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The defense regarding the specific counts of the indictment
necessitates an explanation of the position and the sphere of responsibility of
the defendant.
Dr. von Knieriem was — at any rate after 1938
— the first lawyer of the IG. This designation and the meaning of this
position can be understood only if one is familiar with the decentralization
system of legal matters at the IG.
Dr. von Knieriem was not the chief
of the legal department of IG, because such a department did not exist; nor was
it his duty to take care of legal matters. The judicial activity in such an
enterprise is an auxiliary function, assisting the technicians and businessmen
in their tasks, and just like the latter it was completely decentralized. A
number of independently working legal departments existed, which, on their own
responsibility, advised the technicians and businessmen in their respective
offices. Herr von Knieriem did not supervise the activity of these legal
departments and did not have to do so. Any other arrangement was impossible, if
only because of the size of the enterprise; it was impossible, too, because of
the diversity of production and the complexity of the chemical field in
general, which obliged the jurists in the various legal departments to become
technically and commercially informed experts. Owing to the independent
functioning of the various legal departments, the Central Office for Contracts
[Zentralstelle fuer Vertraege] was set up; at the conclusion of new contracts
its sole task consisted in examining the possibility of any conflicting
interests. There was also the so-called "Rechtsausschuss" (Legal Committee). It
met about twice a year under the chairmanship of Herr von Knieriem to
coordinate certain doubtful general questions and to receive reports such as
those submitted by Herr von Knieriem regarding his special field of activity in
internal matters pertaining to corporation law — as for instance, general
meetings, consolidated balance sheets, balances, capital changes, statutes,
charters, loans, structural changes within the concern — furthermore,
questions concerning the sphere of patents, which played a large part within
the IG and was under the direction of Herr von Knieriem, whereas this field was
not in the line of the other IG jurists.
Among the counts of the
indictment which touch upon the spheres of Herr von Knieriem's activity, or in
which business events are connected with his name, incidents are mentioned
which are unjustly viewed as suspicious collaboration with military or other
state authorities toward the preparation of an aggressive war. I shall show in
detail that the treatment of patent matters was unobjectionable in every
respect. The measures designated as "camouflage" do not indicate in any way
that the |
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