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»Weil ich nun mal ein Gerechtigkeitsfanatiker bin«: Der Fall des SS-Richters Konrad Morgen
Man habe »das moralische Recht«, dieses Volk »umzubringen«, sagte Heinrich Himmler im Oktober 1943 über den millionenfachen Mord an den Juden. »Wir haben aber nicht das Recht«, fuhr er fort, »uns auch nur mit einem Pelz, einer Uhr, mit einer Mark oder mit einer Zigarette oder sonst etwas zu bereichern.« Tatsächlich hatte Himmler 1939 eine SS-Gerichtsbarkeit geschaffen, die über die »Moral« und die Einhaltung des »Ehrenkodex« der Organisation wachen sollte.Ein solcher SS-Richter war Konrad Morgen (1909-1982). Morgen ermittelte gegen hochrangige Nationalsozialisten, u. a. gegen Karl Otto Koch, den ehemaligen Kommandanten des Lagers Buchenwald, und gegen Adolf Eichmann, dem er vorwarf, Juwelen unterschlagen zu haben. Sich selbst bezeichnete Morgen als »Gerechtigkeitsfanatiker«.Gestützt auf seine Berichte und Briefe aus der Kriegszeit sowie auf seine Aussagen in Nürnberg und beim Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozess, zeichnen Herlinde Pauer-Studer und J. David Velleman die wichtigsten Stationen in der Karriere des SS-Richters Konrad Morgen nach. Die Biografie dieses ambivalenten Charakters ist zugleich eine Studie in moralischer Komplexität und verdeutlicht die strukturelle Pervertierung von Recht und Moral im »Dritten Reich«.
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First published January 14, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 21, 2023
"Morgen once described himself as a Gerechtigkeitsfanatiker—a fanatic for justice. This self-description is true in a sense, but that sense is neither as clear nor as favorable as he thought. Morgen was indeed fanatical about justice as he conceived it, but his conception of justice was inadequate to the systematic inhumanity that surrounded him."
After the end of the Second World War, Morgen was interrogated by the American Counter Intelligence Corps. What did they learn from him?
The book centers around the career of Konrad Morgen. Having received a law degree, he worked as a judge in the SS Judicial system. His professional duties required him to investigate different crimes of corruption, such as embezzlement, black-marketeering, fraud, and double-bookkeeping, that occurred within the Nazi judicial system. Morgen was allowed to investigate so-called 'illegal' killings in the Nazi concentration camps.
His job enabled him to prosecute individuals who, according to Nazi laws, exceeded their authority in one way or another. Thus he sought to prosecute SS men of different ranks, including Commandant Koch along with some of his subordinates and Rudolf Höss, the infamous commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Often the result of Morgen's legal efforts was disappointment. Sometimes they were moderately successful. The thing was to proceed against criminals on lesser charges and avoid touching upon much more serious crimes. There were solid reasons for his proceeding cautiously. Obviously, Morgen was powerless in the face of greater crimes and main perpetrators, such as Himmler, the head of the SS.
Morgen could not investigate the ultimate crimes, such as the very existence of concentration camps and mass killings that were taking place there. He had to reconcile himself with the reality of the Third Reich and limit himself to minor or lateral, for lack of a better word, violations of the law. That being said, Morgen's investigations were not limited to cases of corruption. At one point, he even wanted to arrest Adolf Eichmann.
Being part of the Nazi judicial system, Morgen tried to reduce the level of injustice within it. For example, he indicted Waldemar Hoven, a physician at Buchenwald, for 'illegally' killing prisoners by injections of phenol and other methods.
In a situation in which prosecution of the ultimate crimes was out of the question, small acts aimed at reducing the big evil may have been regarded as at least something. But does investigating corruption make sense when it comes to a system that is completely corrupt and immoral?
The SS judge seems to have managed to soothe his conscience even if probably not entirely. He was doing his job and not taking up parts.
The social and political climate in which Konrad found himself may have made him cynical to a certain degree, which did not prevent him from showing naivete in some cases.
The author points out that this book is a moral biography. I think this is an exact definition. And this may explain why the narration did not always seem coherent and dragged at times.
Morgen cuts an equivocal figure. It is clear that Morgen took his professional duties seriously and looked at many events happening around him through the narrow lens of a lawyer.
In other, less extraordinary circumstances, Morgen's behavior could have been perfectly decent. Unfortunately, the challenges of that time often turned out too demanding, especially if someone holding an important position wanted to preserve integrity.
The evidence suggests that Morgen never was fanatical about the ideology of National Socialism. He never showed any kind of enthusiasm about Hitler.
"Any contempt he felt for concentration camp prisoners was reserved for the common criminals, not for Jews or Gypsies or homosexuals."
