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Friedrich Weißler

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Friedrich Weißler

(Georg) Friedrich Weißler (born 28 April 1891 in Königshütte, Upper Silesia; died 19 February 1937 at Sachsenhausen concentration camp) was a German lawyer and judge. Born into a Jewish family and baptized Protestant,[1] he joined the Christian resistance against the Nazi regime after Nazi bullies had destroyed his judicial career.

Early life

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Friedrich Weißler was the youngest of three sons of the lawyer and notary Adolf Weißler and his wife Auguste (née Hayn).[2][3] Departing from Judaism, his father had him, like his brothers, baptized in infancy by a Protestant pastor.

In 1893, the family moved to Halle, where Friedrich attended school. After graduating from high school, he began studying law at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Like his father and brothers, he became a member of the Ascania Halle singers’ association. He transferred to the University of Bonn, joining a music association there as well.[4] In 1913, he served as a one-year volunteer in the Prussian Army. He then joined the Eilenburg district court as a law clerk. In 1914, he received his doctorate in Halle.[5] At the beginning of the first World War, Weißler enlisted as a volunteer in the German army. Reaching the rank of lieutenant, he served on the war front until 1918.

Judicial career destroyed by Nazis

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Weißler resumed his legal clerkship in Halle in 1920. After completing it, he received a position in the Prussian judiciary. He then served at various courts, including the Naumburg superior court and the Halle labor court. In October 1932, he was appointed presiding judge of the Magdeburg regional court.[6]

A few months after Weißler began presiding as judge in Magdeburg, Hitler took power. In February 1933, in a criminal case he was judging, Weißler sentenced an SA (storm trooper) man, who appeared illegally in court in full uniform, to a small fine for improper behavior. A short time later, a group of SA men assaulted Weißler in his office, beating and kicking him. Presenting him to an aroused mob on the balcony of the district court, they forced Weißler to salute a swastika flag. SA men then dragged him through the city streets and detained him for a short time in an SA camp. In August 1933 Weißler was dismissed as a judge, due to his Jewish origins and resistance to Nazis.[7]

Joins Protestant opposition to Nazis

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Weißler moved to Berlin and began working with the Protestant opposition (Confessing Church) within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union. Starting November 1934 as legal advisor for the opposition, he helped Inundate old-Prussian state bishop Ludwig Müller and his minions with a wave of litigation in the ordinary courts, contesting Müller's arbitrary measures that violated the church constitution (Kirchenordnung).[8] Since Müller usually acted without legal basis, the courts often upheld the litigants’ claims.[9]

Weißler had already worked as legal advisor to the first Preliminary Church Executive, a body organised by the Confessing Church as an alternative to the Nazi-submissive German Evangelical Church. He was also appointed legal advisor to the second Preliminary Church Executive, and later became its office manager.[10]

Memorandum to Hitler

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On Pentecost 1936 (31 May), the second Preliminary Church Executive prepared a “memorandum” (Denkschrift) to Adolf Hitler, also to be read from the pulpits on 23 August 1936, condemning anti-Semitism, Nazi concentration camps and state terrorism. The memorandum was delivered to Hitler at the Chancellery on 4 June 1936 — but there was no reaction from the government.[11] A draft was then leaked to and published in the foreign press in July 1936, during the build-up to the Olympic Games.[12]

If blood, race, nationhood and honour are given the rank of eternal values, so the Evangelical Christian is compelled by the First Commandment, to oppose that judgement. If the Aryan human is glorified, so it is God's word, which testifies the sinfulness of all human beings. If — in the scope of the National Socialist world view — anti-Semitism, requiring hatred of the Jews, is imposed on the individual Christian, so for him the Christian virtue of charity stands against that.[13]

The memorandum concluded that the Nazi regime would definitely lead the German people into disaster.[14]

A memorial plate in Berlin

Arrest and deportation to Sachsenhausen

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On 7 October 1936, the Gestapo arrested Weißler and two “Aryan” assistants who also worked for the Confessing Church — erroneously accusing them of passing the memorandum into the hands of foreign media.[10] Whereas the Aryans were ultimately released, the church did not intervene on Weißler's behalf.[15] Had he been taken to court, he could easily have exposed the false evidence implicating him in a crime against the Nazi regime. But instead, Weißler was summarily deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There, he was tortured to death from 13 to 19 February 1937.[16] Weißler was the first “full-blooded Jew” murdered in the Kirchenkampf on the Protestant side.[17]

