. NMT03-T0212
Volume III · Page 212
| C. Organization and Structure of the German Judicial System and the Reich Ministry of Justice |
| I. THE POSITION AND
RESPONSIBILITY OF LEADING OFFICIALS IN THE REICH MINISTRY OF JUSTICE |
| EXTRACT FROM THE TESTIMONY OF DEFENDANT
METTGENBERG¹ |
| DIRECT EXAMINATION |
| * * * * * * * * * * |
| DR. SCHILF (counsel for defendant
Mettgenberg) : Dr. Mettgenberg, at the Reich Ministry of Justice you last held
the position of a subdepartment chief. In the course of this trial a great many
things have been said about that subdepartment chief,² but you are the
only defendant who last held that position. Therefore, would you please give
the court an outline of that last position you held? DEFENDANT METTGENRERG: Perhaps I may somewhat exceed the scope of the question and say a few words about the structure of the Reich Ministry of Justice as a whole, of which so far nothing has been said here. The entire personnel of the Reich Ministry of Justice amounted to approximately 800. Those 800 people composed three groups, the workers, the employees, and the officials. As an example for the workmen may I perhaps mention the cleaning women and the boilermen. As an example for the employees, the majority of the secretaries and typists. Officials were those who held the posts of civil servants. Conditions to fulfill the status of a civil servant were mainly of a formal nature. Within the body of civil servants there were three groups which must be distinguished — the lower grade, the intermediate grade, and the higher grade. Lower officials were, for example, those who carried the files, the chief messengers, etc. Officials of the intermediate grade were the men whose task it was to keep the registers and to draft documents which were made by the dozen. The higher grade of officials were those beginning with assessor [junior judge or prosecutors up to the Minister himself. The scope of work for the higher grade civil servants was distributed in such a way that the younger of these civil servants were employed as so-called coworkers [Mitarbeiter] or assistants. |
¹ Complete testimony is recorded in the mimeographed transcript, (31 July, 1 Aug. 1947), pages 6235-6271; 6274-6362.
² Defendant Mettgenberg later testified that in department III of the Ministry of Justice he held the position of "Referent for legislation in the field of international penal law" and that in department IV he was "a subdepartment chief in charge of a sphere of work which, above all, also concerned affairs of international penal law" (Tr. p. 6251).
