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Volume III · Page 491
| This impression in particular was very vivid
to me from my experiences in England. Therefore, my belief that the idea of the
so-called Judge-King in Germany too, if there was any chance at all, would
exert an influence on the development. This memorandum represents a final
warning to Hitler in order to hold him back from this development which had
begun. If today I put the question to myself, whether I believed that I could
convince Hitler at all from my knowledge that I have today I, of course, have
to answer no to that question. According to my knowledge at that time I hoped
for it and I believe that the fact alone that I undertook such an attempt at
all is the best proof for this; and my belief of the time will be understood on
the basis of the experiences which I had gathered in Hamburg where it had been
possible by trying to swim against the current and to exert influence upon
leading political personalities, that one could succeed there. The aim of my memorandum was, in the final analysis, the same as has to be the aim of every state, namely, the rebuilding of an autonomous law which is independent of the form of government and without temporal limitation. In countries which have a tradition this may not be a problem at all, but in Germany this question had for decades been the problem, and already since 1905 leading jurists in Germany had occupied themselves with this problem again and again. If I had described this idea in my memorandum in very dry and bare words then this memorandum as hundreds of others would immediately have been thrown into the wastepaper basket and I would have been described as a fool. Therefore, I had first to describe the means which could create the prerequisites for such a final condition and, therefore, I described the proximate aims which I wanted to reach first. I emphasized them first. In order to clarify to the Tribunal that the position of a judge in Germany is a completely different one than in England, and I believe also than in the United States, I have to go into the historical development of the profession of the German judge in a few words. I can do this more briefly since this historical development is indicated briefly in this memorandum; furthermore, because in a lengthy article which I wrote at that time, which will be submitted as an exhibit by my defense counsel, I went into this historical development in detail. I therefore want to say here merely by a slogan that once due to the acceptance of the Roman law in Germany in the 16th Century which took place only on the continent of Europe and not in England, and furthermore caused by the development of the Prussian state where the administration of justice, as I already em- […phasized] |