As to the war and increasing chances of Germany's defeat, he was worrying about his parents, his fiancée, and his former comrades fighting in the SS Regiment Germania.
The book reminds the reader that behind any system stand people with their views and values.
The mass crimes would not have been possible without individuals who made decisions and acted accordingly. At the same time, the same people were to a great extent a product of their times.
The book touches upon the connections between law and ethics. Law regulations and ethical norms can sometimes overlap.
Perhaps we can say that the legal system is influenced by ethical markers prevalent in society. But what if those markers do not hamper genocidal policies and, on the contrary, contribute to them or condone them?
Ethical principles, as we all know, are not a constant. They are subject to time fluctuations.
Certain things that most of us take for granted could have been perceived differently by people of the past.
Thinking of the cases of corruption in concentration camps brings the expression of "the illusion of normality" to my mind.
My review of this book is too lengthy and rambling, but if I am allowed to find some excuses, the book itself has encouraged me to think of it in such a manner.
I would have appreciated this well-researched moral biography or study of the conscience more had it been more to the point. However, I rated it "four stars" because of the unique perspective it provided and the thought-provoking ideas it brought up.
After the end of the Second World War, Morgen was interrogated by the American Counter Intelligence Corps. What did they learn from him?
The book centers around the career of Konrad Morgen. Having received a law degree, he worked as a judge in the SS Judicial system. His professional duties required him to investigate different crimes of corruption, such as embezzlement, black-marketeering, fraud, and double-bookkeeping, that occurred within the Nazi judicial system. Morgen was allowed to investigate so-called 'illegal' killings in the Nazi concentration camps.
His job enabled him to prosecute individuals who, according to Nazi laws, exceeded their authority in one way or another. Thus he sought to prosecute SS men of different ranks, including Commandant Koch along with some of his subordinates and Rudolf Höss, the infamous commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Often the result of Morgen's legal efforts was disappointment. Sometimes they were moderately successful. The thing was to proceed against criminals on lesser charges and avoid touching upon much more serious crimes. There were solid reasons for his proceeding cautiously. Obviously, Morgen was powerless in the face of greater crimes and main perpetrators, such as Himmler, the head of the SS.
Morgen could not investigate the ultimate crimes, such as the very existence of concentration camps and mass killings that were taking place there. He had to reconcile himself with the reality of the Third Reich and limit himself to minor or lateral, for lack of a better word, violations of the law. That being said, Morgen's investigations were not limited to cases of corruption. At one point, he even wanted to arrest Adolf Eichmann.
Being part of the Nazi judicial system, Morgen tried to reduce the level of injustice within it. For example, he indicted Waldemar Hoven, a physician at Buchenwald, for 'illegally' killing prisoners by injections of phenol and other methods.
In a situation in which prosecution of the ultimate crimes was out of the question, small acts aimed at reducing the big evil may have been regarded as at least something. But does investigating corruption make sense when it comes to a system that is completely corrupt and immoral?
The SS judge seems to have managed to soothe his conscience even if probably not entirely. He was doing his job and not taking up parts.
The social and political climate in which Konrad found himself may have made him cynical to a certain degree, which did not prevent him from showing naivete in some cases.
The author points out that this book is a moral biography. I think this is an exact definition. And this may explain why the narration did not always seem coherent and dragged at times.
Morgen cuts an equivocal figure. It is clear that Morgen took his professional duties seriously and looked at many events happening around him through the narrow lens of a lawyer.
In other, less extraordinary circumstances, Morgen's behavior could have been perfectly decent. Unfortunately, the challenges of that time often turned out too demanding, especially if someone holding an important position wanted to preserve integrity.
The evidence suggests that Morgen never was fanatical about the ideology of National Socialism. He never showed any kind of enthusiasm about Hitler.
"Any contempt he felt for concentration camp prisoners was reserved for the common criminals, not for Jews or Gypsies or homosexuals."
As to the war and increasing chances of Germany's defeat, he was worrying about his parents, his fiancée, and his former comrades fighting in the SS Regiment Germania.
The book reminds the reader that behind any system stand people with their views and values.
The mass crimes would not have been possible without individuals who made decisions and acted accordingly. At the same time, the same people were to a great extent a product of their times.
The book touches upon the connections between law and ethics. Law regulations and ethical norms can sometimes overlap.
Perhaps we can say that the legal system is influenced by ethical markers prevalent in society. But what if those markers do not hamper genocidal policies and, on the contrary, contribute to them or condone them?
Ethical principles, as we all know, are not a constant. They are subject to time fluctuations.
Certain things that most of us take for granted could have been perceived differently by people of the past.
Thinking of the cases of corruption in concentration camps brings the expression of "the illusion of normality" to my mind.
My review of this book is too lengthy and rambling, but if I am allowed to find some excuses, the book itself has encouraged me to think of it in such a manner.
