Selbstverstandlich

In the stuffy chamber of Germany's Supreme Court last week a dullwitted, loose-lipped Dutch youth with wild hair and shabby clothes sat laughing and laughing. There he was, Marinus van der Lubbe, propped up before Germany and the world as one of five defendants in a great Nazi anti-Communist propaganda trial, charged with setting fire to Berlin's Reichstag building last winter. All Germany was prepared to believe him guilty. Yet in London fortnight ago a committee of international jurists had held an unofficial trial of the same case, produced important witnesses, listened to reams of testimony, and convinced most of the world that if Marinus van der Lubbe helped fire the Reichstag he did so not as a Communist, but instigated and helped by Nazi firebrands (TIME, Sept. 25). Six red-robed German judges scowled solemnly on the bench, reporters sharpened pencils, lawyers ruffled through their briefs, the trial went on and Marinus van der Lubbe went on laughing. "Are you a Communist or a Socialist?" snapped Presiding Judge Wilhelm Buenger. "Yes--and no--I have my own views." "Why do you laugh?" "At the trial in general." The Nazi object in the entire performance was not only to blame the five Communist defendants for the fire, but to show the existence of a great international Communist plot from which the coming of Adolf Hitler is supposed to have saved the world. The Nazi prosecution did attempt to make some rejoinder to the world's charges that Nazis themselves set fire to the building, by producing alibis for two Nazis--Police Chief Edmund Heines of Breslau and Lieutenant Schultze--both directly named in the London "mock trial." Busy-buzzing U. S. Liberal Arthur Garfield Hays, one of the leading lights of the London trial, hung around Leipzig for days. Defense lawyers devoutly prayed that he go back to his American Civil Lib erties Union before he got them all into trouble. Judge Buenger finally granted him permission to submit testimony later and provide sworn statements from witnesses afraid to appear. From every point of view it was unfortunate that the defendants at the trial were not more articulate. Only one, Ernst Torgler, was German. He cried: "I am fully innocent. ... I have been in jail for seven months, five of which I was chained day and night and compelled to live in en forced silence." Dim-witted Defendant van der Lubbe could scarcely speak German. Two of the Bulgarian defend ants could speak none at all. But fiery George Dimitroff, for 23 years leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party, was articulate. Trials, even death sentences, are no novelty for him. In 1924, after the horrible bombing of Sofia's Sveti Krai Cathedral in which more than 200 people were killed, he was accused of high treason, condemned to death in absentia. Knowing there was little hope from this Nazi court, Communist Dimitroff blustered and roared his way through the trial while timorous, law-abiding Germans hung open-mouthed on his words. Nothing seemed to annoy bullet-headed Presiding Judge Blanker like the defend ant's persistent snapping of the word selbstvcrstdndlich ("self-evident") to questions whether or not he was a Communist, had been exiled from Bulgaria, believed in the proletarian revolution, had traveled under forged passports, etc. etc.

"You are altogether too fresh!" roared the judge. "I understand you acted in the same way to the examining magistrate. And please cease once and for all saying selbstverstandlich. It gives the impression that we are asking superfluous questions!"

Defendant Dimitroff replied: "I have had my hands chained together night and day for five months, and it is difficult for me not to get excited sometimes. I only want the court to understand me."

A moment later he was off on a slashing attack on the Bulgarian Government "for innocently slaughtering 2,000 peasants and Communists."

Judge Buenger banged his Bench. "You say that without proof!"

"Proof! If I had had a free choice of counsel I would have supplied the proof, but all the eight lawyers I suggested were rejected." He waggled a long finger at a Dr. Treichert, his official defender. "The attorney you assigned me I never saw before. I will have none of him. I defend myself."

"Is it true," asked Judge Buenger, "that the couple with whom you lived in Berlin tried to commit suicide?"

"Believe me," answered Communist Dimitroff, "I too would have committed suicide in prison if I had had a chance. Being handcuffed for five months is no laughing matter."

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