Rüdiger Schleicher (14 January 1895 – 23 April 1945) was a German legal academic and
resistance fighter against the
Nazi régime.
Life
Born in
Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...
,
Württemberg
Württemberg ( ; ) is a historical German territory roughly corresponding to the cultural and linguistic region of Swabia. The main town of the region is Stuttgart.
Together with Baden and Province of Hohenzollern, Hohenzollern, two other histo ...
, Schleicher was married to Ursula Bonhoeffer (1902–1983),
Karl Bonhoeffer's daughter and
Dietrich and
Klaus Bonhoeffer's sister. His daughter Renate married Dietrich Bonhoeffer's friend and fellow theologian,
Eberhard Bethge. Schleicher studied
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...
in
Tübingen
Tübingen (; ) is a traditional college town, university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer (Neckar), Ammer rivers. about one in ...
and obtained his
doctorate
A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...
in 1923 with a dissertation on "International Air Travel Law."
After working in the Württemberg government service and the German-American Arbitration Committee at the
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* United ...
in
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, he became an official in the
Reich Ministry of Transport
The Reich Ministry of Transport (, ''RVM'') was a cabinet-level agency of the Germany, German government from 1919 until 1945, operating during the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. Formed from the Prussian Ministry of Public Works after the end o ...
in 1927. Upon the
Nazi seizure of power
The rise to power of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919, when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He quickly rose t ...
in 1933, he was posted to the newly established
Ministry of Aviation under
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician, aviator, military leader, and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which gov ...
. There, beginning in 1935, he headed the legal department as a ministerial adviser.
On 14 August 1939, less than three weeks before the
war broke out, Schleicher was removed as leader of the legal department and given a job as a consultant in the General Air Office. His advocacy, in publications and presentations, of
international law
International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of Rule of law, rules, norms, Customary law, legal customs and standards that State (polity), states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generall ...
, the war renunciation pact (
Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928), and the
Hague Conventions did not sit well with the government. In 1939, as an added responsibility, Schleicher took on the leadership of the Institute for
Aviation Law at the
Frederick William University of Berlin and the publication of the magazine ''Archiv für Luftrecht''. The institute was later used for conspiratorial resistance meetings.
In the event that the revolt against
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
on
20 July 1944 was successfully accomplished, Schleicher was to be responsible for the reorganization of air travel. After the plot to assassinate the Führer at the
Wolf's Lair in
East Prussia
East Prussia was a Provinces of Prussia, province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1772 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 1871); following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's ...
failed, Schleicher explained during interrogation that he opposed the Nazi régime. To bring about reconciliation with Western war opponents, he said, Hitler had to step down.

On 2 February 1945, Schleicher was sentenced to death by the
People's Court (''Volksgerichtshof''). The presiding judge was
Roland Freisler, who was killed in a US
air raid the very next day. After several months in
Gestapo
The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
custody, Rüdiger Schleicher was shot on the night of 22–23 April, along with twelve fellow prisoners, among them his own brother-in-law
Klaus Bonhoeffer and his assistant
Hans John, by a special
Reich Security Main Office
The Reich Security Main Office ( , RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and , the head of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS). The organization's stat ...
squad on the former exhibition grounds near Lehrter Straße prison in
Moabit
Moabit () is an inner city locality in the boroughs of Berlin, borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2022, about 84,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial sector, industr ...
, as
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
troops were already entering Berlin.
Schleicher's commentary on the German Air Traffic Law (''Luftverkehrsgesetz, 1. Aufl. 1933, 2. Aufl. 1937'') was continued after his death (''Schleicher/Reymann/Abraham, Das Recht der Luftfahrt, 3. Aufl. 1960/1966'').
Literature
* Bracher, Karl Dietrich: ''Geschichte als Erfahrung. Betrachtungen zum 20. Jahrhundert''; Stuttgart u.a. 2001;
(Bracher is – like Eberhard Bethge – Rüdiger Schleicher's son-in-law. In this work, which brings together many of Bracher's essays, is a short biography of Schleicher.)
External links
*
Page about reinstatement of doctorates stripped by the University of Tübingen for political reasons during the Third Reich, including Rüdiger Schleicher'sPage about Rüdiger Schleicher from air law perspective
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schleicher, Ruediger
1895 births
1945 deaths
People executed by Nazi Germany by firing squad
Executed members of the 20 July plot
People educated at Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium
People from the Kingdom of Württemberg
University of Tübingen alumni
People from Baden-Württemberg executed by Nazi Germany
Bonhoeffer family