Friedrich Wilhelm Johannes Grimm (17 June 1888 – 16 May 1959) was a German lawyer, Nazi Party politician, and propagandist. He opposed the Treaty of Versailles, defended political assassinations during the Weimar Republic, supported the rise to power of the Nazis, and persecuted resistance fighters and opponents of the regime. He was a deputy of the Reichstag, was an expert on French policy and served as a German consul-general at Paris during the Second World War.
Following the end of the war, Grimm gained notoriety for his advocacy for a general amnesty for Nazi perpetrators, his Holocaust denial and his participation in the legal defense of former Nazi war criminals and officials, including the leader of the Naumann Circle, a neo-Nazi organization in West Germany.
In the German Empire Education Grimm was born in Düsseldorf, the son of a railway surveyor, graduated from the Gymnasium in Essen in 1907 and studied law at the University of Geneva, the Humboldt University of Berlin and Marburg University. He completed his studies at the University of Münster, where he received his Doctor of Law degree in 1910. In 1912, he was assigned as a lawyer in training at the Essen public prosecutor's office. In 1914, after passing the second state law examination, he became a partner in a law firm in Essen.Friedrich Grimm biography in the Reichstag Members Database
War service Grimm was conscripted in 1916 to serve in the Imperial German Army during World War I. His knowledge of the French language led to his assignment in a Landsturm unit as an interpreter and mail censor at a prisoner-of-war camp in Münster. He later was assigned to defend French and Belgian civilians before German military courts.
In the Weimar Republic Academic career In 1921, Grimm received his habilitation in Münster with a work on international law concerning the Treaty of Versailles. Revision of the treaty was a focus of his publications, which he pursued for almost two decades. From 1922, Grimm worked as a lecturer at the University of Münster and advanced to an associate professorship of international law in 1927. That same year, he was named an honorary senator of the University of Marburg. From 1923 to 1933, Grimm was a co-editor of the prestigious law journal, .Prof. Dr. Friedrich Grimm (1888–1959) in Anwaltsgeschichte und die Geschichte der Anwaltschaft
Legal career Post-war defense of German interests Grimm distinguished himself primarily as a successful lawyer in numerous political trials. Immediately after Germany's defeat, Grimm defended the Saar industrialist of the Völklingen Ironworks before a French military tribunal for alleged war crimes. Röchling was accused of having confiscated raw materials and machinery in occupied France as an agent of the Prussian Ministry of War and using them in his factories. Grimm was successful in having Röchling's ten-year prison sentence suspended and obtaining his release after 22 months of pretrial detention. Grimm also defended German interests in numerous cases before the joint arbitration tribunals that had been established in Paris, Brussels and Bucharest by the Versailles Treaty. Due to Germany's inability to fulfill its reparations obligations, French military forces occupied the Ruhr in 1923. Grimm defended the economic and political interests of prominent figures such as Fritz Thyssen, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach and the mayor of Duisburg, Karl Jarres, in French court proceedings.
Defense of political assassins and right-wing extremists Grimm became known for his legal defense of nationalist and anti-republican elements. He defended Freikorps fighters such as Albert Leo Schlageter who attempted to blow up railway lines to sabotage the actions of the French occupiers. Despite Grimm's intervention, he was sentenced to death and was considered a martyr by many Germans. Grimm was more successful in defending 18-year-old Count Keller and his accomplices before a Belgian military court in Aachen. They had been arrested near Neuss, carrying explosives from a Reichswehr barracks. Their death sentences were commuted to prison terms.Anwalts Kriminalmagazin 1931, Heft 3, abgedruckt im Verein Anwaltsgeschichte E.V. unter www.anwaltsgeschichte.de.
Grimm also was involved in combating separatism on the left bank of the Rhine. He condoned the murders of separatists, some of which were supported by France, such as the 9 January 1924 assassinations of members of the Palatinate separatist government in Speyer that were carried out on the orders of the Bavarian state government. Grimm provided the assassins with a justification that legitimized their actions as self-defense of the state. He further enhanced his reputation in anti-republican and nationalist circles by defending perpetrators of Feme murders such as the Nazi Party politician, and Sturmabteilung (SA) officer, Edmund Heines, and the Nazi politician and leader of the Black Reichswehr, Paul Schulz. Grimm also defended the political assassin Richard Eckermann, whose acquittal was based on the argument that his action, carried out on behalf of the Black Reichswehr, was an act of self-defense for the state.Sozialdemokratischer Pressedienst vom 28. September 1929 (PDF; 3.1 MB))
Grimm also gave public lectures on his defense of opponents of the Weimar Republic, which were very well received and published in book form, including the 1929 book Oberleutnant Schulz. Femeprozesse und Schwarze Reichswehr (First Lieutenant Schulz: Feme Trials and the Black Reichswehr). Grimm's lectures and brochures were part of a campaign to obtain amnesty for political assassins, which in October 1930 led to the suspension of all ongoing proceedings and the release of those still imprisoned.Bernhard Sauer: Schwarze Reichswehr und politische Attentate. Eine Milieustudie zum Rechtsradikalismus in der Weimarer Republik. Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-06-9, pp. 281–287. After the Nazi seizure of power, Grimm contacted the then State Secretary in the Prussian Justice Ministry, Roland Freisler, on 16 May 1933 and proposed compensation for the perpetrators of these political assassinations.
