- Person
- Fritz Bauer
- Lived
- 1903–1968
- Field
- Prosecutor & Jurist
- From
- German
The story
Fritz Bauer, attorney general of Hesse from 1956 until his death in 1968, believed that prosecuting Nazi criminals was only half the task. Germans also had to understand how Nazism had happened, or it could happen again.
In 1960 he gave a lecture to representatives of youth organisations titled Die Wurzeln faschistischen und nationalsozialistischen Handelns, The Roots of Fascist and National Socialist Action. In it he argued that the Nazi state was no industrial accident of history, but had roots in German society that had to be understood.
The youth council of Rhineland-Palatinate printed the lecture in 1961 and proposed distributing it as a booklet to upper secondary and vocational schools, but the state's education ministry refused. The young CDU politician Helmut Kohl defended that refusal in 1962, arguing that too little time had passed to judge the Nazi era. The lecture was not published in book form until 1965, when the Europäische Verlagsanstalt in Frankfurt brought it out.
Bauer also sat on the board of trustees of the German-Israeli Study Group in Frankfurt, founded in 1959, which worked at Frankfurt University to confront the Nazi past, oppose antisemitism and build ties with Israel. The Fritz Bauer Institute notes that he saw trials of Nazi perpetrators as a means of self-enlightenment and self-cleansing for West German society.
A line he often used, that nothing belongs to the past, everything is still present and can become the future again, now appears on a German postage stamp issued in his honour in 2019. His Stuttgart school awards a Fritz Bauer Prize every year to students who show commitment to others and to civil society.
Today the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt offers educational programmes and training courses on the history of the Holocaust, so that young Germans continue to learn what he tried to teach.
Why it matters
Bauer's insistence on honest education helped prepare a new generation of Germans to face their country's past and defend democracy.
About Fritz Bauer
Jewish judge, exile and Hesse attorney general who secretly tipped off Israel to Eichmann’s hiding place and forced West Germany to face Auschwitz in the Frankfurt trials of 1963–65.
More about Fritz Bauer
- Fritz Bauer enlisted historians to document the SSFor the Auschwitz trial Fritz Bauer recruited expert historians whose research became Anatomy of the SS State, the first thorough survey of the SS based on its own records.
- Fritz Bauer brought the Auschwitz trial to FrankfurtFritz Bauer initiated the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial of 1963–65, in which 319 witnesses, including 181 camp survivors, testified about the crimes of the death camp.
- Fritz Bauer called for war crimes trials from exileIn Swedish exile Fritz Bauer co-founded a periodical with Willy Brandt and in 1945 published Die Kriegsverbrecher vor Gericht, War Criminals in Court.
- Fritz Bauer worked for a more humane justice systemFritz Bauer co-founded the Humanist Union, a civil rights group, and argued for a criminal law focused on rehabilitation; a prize in his name honors legal reformers.
- Fritz Bauer won justice for the plotters against HitlerIn the 1952 Remer trial, prosecutor Fritz Bauer argued that the Nazi state was not a state under the rule of law, and the July 1944 resisters were legally and morally rehabilitated.
- Fritz Bauer's tip led Israel to Adolf EichmannIn 1957 German prosecutor Fritz Bauer secretly told Israel where Adolf Eichmann was hiding in Argentina, a crucial lead that resulted in his capture in 1960.
- Fritz Bauer defended German democracy before 1933Appointed in 1930, Fritz Bauer was the youngest local judge in the Weimar Republic, and he campaigned publicly to defend the democratic constitution against the Nazis.
Sources
- Fritz Bauer Wikipedia (German)
- Fritz Bauer Fritz Bauer Institut
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.