I would have appreciated this well-researched moral biography or study of the conscience more had it been more to the point. However, I rated it "four stars" because of the unique perspective it provided and the thought-provoking ideas it brought up.
September 12, 2016
A fair portrait of Konrad Morgen's activity during World War II and the limitations of his "working from within" approach, raising relevant questions about morality, its relationship with law, and judicial activism, among other topics.
October 4, 2015
What a book! It's probably too gloomy to read on a Sunday afternoon - but it will profoundly move you, similarly to the way you feel after having watched Schindler's List. In fact, the main protagonist (Konrad Morgen) sends auditors to the Nazi concentration camps in order to check their financial standing; Schindler's List has a scene with such auditors coming into the Cracow-Plaszow camp.
This book takes you into the head of a Nazi judge who was very well aware of everything that was happening around him, and deemed it morally reprehensible, but at the same time didn't do much to stop the killings because he couldn't (rather, he focused on prosecuting bribery and corruption within the SS). It's a brilliant exposé of a gigantic ethical dilemma: what can an individual really do if they are cognizant of atrocities happening around them? It's a mix of Morgen's testimonies given during the Nuremberg Trials and later.
This book takes you into the head of a Nazi judge who was very well aware of everything that was happening around him, and deemed it morally reprehensible, but at the same time didn't do much to stop the killings because he couldn't (rather, he focused on prosecuting bribery and corruption within the SS). It's a brilliant exposé of a gigantic ethical dilemma: what can an individual really do if they are cognizant of atrocities happening around them? It's a mix of Morgen's testimonies given during the Nuremberg Trials and later.
October 8, 2017
As an astonishing chronicle of wartime Germany given from the perspective of an SS Judge, it is an incredible historical account. As an accounting of this Judge's moral convictions and attempts, in Morgen's way, to rectify the Final Solution from within, it is a similarly unique and also humane portrayal. Legal history and legal philosophy in one slim volume. The portrayal of the mechanics of the Nazi death camps seen from within defies words--at once an aseptically administrative and grotesquely inhumane undertaking seeking the most efficient means to dispose of civilian lives--for it was a machine run by humans. One theme this book addresses is how one of the concerns of the Nazi regime was that its executioners were not scarred by their task. Easily read, enormously researched, lightly presented despite the subject, it is a lean book that stays close to the facts and remains subtle though it arguing a theory and a view of Morgen's actions, as suggested by the title.
January 17, 2023
was the author trying to shield Morgen or justify him at least a little? from my point of view, no. Although this is the first thing that comes to mind when reading a book.
But it seems to me that the meaning of the book is much deeper, it is an attempt to understand how the human essence works in certain proposed circumstances. how conscience, honor and understanding of morality can be terribly disgusting deformed; how being in a world where everything is distorted, Morgen tried to maintain a strict picture of the world.
I've seen some people could see the romantic/heroic line in the book where they imagine an SS judge fighting the regime the best he can... (for me) that's not true. Morgen is not a hero, he is a man who believed in the ideals of National Socialism, never doubted them, a fan of the justice of the Third Reich,but not universal human justice.
This is a story about crippled morals. About the "honest" judge in the kingdom of crooked mirrors.
But it seems to me that the meaning of the book is much deeper, it is an attempt to understand how the human essence works in certain proposed circumstances. how conscience, honor and understanding of morality can be terribly disgusting deformed; how being in a world where everything is distorted, Morgen tried to maintain a strict picture of the world.
I've seen some people could see the romantic/heroic line in the book where they imagine an SS judge fighting the regime the best he can... (for me) that's not true. Morgen is not a hero, he is a man who believed in the ideals of National Socialism, never doubted them, a fan of the justice of the Third Reich,but not universal human justice.
This is a story about crippled morals. About the "honest" judge in the kingdom of crooked mirrors.
January 12, 2021
Interessant bog om en SS jurists kamp for retfærdighed og justits under "den endegyldige løsning på jødeproblemet".
Dr. Konrad Morgen var en mand af 2 sider, den første en retfærdighedens rytter der kæmpede fanatisk for sin overbevisninger i kamp mod systemet.
Den anden som en mand der ikke kunne se det enorme amoralske aspekt af hele udryddelsesmekanismen og dens følger.
Dr. Konrad Morgen var en mand af 2 sider, den første en retfærdighedens rytter der kæmpede fanatisk for sin overbevisninger i kamp mod systemet.
Den anden som en mand der ikke kunne se det enorme amoralske aspekt af hele udryddelsesmekanismen og dens følger.
January 11, 2018
Sehr interessante, gut geschriebene Fallgeschichte, die auch für jene verständlich ist, die sich in Rechts-/Moralphilosophie nicht auskennen.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews