| Imperial Court | |
|---|---|
| Reichsgericht | |
 TheReichsgericht building in Leipzig (today the seat of theFederal Administrative Court) | |
 | |
| 51°19′59″N12°22′11″E / 51.33306°N 12.36972°E /51.33306; 12.36972 | |
| Established | 1 October 1879 |
| Dissolved | 30 October 1945 |
| Jurisdiction | German Empire |
| Location | Leipzig, Saxony, German Empire |
| Coordinates | 51°19′59″N12°22′11″E / 51.33306°N 12.36972°E /51.33306; 12.36972 |
| Language | German |
| Type of tribunal | Supreme court |
TheReichsgericht (German:[ˈʁaɪçs.ɡəˌʁɪçt],transl. Reich Court or National Court) was the supreme criminal and civil court of Germany from 1879 to 1945, encompassing the periods of theGerman Empire, theWeimar Republic andNazi Germany. It was based inLeipzig.
TheReichsgericht began its work on 1 October 1879, the date on which theReichsjustizgesetze [de] (Imperial Judiciary Acts) came into effect. The acts standardised court types and procedural rules across the newly formed German Empire and establishedjudicial independence and unrestricted access to the courts.[1]
The court's jurisdiction included both criminal and civil cases. It handled appeals, charges of treason and, after 1920, the compatibility of state and national laws. Throughout its life, its major rulings tended to be conservative. They included the conviction ofKarl Liebknecht for high treason in 1907, the lenient treatment of the men charged in the 1920Kapp Putsch and support of the Nazi'santisemitic racial laws.
TheReichsgericht was abolished following Germany's defeat inWorld War II.
The court was headed by a president and a number of senate presidents and counsellors (Reichsgerichtsräte). The number of civil and criminal senates was determined by theReich Chancellor until 1924, at which point theReich minister of justice took over the task. During the imperial period, the president of theReichsgericht, the presidents of the senates and the members of theReichsgericht were appointed by theemperor on the recommendation of theBundesrat, then during the Weimar era by theReich president on the recommendation of theReichsrat. The formal prerequisites for appointment were meeting the general qualifications for the office of judge and having reached the age of 35.[2]
TheReichsgericht was a court of general jurisdiction. It ruled on criminal and civil cases (including civil disputes, legal acts of the state in its fiscal capacity, commercial matters and labour law). There was no separate labour court system (Arbeitsgerichtsbarkeit [de]) until 1926. TheReichsgericht was also responsible forstate liability law. As vested competencies, theReichsgericht decided on civil appeals of final judgments and complaints against orders ofHigher Regional Courts (Oberlandesgerichte). Until 1934, the Reichsgericht ruled in the first and last instance on cases of high treason and treason if the crimes were directed against the German emperor or the state.[3]
From 1920, with the implementation law forArticle 13(2) of theWeimar Constitution, theReichsgericht also ruled on the compatibility of state and Reich law.[4]
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With the exception of its jurisdiction in matters of treason, theReichsgericht was purely an appellate court during the era of theGerman Empire. Its task was to ensure uniformity of jurisprudence throughout the territory of the German Empire. A national civil code (theBürgerliches Gesetzbuch) went only into effect on 1 January 1900, and the civil law systems of the individual states were not harmonised with one another until this time. TheGeneral State Laws for the Prussian States, for theRhineland,Baden,Saxony and uncodified common law all applied side by side.[5]
Critics saw theReichsgericht as a continuation of thePrussian High Tribunal. The judiciary was characterised by monarchical conservatism. Particularly in the area of criminal law, critical voices were in the minority at the court during the Empire, as they were in other state institutions at the time. In 1912, for example, the court ruled that the publication by theSocial Democratic Party (SPD) of a brochure that was aimed at civil servants and called on them to vote for the SPD was offensive.[6] In its verdict of 12 October 1907 in the high treason trial againstKarl Liebknecht, theReichsgericht stated that the unconditional obedience of soldiers to the emperor was a central provision of theConstitution of the German Empire. Liebknecht had argued that imperial orders were null and void if they were intended to violate the constitution. He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for acts preliminary to high treason.[7]
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In theWeimar Republic, the court continued in its conservative path, especially in the area of criminal law. In the judgments it handed down on 21 December 1921 in the trial of three participants in the right-wingKapp Putsch, there was only one conviction –Traugott von Jagow [de], the interior minister under the putsch government, who was sentenced to the minimum penalty of five years' imprisonment. The criminal proceedings against two co-defendants were dropped because, according to the court, they had not played a leading role in the coup attempt. None of the leaders of the putsch was ever brought to trial.[8][9]
In the 1921Leipzig war crimes trials which took place before theReichsgericht, only a few German war criminals were punished. Many cases were dropped, and of the few convictions, the verdicts against two members of the navy for sinking anEnglish hospital ship were later secretly overturned.[10] On 23 November 1931,Carl von Ossietzky was sentenced to 18 months in prison for espionage in theWeltbühne trial because an article published inhis magazine had revealed the secret and illegal rearmament of theReichswehr.[11]
Since violence from the right was not countered as forcefully as that from the left – some verdicts in the trials of the right-wingFeme murders in particular justified the accusation – theWeltbühne trial and others like it contributed to the view that the judiciary during the Weimar Republic was "blind in its right eye".[12]
TheReichsgericht made some groundbreaking decisions in the field of civil law during the period. Revaluation case law, for example, which developed under the impact ofGerman hyperinflation and theGreat Depression, was nothing short of revolutionary. TheReichsgericht for the first time granted itself the authority to examine laws for their validity,[13] which led to the previously recognised mark-for-mark principle (par value principle) being abandoned due to the extremely high rate of inflation.[14][page needed]
