Courtroom to Revolutionary Stage : Performance and Ideology in Weimar Political Trials

What role did the courts play in the demise of Germany's first democracy and Hitler's rise to power? Courtroom to Revolutionary Stage challenges the orthodox interpretation of Weimar political justice. Henning Grunwald argues that an exclusive focus on reactionary judges and a preoccupation with number-crunching verdicts has obscured precisely that aspect of trials most fascinating to contemporary observers: their drama. Drawing on untapped sources and material previously inaccessible in English, Grunwald shows how an innovative group of party lawyers transformed dry legal proceedings into spectacular ideological clashes. Supported by powerful party legal offices (which have hitherto escaped scholarly notice almost entirely), they developed a sophisticated repertoire of techniques at the intersection of criminal law, politics, and public relations. Harnessing the emotional appeal of tens of thousands of trials, Communists and (emulating them) National Socialists institutionalized party legal aid in order to build their ideological communities. Defendants turned into martyrs, trials into performances of ideological self-sacrifice, and the courtroom into 'revolutionary stage', as one prominent party lawyer put it. It is this political justice as 'revolutionary stage' that most powerfully impacted Weimar political culture. While it helps to explain Weimar's demise, this argument about the theatricality of justice transcends interwar Germany. Trials were compelling not because they offered instruction about the revolutionary struggle, but because in a sense they were the revolutionary struggle. The ideological struggle, their message ran, left no room for fairness, no possibility of a 'neutral platform': justice was unattainable until the Republic was destroyed. Offering a new interpretation of the tens of thousands of political trials that undermined the first German democracy, Henning Grunwald looks for the first time at combative and fiercely committed party barristers who turned dry legal procedure into spectacular clashes of ideology. What role did the courts play in the demise of Germany's first democracy and Hitler's rise to power? Courtroom to Revolutionary Stage challenges the orthodox interpretation of Weimar political justice. Henning Grunwald argues that an exclusive focus on reactionary judges and a preoccupation with number-crunching verdicts has obscured precisely that aspect of trials most fascinating to contemporary observers: their drama. Drawing on untapped sources and material previouslyinaccessible in English, Grunwald shows how an innovative group of party lawyers transformed dry legal proceedings into spectacular ideological clashes. Supported by powerful party legal offices (which have hitherto escaped scholarly notice almost entirely), they developed a sophisticated repertoire oftechniques at the intersection of criminal law, politics, and public relations. Harnessing the emotional appeal of tens of thousands of trials, Communists and (emulating them) National Socialists institutionalized party legal aid in order to build their ideological communities. Defendants turned into martyrs, trials into performances of ideological self-sacrifice, and the courtroom into 'revolutionary stage', as one prominent party lawyer put it. It is this political justice as 'revolutionary stage' that most powerfully impacted Weimar political culture. While it helps to explain Weimar's demise, this argument about the theatricality of justice transcends interwar Germany. Trials were compelling not because they offered instruction about the revolutionary struggle, but because in a sense they were the revolutionary struggle. The ideological struggle, their message ran, left no room for fairness, no possibility of a 'neutral platform': justice was unattainable until the Republic was destroyed Cover Contents Introduction Historiography Rethinking Weimar political justice Definitions and sources Chapter structure 1. The Rosa Luxemburg Trials of 1914 and the Emergence of the Ideal Type of the Weimar Party Lawyer Wilhelmine legal culture and its discontents The best outcome is that where the party profits the most’: The militarism trial and the revolution in Social Democrat defending Conclusion 2. ‘Nursing Revolutionary Fighters’ and ‘Legal SA-Duty’: Ten Political Lawyers Biographies Patterns of professional development ‘Cleaning the toilet for Uncle Scrooge’: party lawyers vs. their non-political peers Conclusion 3. ‘To Fight the Class Struggle with the Bourgeois Courts with All Acridity’: the Communist Party Legal Organization Communist legal aid: evolution and organizational structure Communist legal aid in practice Lawyers as agents of party control Conclusion 4. The Compliment of Imitation: The Rise of National-Socialist Legal Organizations (Mis-)Managing the Rathenau trial: The Reich League of German Nationalist Trial Lawyers Symbols without substance? The Patriotic Prisoners Aid/National Emergency Aid The Association of National Socialist German Lawyers 5. Performing Ideology: Rethinking Weimar Political Justice The performativity of justice and German legal culture ‘Better propaganda of the deed than the offence itself ’: political trials in the public sphere Political trials and the aestheticization of politics Conclusion Conclusion ‘Losing with a splash’ The end of the story: party lawyers after 1933 Weimar as a stick to beat Bonn: a plea to retire some historiographical clichés Party lawyers on the Sonderweg? Orestes vs. the Furies or how to perform judicial legitimacy Appendix A: Party Allegiance of 36 Prominent Political Lawyers in the Weimar Republic Appendix B: Occupation of 100 Lay Magistrates in Political Trials Appendix C: The Hierarchy of the German Court System Bibliography Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z