Fritz Bauer (16 July 1903 – 1 July 1968) was a

German Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

judge and prosecutor. He was instrumental in the post-war capture of former Holocaust planner

Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann"
''

Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.

Early life

Bauer was born in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

, to Jewish parents, Ella (Hirsch) and Ludwig Bauer. Bauer's father was a successful businessman who ran a textile mill that by 1930 provided him with an annual income of (by way of comparison, the annual income of a typical doctor in Germany in 1930 was ). His sister Margot called their childhood a "liberally Jewish one". Through his family Bauer was assimilated into the German culture, his parents did not celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday (a common practice in Jewish homes in Stuttgart at the time) and insisted on celebrating Jewish holidays. He attended

Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium is a gymnasium in Stuttgart established in 1686. History The school was established in 1686 as Gymnasium illustre (zu Stuttgart), seemingly honouring the Illustrious Gymnasium in Gotha, known by that name since about ...

and studied business and law at the Universities of Heidelberg,

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

and Tübingen. German universities were traditionally strongholds of the ''völkisch'' movement, and almost all

student fraternities Fraternities and sororities are social organizations at colleges and universities in North America. Generally, membership in a fraternity or sorority is obtained as an undergraduate student, but continues thereafter for life. Some accept gradua ...

in Germany under '' völkisch'' influence refused to accept Jews as members. As such, Bauer at Heidelberg found himself joining the liberal Jewish fraternity FWV (''Freie Wissenschaftliche Vereinigung'' – Free Academic Union), to which he devoted much of his time. The only other major Jewish fraternity were the

Zionists Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Jew ...

, whose views Bauer was opposed to.

Career in the Weimar Republic

In 1928, after receiving his PhD in law (at 25, ''Doktor der Rechte'' ur.Dr.in Germany), Bauer became an assessor judge in the Stuttgart local district court. By 1920, he already had joined the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties For ...

(SPD). Bauer found himself feeling at home in Stuttgart, a city with a left-wing working class majority that had a reputation as a "progressive" city where Weimar culture flourished. The city council of Stuttgart was dominated by the Social Democrats while the Nazis won only 1.1% of the vote in the Stuttgart municipal election of 1928. However, Bauer was the only judge in Württemberg who was a member of the SPD and one of the only two Jewish judges in Württemberg. He was much an outsider in the Württemberg judiciary. Bauer recalled later about the other judges in Württemberg: "They came from the highly elitist student fraternities and members of the reserve officers' corps. Their entire outlook was conservative and authoritarian in spirit. The Kaiser had gone, but the generals, public officials and judges remained". Bauer found himself appalled by the way that the other judges in Württemberg flagrantly favored the Nazis, always imposing the most lenient sentences on Nazis who engaged in violence and the harshest possible sentences on Communists and Social Democrats who did the same. Bauer believed that this favoritism towards the Nazis encouraged their violence. Bauer remembered that the judges of Württemberg almost down to a man loathed the Weimar Republic, which they believed was born of the ''

stab-in-the-back myth The stab-in-the-back myth (, , ) was an antisemitic conspiracy theory that was widely believed and promulgated in Germany after 1918. It maintained that the Imperial German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield, but was instead ...

'' of 1918 committed by "godless and unpatriotic scoundrels. The judges weren't at all fond of the republic and they used the guise of judicial independence to sabotage the new state". Bauer felt the political biases of the judiciary—who had an unwritten rule under the Weimar republic that violence committed by the right was acceptable—was the "judicial overture" to their actions under the Nazi regime. In the early 1930s, Bauer was together with Kurt Schumacher, one of the leaders of the SPD's Reichsbanner defense league in Stuttgart. Bauer served as the chairman of the Stuttgart chapter of the ''Reichsbanner'' and from 1931 onward found himself engaged in a feud with

Dietrich von Jagow Dietrich () is an ancient German name meaning "Ruler of the People.” Also "keeper of the keys" or a "lockpick" either the tool or the profession. Given name * Dietrich, Count of Oldenburg (c. 1398 – 1440) * Thierry of Alsace (german: Dietric ...