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AfterAdolf Hitler came to power, the Law on Admission to the Bar forced Jewish and Social Democratic judges (including Senate PresidentAlfons David [de] andReichsgericht justiceHermann Grossmann [de]) to resign, and Jewish lawyers at theReichsgericht were prevented from continuing their work.[15]
In the period that followed, theReichsgericht did not oppose the Nazi takeover or the regime's numerous illegal acts. Instead it became deeply entangled in theNational Socialist justice system, for example when it sentenced the Dutch communistMarinus van der Lubbe to death on the basis of the retroactively appliedLaw on Imposition and Enforcement of the Death Penalty in theReichstag fire trial.[16] The acquittal of the other four defendants was one of the reasons why theReichsgericht was stripped of its jurisdiction in matters of treason in 1934 by the law that established thePeople's Court.[17]
Germany'sannexation of Austria in 1938 led to the dissolution of theSupreme Court of Justice in Vienna and the transfer of its jurisdiction to theReichsgericht.[18] When the measure was implemented on 1 April 1939, theReichsgericht became the supreme court of appeal for Austrian civil cases.[19] Although partial reforms were made to Austriansubstantive law, the AustrianGeneral Civil Code remained the applicable private law code in Austria. Meanwhile, the 8th Civil Senate was established at theReichsgericht, to which all legal matters concerning Austria, theSudeten German territories and theProtectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were assigned whenever the jurisdiction of the first five senates was not applicable. It was dissolved due to understaffing before theReichsgericht was abolished.[citation needed]
In civil law, theReichsgericht handed down decisions – for example on marriage and contract law – that affected the status of Jews under the National Socialist government. In 1935, theReichsgericht wrote:
The court is in agreement with the verdict that, given the fundamental importance of the racial question in the National Socialist state, the education of young people ofAryan descent to become members of thenational community conscious of their kind and race, forms an integral part of the educational process and that this education is not guaranteed if the foster mother but not the foster father is of Aryan descent.
— Reichsgericht, Judgment of 2 November 1935 – IV B 7/35[20]
In 1935, in a further development of the law, theReichsgericht recognised even before theNuremberg Laws were passed that if a marriage partner was Jewish, it was grounds for annulling the marriage, although a formal legal basis for such terminations was not created until the Marriage Act enacted in 1938.[21] On the interpretation or reinterpretation of contracts with Jews, it ruled that "the National Socialist worldview requires that only those of German origin (and those legally equal to them) be treated as legally valid in the German Reich".[22] With the ruling, theReichsgericht adopted the racist subversion of the private law system that was developed by the German legal scholarship of the time, especially by theKiel School [de] (Kieler Schule). One of its most important representatives, the legal philosopherKarl Larenz, wrote in 1935, just a few months before the judgment was handed down: "A person is only a legal comrade if he is a national comrade; a national comrade is a person of German blood. Those outside the national community are not within the law."[23]
Following the collapse of National Socialism with thedefeat of Germany, theReichsgericht was dissolved by the Allies in 1945[24] and was not re-established. The last president of the court,Erwin Bumke, committed suicide two days after the US Army entered Leipzig.[25]
Beginning on 25 August 1945, 39 judges of theReichsgericht (more than one third of the total staff) were arrested by theNKVD (the Soviet secret service). The four survivors were released between 1950 and 1955; the others had starved to death or died of disease.[26]
Provisional supreme courts were formed in the individualoccupation zones. In 1950, the newly establishedFederal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) took over the tasks of theReichsgericht for theFederal Republic of Germany. Former judges of theReichsgericht were among the first judges in the court. In 1952, the Federal Court of Justice ruled that theReichsgericht had ceased to exist on 30 October 1945. In theGerman Democratic Republic, theSupreme Court of East Germany took over theReichsgericht's duties.[citation needed]
Located in Leipzig,Saxony, Germany, the building (Reichsgerichtsgebäude) was designed byLudwig Hoffmann andPeter Dybwad, and construction was completed in 1895. It is designed in theItalian renaissance style and features two large courtyards, a central cupola and a large portico at the entrance.[27] The rich decorative gable and sculptures are byOtto Lessing. After theGerman reunification, the former Reichsgericht building was renovated and became the seat of theBundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court).
| No. | Portrait | Name | Took office | Left office | Time in office |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | Simson, EduardEduard von Simson (1810–1899) | 1 October 1879 | 1 February 1891 | 11 years, 123 days |
| 2 |  | Oehlschläger, OttoOtto von Oehlschläger (1831–1904) | 1 February 1891 | 1 November 1903 | 12 years, 273 days |
| 3 | .jpg) | Gutbrod, KarlKarl Gutbrod (1844–1905) | 1 November 1903 | 17 April 1905 † | 1 year, 167 days |
| 4 | ![Rudolf von Seckendorff [de]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aRudolf_von_Seckendorff.jpg) | Seckendorff, RudolfRudolf von Seckendorff [de] (1844–1932) | 18 June 1905 | 1 January 1920 | 14 years, 197 days |
| 5 | ![Heinrich Delbrück [de]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aNo_image.png) | Delbrück, HeinrichHeinrich Delbrück [de] (1855–1922) | 1 January 1920 | 3 July 1922 † | 2 years, 183 days |
| 6 |  | Simons, WalterWalter Simons (1861–1937) | 16 October 1922 | 1 April 1929 | 6 years, 167 days |
| 7 |  | Bumke, ErwinErwin Bumke (1874–1945) | 1 April 1929 | 20 April 1945 † | 16 years, 19 days |
Authority control databases: National |
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