR REICHSTAG CANDIDATE", in which it stated that Freisler had been "until rather recently a member of the German Communist Party" and that this was interesting because "his grandmother was a full Jewess". However, H. W. Koch states that there is no evidence that Freisler was of Jewish heritage, and that after the Russian Revolution the description "Commissar" was simply the title given to anyone employed in an administrative post in the prison camps and had no political connotations. He also states that Freisler was never a Communist, although in the early days of his Nazi Party career in the 1920s he was on the movement's left wing.Koch, H. W. In the Name of the Volk: Political Justice in Hitler's Germany, Barnes & Noble, New York, 1997, pp. 28-29.
In the late 1930s, during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the Soviet Union, Freisler attended the Moscow Trials to watch the proceedings against the condemned. Freisler later rejected any insinuation that he had ever co-operated with the Soviets, the ideological nemesis of Nazi Germany, but rumours about his time as a "Commissar" with the "Reds" cast a shadow over his subsequent career as a political official in Germany.
Interwar legal and political career Freisler returned to Germany in 1919 to complete his law studies at the University of Jena, and he qualified as a Doctor of Law in 1922. In 1924, he began working as an Assessor in Kassel and also was elected as a city councillor for the Völkisch-Social Bloc, an ultranationalist splinter party."Freisler, Political Soldier", Der Spiegel, 23 September 1968, review of 'Judge in a Red Robe - Freisler, President of the People's Court' by Gert Buchheit (Pub. Paul List, 1968) He joined the Nazi Party in July 1925 (membership number 9,679) and immediately gained a position of authority within the organisation by using his legal training to defend Party members and Sturmabteilung (SA) men who were regularly facing prosecutions for acts of political violence. As an early party member, or Alter Kämpfer, he would later be awarded the Golden Party Badge. From late 1925 to September 1927, Freisler was the Deputy Gauleiter in Gau Hessen-Nassau Nord under Walter Schultz. He was also a member of the Party's National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK), attaining the rank of NSKK-Brigadeführer in 1942.
As the Nazis changed from a fringe political beer hall and street fighting movement into a political party, Freisler was elected to the Hesse-Nassau provincial Landtag, a position he held between 1930 and 1933. In 1931, he joined the Association of National Socialist German Legal Professionals, founded by fellow Nazi lawyer Hans Frank. He was elected to the Prussian Landtag in April 1932 serving until the Landtag was dissolved in October 1933. At the November 1933 German parliamentary election he was elected as a deputy of the Reichstag, retaining his seat until his death. Reelected in 1936 and 1938, he represented electoral constituencies 19 (Hesse-Nassau), 13 (Schleswig-Holstein) and 35 (Mecklenburg), respectively.Roland Freisler entry in the Reichstag Database Retrieved 27 May 2023.
In 1927, Karl Weinrich, a Nazi member of the Prussian Landtag along with Freisler, characterised his reputation in the rapidly expanding Nazi movement in the late 1920s: "Rhetorically Freisler is equal to our best speakers, if not superior; particularly on the broad masses he has influence, but thinking people mostly reject him. Party Comrade Freisler is usable as only a speaker though and is unsuitable for any position of authority because of his unreliability and moodiness".The Nazi Party 1919 to 1945: A Complete History by Dietrich Orlow (Pub. Enigmas Books, 2007)
Career in Nazi Germany In February 1933, after the Nazi seizure of power, Freisler was appointed Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Justice under Hans Kerrl. He was placed in charge of the personnel office and used his authority to force out Jewish members of the staff. By June, he was promoted to State Secretary in the Ministry. On 31 July, Prussian Minister president Hermann Göring appointed him to the recently reconstituted Prussian State Council. On the founding of the Academy for German Law by Hans Frank in October 1933, Freisler was made a member. He was the chairman of its Criminal Law Committee, head of its department of scientific studies and editor of the Academy newspaper. When the Prussian Ministry of Justice was merged with the Reich Ministry of Justice on 1 April 1935, Freisler became the State Secretary in the unified Ministry, where he served until August 1942.
Freisler's mastery of legal texts, mental agility, dramatic courtroom verbal dexterity and verbal force, in combination with his zealous conversion to Nazi ideology, made him the most feared judge in Nazi Germany, and the personification of Nazism in domestic law. Despite his talents and loyalty, Adolf Hitler never appointed him to any post beyond the legal system. That might have been because he was a lone figure, lacking support within the senior echelons of the Nazi hierarchy but he had also been politically compromised by his brother, Oswald Freisler, also a lawyer. Oswald had acted as a defence counsel against the regime's authority several times during the increasingly politically driven trials by which the Nazis sought to enforce their control of German society and he had the habit of wearing his Nazi Party membership badge in court whilst doing so. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels reproached Oswald Freisler and reported his actions to Adolf Hitler who ordered Freisler's expulsion from the Party. (Oswald Freisler died, allegedly by suicide, in 1939.)Wesel, Uwe. "Drei Todesurteile pro Tag" (Three death sentences per day), Die Zeit, 3 February 2005. Text in German Uwe Wesel is professor emeritus of Legal History in Berlin's Free University.
In 1941, in a discussion at the "Führer Headquarters" about whom to appoint to replace Franz Gürtner, the Reich Justice Minister, who had died, Goebbels suggested Freisler as an option; Hitler's reply, referring to Freisler's alleged "Red" past, was "That old Bolshevik? No!"
Contribution to the Nazification of the law Freisler was a committed Nazi ideologist and used his legal skills to adapt its theories into practical law-making and judicature. He published a paper titled Die rassebiologische Aufgabe bei der Neugestaltung des Jugendstrafrechts ("The racial-biological task involved in the reform of juvenile criminal law").In Monatsschrift für Kriminalbiologie und Strafrechtsreform, 1939, p. 209. In this document he argued that "racially foreign, racially degenerate, racially incurable or seriously defective juveniles" should be sent to juvenile centres or correctional education centres and segregated from those who are "German and racially valuable".Cited by Wayne Geerling, see below in the Bibliography.