, the SA leader for Southwestern Germany. In late 1931, Bauer was demoted from a judge handling criminal cases to a judge handling civil cases following accusations from the Nazi journalist Adolf Gerlach in the local Stuttgart Nazi newspaper ''NS-Kurier'' that Bauer was biased because he was a Jew and a Social Democrat who discussed details of the trial with a journalist from the Social Democratic newspaper ''Tagwacht''. At the hearing in response to Gerlach's complaint, Bauer argued the details of the case involving a local con-man on trial for cheating others of their money had already been discussed in the court, so he had not violated any rules by speaking to a journalist and the case was not political. At the hearing, the judges ruled that Bauer had failed to "comply with existing regulations", thereby implying that Gerlach's accusations were partly justified and only declined to dismiss him because it could not be proved that Bauer's actions were "politically motivated". Following the demotion, Bauer contacted Schumacher, a highly decorated World War One veteran who lost his arm who served as the editor of the Social Democratic newspaper ''Schwäbishe Tagwacht'', about the need to drum up an anti-Nazi movement. Schumacher told Bauer: "We don't need intellectuals. Workers don't like intellectuals". Finally, Schumacher agreed to send Bauer to speak at a SPD rally, where Bauer gave what he called "a talk which went down rather well, I must admit". Bauer had a "deep, roaring voice" that electrified audiences and even a hostile Nazi account admitted he had "an accessible and very appealing style of expression". Schumacher in turn was, despite his grotesque appearance owing to his war wounds, one of the most popular Social Democrats in Württemberg, as one lawyer recalled: "He was like

Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1 ...

, chain-smoking cigarettes and puffing on cigars. You could sense his resolve and unwavering belief in the absolute righteousness of his cause". Schumacher and Bauer travelled across Württemberg giving speeches as Bauer recalled: "He and I spoke every weekend, sometimes three, four or five times. We were urging people to defend the Weimar Constitution, but also combat the extremism of the Weimar era". The rallies usually ended with people shouting ''Frei-Heil!'' (Hail Freedom!) which was intended to mock the Nazi slogan ''

Sieg Heil! The Nazi salute, also known as the Hitler salute (german: link=no, Hitlergruß, , Hitler greeting, ; also called by the Nazi Party , 'German greeting', ), or the ''Sieg Heil'' salute, is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. Th ...

'' (Hail Victory!). As Schumacher was also a Social Democratic MdR, he had to spend much time in Berlin attending the sessions of the ''Reichstag'', causing him to resign as a chairman of the Stuttgart chapter of the ''Reichsbanner'' in favor of Bauer. After the

Harzburg Front The Harzburg Front (german: Harzburger Front) was a short-lived radical right-wing, anti-democratic political alliance in Weimar Germany, formed in 1931 as an attempt to present a unified opposition to the government of Chancellor Heinrich Brü ...

was founded in October 1931, Bauer was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the Iron Front, whose stated purpose was to defend democracy.

Imprisonment in Nazi Germany

On 8 March 1933, Jagow was appointed police commissioner for Württemberg. On 23 March 1933, while Bauer was at work in his office, a group of policemen arrived to arrest him without charges. In March 1933, soon after the Nazi seizure of power, a plan to organize a general strike against the Nazis in the Stuttgart region failed, and Schumacher and Bauer were arrested with others and taken to Heuberg concentration camp. Bauer was tormented by the SA guards at Heuberg who found various ways to humiliate him and often beat him. As a "third-class" prisoner (i.e. one considered especially dangerous to the German state), Bauer was singled out for abuse such as being forced to stand for hours facing a wall while SA men struck him in the knees with their nightsticks and banged his head against the wall. Other than mentioning that he was forced to clean the camp's latrine on a daily basis, Bauer never mentioned his own experiences at Heuberg, which was too painful for him. The man whom Bauer consistently praised in his recollections of Heuberg was Schumacher, who despite missing one of his arms and being in constant pain because of his war wounds, was unyielding in his principles, taking abuse from the guards without complaint. The more prominent and older Schumacher, who had been an outspoken opponent of the Nazis as an SPD deputy in the Reichstag, remained in concentration camps (which destroyed his health) until the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, whereas the young and largely unknown Bauer was released. In November 1933, Bauer was transferred from Heuberg to a newly founded prison, Oberer Kuhberg concentration camp, located in former Army barracks in Ulm, where the guards were professional policemen instead of the SA, and conditions were better. In 1933, it was possible for lesser political prisoners to be released if they signed a public declaration of loyalty to the Nazi regime. On 13 November 1933, a letter appeared in the ''Ulmer Tagblatt'' newspaper from eight imprisoned Social Democrats declaring their loyalty to the new regime, which led to their release; one of the signatories was Bauer, who felt so humiliated that he never allowed discussion of this chapter of his life. In accordance with the ''

Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Hitler Service (german: Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums, shortened to ''Berufsbeamtengesetz''), also known as Civil Service Law, Civil Service Restoration Act, and Law to Re-es ...

'' he was removed from office. Schumacher was also offered release if he signed such a declaration, which he refused, saying that he rather would stay in the concentration camps forever than betray his beliefs; much of the praise that Bauer was later to offer Schumacher as a man who was always true to himself seemed to have reflected guilt about his own actions in signing the declaration.

Exile

In 1936, Bauer emigrated to

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...

