Marion Freisler (

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth ...

Russegger; 10 February 1910 in

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

– 21 January 1997 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

) was the wife of

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. A ...

, the infamous judge and chairman of the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...

'' Volksgerichtshof'' (People's Court), who died in 1945 during an air raid in

Berlin Berlin is Capital of Germany, the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and List of cities in Germany by population, by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European U ...

. She is sometimes mistakenly referred to as Anna Freisler. Marion Russegger was born 10 February 1910 in

, the daughter of Bernhard Adolf Cajetan Russegger, a merchant in Hamburg and Bremen, and Cornelia Pirscher. On 24 March 1928, she married

, who was a lawyer and city councillor of the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2 ...

at the time. They had two sons, Harald and Roland, and both were baptized. On 3 February 1945, her husband was killed during an Allied air raid in

. In his will, dated 1 October 1944, Freisler had decreed that their two houses belonged to his wife. She was considered "not incriminated" by the decision of the tribunal of April 29, 1953 and was his universal heir. She never remarried and, after the war, resumed her birth name Russegger and moved to

. In 1974, her pension was raised by about 400

Deutsche Mark The Deutsche Mark (; English: ''German mark''), abbreviated "DM" or "D-Mark" (), was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until the adoption of the euro in 2002. In English, it ...

s. The explanation given by the pension office was that had her husband survived the war, and not been executed, disbarred, or imprisoned by the military tribunals of the allied countries, he presumably would have had a successful career as a lawyer or a senior judge. This decision was protested by a member of the

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total l ...

n ''

Landtag A Landtag (State Diet) is generally the legislative assembly or parliament of a federated state or other subnational self-governing entity in German-speaking nations. It is usually a unicameral assembly exercising legislative competence in non- ...

'', but the protest was rejected by the state government. This was one of the last incidents connected with the problematic issue of social integration of

National Socialist Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

jurists in the

Federal Republic of Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south ...

in the early years.Guido Knopp, ''Hitler's Hitmen'', Sutton, 2002, pg. 251. In 1985, there was a scandal about her and other well-pensioned survivors of high-ranking

officials. In 1997, aged 86, Freisler died. She was buried in Berlin in the Russegger family plot alongside her parents and her husband (Roland Freisler's name is not on his gravestone).

Bibliography

Guido Knopp Guido Knopp (born 29 January 1948 in Treysa, Hesse) is a German journalist and author. He is well known in Germany, mainly because he has produced a great number of TV documentaries, predominantly about the " Third Reich" and National Socialism ...

, ''Hitler's Hitmen'', Sutton Publishing (2002), chapter "The Hanging Judge", pp. 213–251.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Freisler, Marion 1997 deaths 1910 births People from Hamburg People of Nazi Germany Roland Freisler