page_title: Roland Freisler
section_title: 20 July Plot show-trials
hierarchical_section_title: Roland Freisler / 20 July Plot show-trials
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Volksgerichtshof, Reinecke, Freisler, Lautz Berlin - Volksgerichtshof, Prozeß nach dem 20. Juli 1944; v.l.n.r.: Hermann Reinecke, Roland Freisler, Ernst Lautz Abgebildete Personen: Reinecke, Hermann: General der Infanterie, Ritterkreuz (RK), Heer, Beisitzer Prozeß 20.Juli 1944, Deutschland (GND 133719561) Freisler, Roland: Präsident des Volksgerichtshofes, Deutschland Lautz, Ernst: Oberreichsanwalt am Volksgerichtshof, Deutschland
context_page_description: Roland Freisler was a German Nazi jurist, judge, and politician who served as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1934 to 1942 and President of the People's Court from 1942 to 1945.
  He was a prominent ideologist of National Socialism who influenced the Nazification of Germany's legal system as a jurist, and attended the Wannsee Conference which set in motion the Holocaust. He was appointed President of the People's Court in 1942, overseeing the prosecution of notable political crimes as a judge, for which he became infamous for his aggressive personality, humiliation of defendants, and frequent sentencing with the death penalty.
  Although the death penalty was abolished with the creation of the Federal Republic, he is also notable as defining murder in German law in 1941, which survives to date in the Strafgesetzbuch § 211.
context_section_description: In August 1944, some of the arrested perpetrators of the failed assassination of Adolf Hitler were taken before Freisler for punishment. The proceedings were filmed to be seen by the German public in cinema newsreels, portraying how Freisler ran his court, showing him alternating between cerebral questioning of the defendants, with clinical interrogations to prove their guilt of the charges, and verbally and psychologically toying with them to the point of enraged yelling of personal abuse at them from the bench. At one point he yelled at Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, who was trying to hold up his trousers  after having been given old, oversized and beltless clothing, "You dirty old man, why do you keep fiddling with your trousers?" 
  Another example is his handling of defendant Ulrich-Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld, screaming at him in an exaggerated and theatrical manner, "Sie sind ja ein schäbiger Lump!" (roughly, "You really are a lousy piece of trash!").
  Nearly all were sentenced to death by hanging, some of the sentences being carried out within two hours of the verdict.
caption: 1944 Freisler presiding over the German People's Court with Hermann Reinecke at left and at right, Oberreichsanwalt Ernst Lautz
exif: {}