. Shortly after arriving in Denmark, Bauer was arrested by the Danish police on charges of having sex with a male prostitute. Homosexuality was legal in Denmark, but soliciting the services of a prostitute of the same sex was not. Bauer admitted to the police that he did have sex with the prostitute in question, but denied vehemently that he paid the man for sex. After the German occupation, the Danish authorities revoked his residence permit in April 1940 and interned him in a camp for three months. On 1 December 1941, Bauer's first cousin, Erich Hirsch, and his aunt, Paula Hirsch, both of whom had remained in Stuttgart, were arrested by the Stuttgart police and were placed on a train together with 1,013 Stuttgart Jews. The train went to

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

, where all of the Jews were taken out to a field outside of Riga and shot by

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

n collaborationists. In October 1943, as Nazis began the deportation of Danish Jews to

Theresienstadt concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the Schutzstaffel, SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German occupation of Czechoslovakia, German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstad ...

, he went underground. If Bauer was homosexual, that would have placed him in even further peril should he remain in Germany or Nazi-occupied Denmark. To protect himself, he formally married the Danish kindergarten teacher Anna Maria Petersen, in June 1943. Although some authors, such as biographer Ronen Steinke, argue that Bauer was probably homosexual, others consider this unproven. In October 1943, he fled to

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

after the Danish government resigned and the Nazis declared martial law, which endangered the Jewish population in Denmark. Bauer spent 8 days in hiding in a cellar and on the night of 13 October 1943 left Denmark in a Danish fishing boat that took him to Sweden. In Sweden, Bauer founded, along with

Willy Brandt Willy Brandt (; born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and served as the chancellor of West Ge ...

and others, the periodical ''Sozialistische Tribüne'' ().

Return to Germany

Bauer returned to Germany in 1949, as the postwar

Federal Republic A federal republic is a federation of states with a republican form of government. At its core, the literal meaning of the word republic when used to reference a form of government means: "a country that is governed by elected representatives ...

(West Germany) was being established, and once more entered the civil service in the justice system. At first he became director of the district courts, and later the equivalent of a U.S.

district attorney In the United States, a district attorney (DA), county attorney, state's attorney, prosecuting attorney, commonwealth's attorney, or state attorney is the chief prosecutor and/or chief law enforcement officer representing a U.S. state in a l ...

, in

Braunschweig Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the Nor ...

. In 1956, he was appointed the district attorney in Hessen, based in Frankfurt. Bauer held this position until his death in 1968. In 1957, thanks to

Lothar Hermann Lothar Hermann (November 11, 1901 – July 6, 1974) was a German Jew and concentration camp survivor who contributed to the identification and arrest of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust. Early life and exile Hermann w ...

, a former

Nazi camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...

prisoner, Bauer relayed information about the whereabouts in Argentina of fugitive

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

planner

Adolf Eichmann Otto Adolf Eichmann ( ,"Eichmann"
''

Mossad Mossad ( , ), ; ar, الموساد, al-Mōsād, ; , short for ( he, המוסד למודיעין ולתפקידים מיוחדים, links=no), meaning 'Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations'. is the national intelligence agency ...

. Hermann's daughter Sylvia began dating a man named Klaus Eichmann in 1956 who boasted about his father's Nazi exploits, and Hermann alerted Fritz Bauer, at the time prosecutor-general of the Land of

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major histor ...

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

. Hermann then tasked his daughter with investigating her new friend's family; she met with Eichmann himself at his house, who said that he was Klaus's uncle. Klaus arrived not long after, however, and addressed Eichmann as "Father". In 1957, Bauer passed the information to Mossad director

Isser Harel Isser Harel ( he, איסר הראל, 1912 – 18 February 2003) was spymaster of the intelligence and the security services of Israel and the Director of the Mossad (1952–1963). In his capacity as Mossad director he oversaw the capture and co ...

, who assigned operatives to undertake surveillance, but no concrete evidence was initially found. Bauer trusted neither Germany's police nor the country's legal system, as he feared that if he had informed them, they would likely have tipped off Eichmann. Thus he decided to turn directly to Israel authorities. Moreover, when Bauer called on the German government in order to make efforts to get Eichmann extradited from Argentina, the German government immediately responded negatively. In 2021, it became known that much more instrumental to the capture of Eichmann was the geologist

Gerhard Klammer Gerhard Klammer was a German geologist who informed authorities that Adolf Eichmann was hiding in Argentina, which led to his capture by Mossad. Klammer and Eichmann, under the alias 'Ricardo Klement', both worked for CAPRI Construction in Tu ...