During the Nazi Era Grimm's antisemitism Antisemitism was a prominent element in Grimm's political worldview, which he expressed through propaganda and also put into practice by participating in repression and persecution. In early 1929, he signed an appeal by Alfred Rosenberg's antisemitic Militant League for German Culture that aimed to "enlighten the German people about the connections between race, art and science, and moral and volitional values".Thomas Neumann (Hrsg.): Quellen zur Geschichte Thüringens. Kultur in Thüringen 1919–1949. Thüringer Landeszentrale für politische Bildung 1998, ISBN 3-931426-23-8, p.132. thueringen.de (PDF; 1.1 MB)
In April 1933, Grimm was involved in drafting the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service and the Law Concerning Admission to the Legal Profession at the Reich Ministry of Justice along with Reichsminister Franz Gürtner and his State Secretary Franz Schlegelberger. These statutes effectively banned large numbers of Jewish civil servants and lawyers from their livelihoods. Grimm welcomed this ban in an article he published in the Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung.Tillmann Krach: Jüdische Juristen in Preußen. C.H. Beck, 1991, p. 282. In 1941, during a lecture before the Working Group on Criminal Justice of the National Socialist Association of Legal Professionals, Grimm blamed Jews for the poor reputation of criminal defense lawyers: "The Jewish defense attorney, who was a master of sophistry and the art of twisting the facts, who tried to make black appear white, greatly damaged the legal profession".Angelika Königseder: Recht und nationalsozialistische Herrschaft: Berliner Juristen 1933–1945. Bonn, 2001, ISBN 3-8240-0528-X, p. 153.
Grimm's antisemitic publications were promoted by the Reich Propaganda Ministry and many of his books and pamphlets were published with funds from either the ministry, the foreign office or the Nazi Party. The ministry published a directive on 12 January 1938, supporting the publication of an article by Grimm in the journal Deutsche Justiz (German Justice) on the "Jewish Question in Romania", stating: "The German press is hereby informed of the importance of this article".Josef Wulf: Kultur im Dritten Reich: Presse und Rundfunk. Frankfurt am Main/Berlin 1989, p. 102.
Grimm blamed all foreign reactions to Germany's persecution of Jews on the "Jewish world conspiracy". Even after 1945, in a posthumously published autobiographical work, he described the Second World War in typically antisemitic terms as a "German-Jewish foreign policy war".
Nazi Party involvement In May 1932, Grimm first met Adolf Hitler, who visited him at his private residence in Essen to discuss legal questions regarding a revision to the Treaty of Versailles. Shortly afterward, Hitler invited Grimm and his wife to his residence, the Berghof at the Obersalzberg. There, on 11 August 1932, Grimm and Hitler continued their discussion on methods for revising the treaty. Grimm proudly emphasized in his postwar autobiography that, despite the presence of other guests, Hitler invited him alone into his private sitting room where they continued their conversation. Grimm became an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazis and a propagandist for their aggressive foreign policy. After becoming Reich Chancellor, Hitler met Grimm at the Reich Chancellery on numerous occasions. Grimm, for his part, not only supported Hitler, but practically idolized him:
Anyone who has seen Adolf Hitler up close, anyone who has been captivated by his rousing speeches, cannot deny that this man has a mission, a calling that fills him, in which he believes, in which all his followers believe, with the power that can move mountains. But this is the essential point of this realization: that the mission bestowed upon Adolf Hitler, the historical mission that sets him apart from all other Germans, is a German mission, a mission that concerns us all, from which we cannot escape, however we may individually feel about the movement and its goals, a mission governed by one grand, ultimate idea before which everything small and insignificant must recede. This idea is: One people, one Reich, one leader; overcoming German particularism in every form; one German people, the Reich of the Germans; the realization of a centuries-old longing; this is Hitler's German mission.Léon Poliakov, Josef Wulf: Das Dritte Reich und seine Denker. Berlin 1959, p. 53.
Until 1933, Grimm belonged to the German People's Party (DVP). He was admitted to the Nazi Party on 1 May 1933 (membership number 2,550,332).Federal Archives R 9361-IX CARD/11950226 In the parliamentary election of 12 November 1933, Grimm was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 23 (Düsseldorf West). He initially served as a "guest" of the Nazi Party faction before being accepted into it. Reelected in 1936 and 1938, he retained his parliamentary seat until the fall of the Nazi regime in May 1945.Friedrich Grimm entry in the Reichstag Members Database
Grimm also held an office as a Nazi Party official. He was deputy head of the Office for Legal Support of the German People, which was Department III of Hans Frank's Legal Office in the Party Reichsleitung (Reich leadership) in Munich.Tilman Krach: Jüdische Juristen in Preußen. München 1991, p. 156.