Notes

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  1. ^ "Memorial Speech: Friedrich Weissler (1891-1937) and the Confessing Church. Remembrance and Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Death of Friedrich Weissler. Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum, February 19, 2012 – Contemporary Church History Quarterly".
  2. ^ Wolf-Georg Harms: Adolf Weißler. Rechtsanwalt – Notar – Justizrat. 1855–1919: Eine biografische Dokumentation. Deutscher Notarverlag, Bonn 2017 [über den Vater von Friedrich Weißler].
  3. ^ Auguste Weißler geb. Hayn (Stolperstein Berlin), Friedrich Weißler (Stolperstein Berlin)
  4. ^ Sondershäuser Verband Deutscher Sänger-Verbindungen: A.H.-Anschriften-Buch. Mitglieder-Verzeichnisse sämtlicher A.H.-Verbände (Stand vom 15. April 1929). München 1929, S. 176.
  5. ^ Dissertation: Die Behandlung entfernter Möglichkeiten im Privatrecht – Ein Beitrag zur Lehre vom Vertrauensschutz. Halle an der Saale 1914.
  6. ^ Johannes Weissler: Die Weißlers. Ein deutsches Familienschicksal. Oase Verlag, Badenweiler 2011; Dieter Miosge: Friedrich Weissler (1891–1937). Ein Juristenschicksal. In: Armin Höland/Heiner Lück (Hrsg.): Juristenkarrieren in der preußischen Provinz Sachsen (1919–1945). Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle 2004, S. 43–51.
  7. ^ Horst Göppinger: Juristen jüdischer Abstammung im „Dritten Reich“. Entrechtung und Verfolgung. C.H. Beck, München 1990, ISBN 3-406-33902-6, S. 263f.
  8. ^ Ralf Lange and Peter Noss, "Bekennende Kirche in Berlin", in: Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932-1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten, Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 114-147, here p. 131. ISBN 3-923095-61-9.
  9. ^ Barbara Krüger and Peter Noss, "Die Strukturen in der Evangelischen Kirche 1933-1945", in: Kirchenkampf in Berlin 1932-1945: 42 Stadtgeschichten, Olaf Kühl-Freudenstein, Peter Noss, and Claus Wagener (eds.), Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1999, (Studien zu Kirche und Judentum; vol. 18), pp. 149-171, here p. 159. ISBN 3-923095-61-9.
  10. ^ a b Martin Greschat, "Friedrich Weißler: Ein Jurist der Bekennenden Kirche im Widerstand gegen Hitler", In: Die verlassenen Kinder der Kirche: Der Umgang mit Christen jüdischer Herkunft im »Dritten Reich«, Ursula Büttner and Martin Greschat (eds.), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998, pp. 86-122, here p. 115. ISBN 3-525-01620-4.
  11. ^ "Werner Koch". Internationale Bonhoeffer-Gesellschaft (ibg), Deutschsprachige Sektion, e.V., Wolfhagen. Archived from the original on 3 September 2018. Retrieved 3 September 2018.
  12. ^ Matthew D. Hockenos (June 2016). "On the Confessing Church's June 1936 Memorandum to Hitler". Contemporary Church History Quarterly. Ambrose University, Calgary. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  13. ^ The German original: »Wenn Blut, Rasse, Volkstum und Ehre den Rang von Ewigkeitswerten erhalten, so wird der evangelische Christ durch das erste Gebot [Es lautet: »Du sollst keine anderen Götter neben mir haben.«] gezwungen, diese Bewertung abzulehnen. Wenn der arische Mensch verherrlicht wird, so bezeugt Gottes Wort die Sündhaftigkeit aller Menschen. Wenn dem Christen im Rahmen der nationalsozialistischen Weltanschauung ein Antisemitismus aufgedrängt wird, der zum Judenhaß verpflichtet, so steht für ihn dagegen das christliche Gebot der Nächstenliebe.« Cf. Martin Greschat (ed. and commentator), Zwischen Widerspruch und Widerstand: Texte zur Denkschrift der Bekennenden Kirche an Hitler (1936), Munich: Kaiser, 1987, (Studienbücher zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte; vol. 6), pp. 113seq. ISBN 3-459-01708-2.
  14. ^ Klaus Drobisch, "Humanitäre Hilfe – gewichtiger Teil des Widerstandes von Christen (anläßlich des 100. Geburtstages von Propst Heinrich Grüber)", in: Heinrich Grüber und die Folgen: Beiträge des Symposiums am 25. Juni 1991 in der Jesus-Kirche zu Berlin-Kaulsdorf, Eva Voßberg (ed.), Berlin: Bezirkschronik Berlin-Hellersdorf, 1992, (Hellersdorfer Heimathefte; No. 1), pp. 26-29, here p. 28. No ISBN.
  15. ^ Friedlander, Saul (1998). Nazi Germany and the Jews,1933-1945: Abridged Edition, New York: Harper Perennial, pp. 61-86
  16. ^ Bethge, Renate; Gremmels, Christian (2006). Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures. Fortress Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-8006-3811-5.
  17. ^ The first lethal victim was the Catholic Erich Klausener, murdered on 30 June 1934. Paul Schneider (pastor) is referred to as the first cleric of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, to have been murdered in the Kirchenkampf.
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