, who had worked with Eichmann in the early 1950s in a construction company in the Argentinian Tucumán province, who provided Bauer with Eichmann's exact address and a photograph of Eichmann alongside Klammer. Klammer was in contact with the German priest Giselher Pohl and bishop Hermann Kunst, to whom he sent the information with the photograph, from which Klammer's face was ripped. Kunst, in turn, passed the evidences to Bauer. Bauer's sources remained secret, and along with Klammer's recomposed picture were not revealed before 2021. Mossad's Isser Harel acknowledged the important role Fritz Bauer played in Eichmann's capture, and claimed that he pressed insistently the Israeli authorities to organize an operation to apprehend and deport him to Israel. In Harel book's introduction by Shlomo J. Shpiro, added to the 1997 expanded edition, it was stated Bauer did not act alone, but was discretely helped by

minister-president A minister-president or minister president is the head of government in a number of European countries or subnational governments with a parliamentary or semi-presidential system of government where they preside over the council of ministers. It ...

Georg-August Zinn Georg August Zinn (27 May 1901 – 27 March 1976) was a German lawyer and a politician of the SPD. He was a member of the Bundestag from 1949 to 1951 representing Kassel, the 2nd Minister-President of Hesse from 1950 to 1969 and served as ...

. Bauer was active in the postwar efforts to obtain justice and compensation for victims of the Nazi regime. In 1958, he succeeded in getting a class action lawsuit certified, consolidating numerous individual claims in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, which opened in 1963. Bauer pressed for replacing the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which made the "expression of homosexuality" illegal, thus meaning that for gay people that even to come out of the closet and declare their sexuality was a criminal offense. In West Germany, the 1935 version of Paragraph 175 stayed in effect until 1969, making the lives of gay people almost unbearable. Perhaps reflecting concerns about drawing attention to his own sexuality, Bauer did not demand the abolition of Paragraph 175, and instead suggest merely reverting back to the 1871 version of Paragraph 175 that made homosexual sex a criminal offense. In 1968, working with German journalist Gerhard Szczesny, Bauer founded the

Humanist Union The Humanist Union (German: ''Humanistische Union'', HU) is a German civil rights organization. Their targets include the enforcement of freedom of information, direct democracy and the abolition of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Con ...

, a human-rights organization. After Bauer's death, the Union donated money to endow the Fritz Bauer Prize. Another organization, the Fritz Bauer Institute, founded in 1995, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to civil rights that focuses on history and the effects of the Holocaust. Fritz Bauer's work contributed to the creation of an independent, democratic justice system in West Germany, as well as to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals and the reform of the criminal law and penal systems. Within the postwar German justice system, Bauer was a controversial figure due to his political engagements. He once said, "In the justice system, I live as I were in exile." Bauer died in

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

, aged 64. He was found drowned in his bathtub. A post mortem examination found that he had taken alcohol and sleeping tablets.

Works

* ''Die Kriegsverbrecher vor Gericht'' ("War Criminals in Court"), with a postscript by Hans Felix Pfenninger. Neue Internationale Bibliothek, Europa, Zürich 1945. * ''Das Verbrechen und die Gesellschaft'' ("Crime and Society"). Ernst Reinhardt, Munich 1957. * ''Sexualität und Verbrechen. Beiträge zur Strafrechtsreform'' ("Sexuality and Crime"). Fischer, Frankfurt 1963. * ''Die neue Gewalt. Die Notwendigkeit der Einführung eines Kontrollorgans in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland'' ("The new Oppression"). Verlag der Zeitschrift Ruf und Echo, Munich 1964. * ''Widerstand gegen die Staatsgewalt. Dokumente der Jahrtausende'' ("Resistance to State Oppression"). Fischer, Frankfurt 1965. * ''Die Humanität der Rechtsordnung. Ausgewählte Schriften'' ("The Human Vales of Legal Process; Selected Documents"). Joachim Perels and

Irmtrud Wojak Irmtrud Wojak (born 1963) is a German historian. From the end of March 2009 until November 2011, she was the founding director of the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism. Life Wojak studied history, Social History, ...

, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/New York 1998, .

Biographies

* Irmtrud Wojak: ''Fritz Bauer. Eine Biographie, 1903–1968'', Munich: C.H. Beck, 2009, * Ronen Steinke: ''Fritz Bauer: oder Auschwitz vor Gericht'', Piper, 2013, , tranlsated into English as: **

References

External links

Fritz Bauer Institute
(German)

2012

''Im Labyrinth des Schweigens'', 2014 {{DEFAULTSORT:Bauer, Fritz 1903 births 1968 deaths People educated at Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium People from the Kingdom of Württemberg 20th-century German Jews Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold members Jurists from Stuttgart Heidelberg University alumni Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni University of Tübingen alumni 20th-century German jurists German socialists LGBT people from Germany