Colin’s case, a review of one of the biggest scandals in German court history

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Why did Fabricio Colin kill Hans Meyer, an industrialist from high German society? How do we protect an accused who refuses to speak? By investigating this file, his lawyer discovers the biggest legal scandal and truth in German history that no one wants to challenge.

Painful introspection

For several years now, German cinema has been engaging with a fascinating introspection of how the country, at the end of World War II and the subsequent enormous gravity of crime, undertook to denationalize society, its administrative and judicial systems.

Let’s bring to mind the remarkable labyrinth of silence that emerged in 2015, which Returned to relatively unknown facts to the general public, but essentially: the prosecution of former Nazi officials by the German judiciary who were responsible for administering the Auschwitz extermination camp. The hunt that led to the Frankfurt Trial took place in post-Nazi Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, where the time for repentance for the crimes of the burning past was not yet appropriate. A special trial was held For 20 months, from October 1963 to August 1965. 20,000 people attended this special trial; 360 Witnesses from 19 different countries were called to testify, including 211 Auschwitz survivors.

For example we can cite another solid film that pretty much complements the previous film: Lars Kraume’s German protagonist Fritz Bauer, which was released in 2016. A fascinating portrait of the Frankfurt Prosecutor, Fritz Bauer, which was of origin. On the above trial, which was also important in the hunt for a prominent former Nazi war criminal who took refuge in Buenos Aires, Adolf Eichmann.

If we go back a bit to these two works, it’s because L’Affaire Collini cleverly performs them. First of all, because of the unique legacy of director Marco Kreispaintner’s film. This is indeed an adaptation of a novel published in 2011 and written by a renowned former lawyer specializing in criminal law and later transformed into a (great) successful writer: Ferdinand von Shirak.

A very heavy surname to bear for those who know history: this is the grandson of Baldur von Schirach (1907-1974), Hitler’s youth leader responsible for the deportation of Jews from Vienna, condemned at the Nuremberg trials. Years in prison. The same sentence was handed down to Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of Arms.

Justice for unwritten crimes without memory

In January 2012, the Federal Minister of Justice, Sabin Leutheuser-Schnarenberger, set up an independent commission within the Federal Ministry of Justice to re-evaluate the country’s Nazi past; And unequivocally quoted the work The Colin Case.

This is because the work, and therefore the film from which it is taken, evokes an unjust law, baptized the “Dreher Law”, which serves as the background and common thread. Edward Dreher was a special Reich prosecutor at the Innsbruck Special Court and regularly sought the death penalty for very minor crimes, including shoplifting. After the war he became a public servant. In 1968 he was appointed Head of the Criminal Department.

He was instrumental in drafting a law called the Introduction to Administrative Offenses, which contained seemingly insignificant regulations and was voted on unanimously by members of the Budenstag (Parliament) in 1968. But, as often, the devil. Is in detail … because this law included a sentence that made it possible to identify almost all the crimes of the Nazi era at the same time as the law came into force.

Just days after its adoption, MPs read the article in the newspaper and discovered the disastrous consequences of this law. The game. Some wanted to believe an unintentional mistake. The facts show that this was not the case: Edward Dreher knew perfectly well what he was doing.

This sentence, enshrined in Article 50 of the Criminal Code, concerned accomplices in murders whose motives could not be substantiated. For example, the Nazis who killed Jews but for whom it was impossible to prove that their actions were motivated by personal racial hatred. This new provision provided that these accomplices in the murder should no longer be punished for murder, but only for negligent murder.

Murder, voluntary or involuntary, is punishable by a variety of gravity in Germany: life imprisonment for murder, up to 15 years in prison for premeditated murder. This difference affects the statute of limitations. Murder is not allowed, and murder is ordered after 20 years. When Dreher’s law came into force in 1968, all crimes committed by the Nazis were considered timely …

Jurisprudence quickly confirmed this form of amnesty, which did not mention his name, during Hermann Heinrich’s trial, which took place shortly after the vote on the law. The latter was responsible for selecting and deporting Jews from Krakow to the Auschwitz and Belzek concentration camps; He was then charged with complicity in the murder of at least 37,600 people. However, he was acquitted by a federal court.

Sample? The person concerned knew that this victim had been killed because of racial hatred, but he insisted that the hatred had not been awakened and argued that he was only carrying out orders. These acts of motivation for murder were already provided for in the new version of Article 50 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Subsequently, the largest series of lawsuits against former security staff of the Reich office was dropped, resulting in the burial of 150,000 files. Very few Third Reich criminals have been convicted since then, except those against whom motives for murder could be proved; Or behaviors that go beyond the execution of orders received …