Otto Georg Thierack (19 April 188926 October 1946) was a German
Nazi jurist and politician.
Early life and career
Thierack was born in
Wurzen
Wurzen () is a town in the Leipzig district, in Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the river Mulde, here crossed by two bridges, 25 km east of Leipzig, by rail N.E. of Leipzig on the main line via Riesa to Dresden. It has a cathedral datin ...
in
Saxony. He took part in the
First World War from 1914 to 1918 as a volunteer, reaching the rank of lieutenant. He suffered a facial injury and was decorated with the
Iron Cross
The Iron Cross (german: link=no, Eisernes Kreuz, , abbreviated EK) was a military decoration in the Kingdom of Prussia, and later in the German Empire (1871–1918) and Nazi Germany (1933–1945). King Frederick William III of Prussia e ...
, second class. After the war ended, he resumed his interrupted law studies and ended them in 1920 with his ''Assessor'' (junior lawyer) examination. In the same year, he was hired as a court ''Assessor'' in Saxony.
Joining the Nazi Party
On 1 August 1932, Thierack joined the
Nazi Party. After the
Nazis seized power in 1933, he managed within a very short time to rise high in the ranks from a prosecutor to President of the People's Court (''
Volksgerichtshof''). The groundwork on which this rise was built was not merely that Thierack had been a Nazi Party member, but rather also that he had been leader of the
National Socialist jurists' organization, the so-called ''Rechtswahrerbund''.
Justice Minister of Saxony
On 12 May 1933, having been appointed Saxony's justice minister, it was Thierack's job to "nazify" justice, which was a part of the Nazis'
Gleichschaltung
The Nazi term () or "coordination" was the process of Nazification by which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party successively established a system of totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of German society and societies occupied b ...
(Coordination) that he had to put into practice in Saxony. After going through several mid-level professional posts, he became Vice President of the Reich Court in 1935 and in May 1936 President of the ''Volksgerichtshof'', which had been newly founded in 1934. He held this job, interrupted as it was by two stints in the armed forces, until August 1942, when he was succeeded in the position by
Roland Freisler
Roland Freisler (30 October 1893 – 3 February 1945), a German Nazi jurist, judge, and politician, served as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1934 to 1942 and as President of the People's Court from 1942 to 1945.
As ...
. On 20 August 1942, he succeeded
Hans Frank as President of the
Academy for German Law
The Academy for German Law (german: Akademie für deutsches Recht) was an institute for legal research and reform founded on 26 June 1933 in Nazi Germany. After suspending its operations during the Second World War in August 1944, it was abolished ...
.
Reich Minister of Justice
On 24 August 1942, Thierack assumed the office of Reich Minister of Justice. He introduced the monthly ''Richterbriefe'' in October 1942, in which were presented model – from the Nazi leaders' standpoint – decisions, with names left out, upon which German jurisprudence was to be based. He also introduced the so-called ''Vorschauen'' and ''Nachschauen'' ("previews" and "inspections"). After this, the higher state court presidents, in proceedings of public interest, had at least every two weeks to discuss with the public prosecutor's office and the State Court president – who had to pass this on the responsible criminal courts – how a case was to be judged ''before'' the court's decision.
When he became Reich Minister of Justice in August 1942, Thierack saw to it that the lengthy paperwork involved in clemency proceedings for those sentenced to death was greatly shortened. In September of that year, he caused all those in custody who were "Jews, Gypsies, Ukrainians, Poles sentenced to over three years, Czechs, or Germans serving a sentence of over eight years" to be classified as "asocial elements" and transferred to ''Reichsführer-SS''
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
to be
exterminated through work.
At Thierack's instigation, the execution shed at
Plötzensee Prison in Berlin was outfitted with eight iron hooks in December 1942 so that several people could be put to death at once, by
hanging (there had already been a
guillotine there for quite a while). The mass executions began on 7 September 1943 but due to their rapidity some prisoners were hanged "by mistake". Thierack dismissed these as errors and demanded that the hangings continue. Thierack was named to continue as Minister of Justice in
Hitler's political testament. He served in the brief
Goebbels cabinet
The Joseph Goebbels Cabinet was named by Adolf Hitler in his political testament of 30 April 1945. To replace himself, Hitler named Admiral Karl Dönitz as '' Reichspräsident'' and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels ...
but was dismissed on 5 May 1945 by Hitler's successor,
Reichspräsident Karl Dönitz
Karl Dönitz (sometimes spelled Doenitz; ; 16 September 1891 24 December 1980) was a German admiral who briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as head of state in May 1945, holding the position until the dissolution of the Flensburg Government foll ...
.
Arrest and suicide
The
Allies arrested Thierack after the end of World War II. Before he was brought to trial before the court at the
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
Judges' Trial, Thierack committed
suicide in
Sennelager,
Paderborn
Paderborn (; Westphalian: ''Patterbuorn'', also ''Paterboärn'') is a city in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, capital of the Paderborn district. The name of the city derives from the river Pader and ''Born'', an old German term for t ...
, by
poisoning himself.
References
Notes
Bibliography
*
External links
Biographical overview at the German Historical Museum
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thierack, Otto Georg
1889 births
1946 deaths
German Army personnel of World War I
Holocaust perpetrators in Germany
Judges in the Nazi Party
Jurists from Saxony
Members of the Academy for German Law
Nazi Germany ministers
Nazi Party politicians
Nazis who committed suicide in Germany
Nazis who committed suicide in prison custody
People from the Kingdom of Saxony
People from Wurzen
Suicides by cyanide poisoning
1946 suicides