People's Court

No sooner had the regimented millions of Berlin (see p. 18) tramped home from Tempelhof Field to soak their tired feet than they had real news to read in their papers. Dissatisfied with the results of the famed Reichstag Fire trial in which all but one of the five defendants were acquitted, the Nazi government announced the establishment of a new "People's Court" to take all cases of high treason from the penal division of the Supreme Court.

Immediately after the Reichstag trial, Nazi papers snorted that Chief Justice Wilhelm Buenger and his associates were "too legalistic, lacking the common touch." To be sure that nothing like this should hamper the People's Court, it was announced that of its five members, only two had to be lawyers. The other three were to be chosen by the Chancellor from among those "who have had special experience in fighting off attacks against the State."

The People's Court will have plenty of work. There is no appeal from its verdicts, and it must decree:

Death for all seeking to overthrow the Government, or the Constitution, by force or threats of force.

Death for all who attempt forcibly to detach any part of the Reich territory or deliver it to any foreign power.

Death for all who attempt to hinder the President, the Chancellor or any member of the Reich government from exercising his proper authority.

Death for all who try to obtain a State Secret, publish it, sell or attempt to sell it to a foreign power.

Death (or hard labor up to ten years) for all attempting to hamper the army or the police in doing their duty, or to influence them to this end through writings, pictures, radio messages or phonograph records.

Hard Labor for all "atrocity mongers" who publish in Germany or abroad "false or grossly distorted statements" on conditions in the Reich. About the mildest sentence the People's Court can inflict is one month in jail for publishers, printers or booksellers who make, distribute or keep in stock, even unwittingly, treasonable publications. The People's Court was not organized in time last week to handle the 48 Hamburg Communists, members of the so-called "Red Navy" who conducted periodical raids on the Red Eagle Hotel, Nazi headquarters in Hamburg, during 1932 and 1933. A summary court sentenced eight of them to death, 33 up to 15 years in jail, six to three years. Somehow one of the defendants managed to get himself acquitted. Likely starter for the People's Court will be a new public trial for the murderers of Horst Wessel. Everyone knows that the "Horst Wessel Lied" is Nazi Germany's unofficial anthem and greatest marching song.* Horst Wessel was also a man, an insignificant song writer and storm trooper, carefully chosen as a party hero because there was something in his background to appeal to almost every one of the heterogeneous groups that make up the Nazi party. Horst Wessel was the son of a well-known Lutheran pastor; that was for the Conservatives. He was a registered law student at the University of Berlin; that was for the Intellectuals. He was a that was for the Aristocrats. He led the notorious Fifth Storm Battalion, and spent his life in a series of fights with Communist gangsters in Berlin's poorest districts; that was for disgruntled Socialists.

In January 1930, Horst Wessel and his mistress, a streetwalker known as Lucie of the Alexanderplatz, took rooms in a boarding house on the Frankfurterstrasse. The landlady, a Communist in good standing, tipped off her friends. That night a group of men tiptoed up to Horst Wessel's door. When the door was opened, a volley of pistol shots cut him down.

In those days the Republicans knew very little of the secret Nazi-Communist war. Until the trial was well under way few people realized that more was at stake than a duel between a pimp named Albrecht Hoehler and a brown-shirted street fighter named Horst Wessel for the favor of a harlot. Eight people received sentences up to six years at hard labor. Albrecht Hoehler, who confessed firing the fatal shots, died very suddenly in jail last year immediately after the Nazis took over the government. Most of the rest have completed their terms. A new trial with three new defendants will be held as soon as the People's Court is organized. The defendants, all Communists, are Peter Stoll, tailor; Solly Einstein, painter; Hans Ziegler, barber. Object of the trial is not only to chop the heads off Peter, Solly and Hans, but to produce witnesses who will swear to the upright and lofty character of Horst Wessel and Lucie, once of the Alexanderplatz.

*Literal translation of the first two verses: With banner high and ranks firmly closed The shock troops march with steady stride. Our comrades, shot by Red Front and Reaction March in spirit in our ranks. Clear the street for the brown battalions Clear the street for the shock troops! Already hopeful millions look to the swastika; The day of Freedom and of Bread is dawning.

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