Children of a lesser god: GDR lawyers in post-socialist Germany

Michigan Law Review

Volumn 94, Issue 7, 1996, Pages 2270-2308

  Markovits, Inga ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS   (United States)

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EID: 0007269798     PISSN: 00262234     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1289821     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. For an overview of East European lustration efforts see Andrea Stauber, Die Gesetzgebung der ehemaligen Ostblockstaaten zur Bewältigung ihrer sozialistischen Vergangenheit, 49 NEUE JUSTIZ [NJ] 455 (1995).
2. My figure is based on the data provided by a 1994 inquiry by the East German law journal Neue Justiz of the justice administrations of the new East German states. See Übernahme ostdeutscher Richter und Staatsanwälte in den Justizdienst auf Lebenszeit, 48 NJ 266 (1994). The percentage of East Germans among Germany's judges is likely to have risen since then because not all readmitted East German judges and prosecutors, at the time of the inquiry in March 1994, had successfully completed their three-year trial program during which a candidate for the Bench does not yet have tenure.
3. In 1989, the GDR employed 1493 judges and 1237 prosecutors. See Hubert Rottleuthner, Zur Steuerung der Justiz in der DDR. in STEUERUNG DER JUSTIZ IN DER DDR 28 (Hubert Rottleuthner ed., 1994).
4. Of that total of 2730 officials, 1083, or 39.7%, were admitted into the nontenured trial stage. Übernahme ostdeutscher Richter und Staatsanwälte in den Justizdienst auf Lebenszeit, supra, at 266. Of these, by March 1, 1994, 251 had obtained tenure. Even with new probationary judges receiving tenure after March 1, 1994, I would not expect the percentage of formerly socialist judges in East Germany to more than double.
5. See INGA MARKOVITS, IMPERFECT JUSTICE: AN EAST-WEST GERMAN DIARY 86-87, 99-102, 128-39, 177, 186, 192 (1995).
6. Stasi stands for Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Ministry for State Security), which employed an army of secret informers who kept tabs on the population.
7. See M. Kleine-Cosack, Anwaltliche Berufsverbote auf dem Prüfstand, 48 NJ 246 (1994).
8. The review is based on the Statute on Examining the Admissions of Attorneys and Notaries (Gesetz zur Prüfung von Rechtsanwaltszulassungen) of July 24, 1992, BUNDESGESETZBLATT, TEIL I [BGB1. I] 1386 (F.R.G.).
9. The estimate is provided by M. Lemke, Stand der Aufarbeitung von DDR-Unrecht durch die Strafjustiz, 49 NJ 237, 238 (1995). Lemke reports that in 1995, Berlin prosecutors alone were investigating about 7,000 suspected cases of Rechtsbeugung (literally, "bending the law") by GDR judges and prosecutors. Only very few of the prosecutions have led to convictions.
10. See INGO MÜLLER, FURCHTBARE JURISTEN. DIE UNBEWÄLTIGTE VERGANGENHEIT UNSERER JUSTIZ 20 (1988).
11. HITLERS TISCHGESPRÄCHE IM FÜHRERHAUPTQUARTIER 213 (Henry Picker ed., 1951).
12. Carl Schmitt, Was bedeutet der Streit um den "Rechtsstaat"?, 95 ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR DIE GESAMTE STAATSWISSENSCHAFT 198 (1935).
13. For a case study of the adaptation of supposedly "apolitical" civil law adjudication to Nazi ideology, see RAINER SCHRÖDER, "... ABER IM ZIVILRECHT SIND DIE RICHTER STANDHAFT GEBLIEBEN." DIE URTEILE DES OLG CELLE IM DRITTEN REICH (1988).
14. See MÜLLER, supra note 7, at 208.
15. On the East German replacement of former Nazi judges with Socialist judges, see HILDE BENJAMIN ET AL., ZUR GESCHICHTE DER RECHTSPFLEGE DER DDR 1945-1949, at 71 (1976).
16. SED Stands for Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party), the East German Communist Party. See generally HILDE BENJAMIN ET AL., ZUR GESCHICHTE DER RECHTSPFLEGE DER DDR 1949-1961, at 66 (1980).
17. The regional court, upon request of either the regional prosecutor or the court's own director, could assume jurisdiction over all criminal, civil, family, and labor law cases "if the significance, consequences or implications" of the case so warranted. Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz (Court Organization Act) of Sept. 27, 1974, § 30, ¶ 1, GESETZBLATT DER DDR. TEIL I [GB1. I] 457 (G.D.R.)
18. Under § 249 of the STRAFGESETZBUCH [StGB] (Criminal Code) of the GDR, "infringements of public order and security through asocial behavior" - mostly persistent refusal of employment combined with petty property offenses and/or violations of child support obligations - could be punished with up to five years in prison. In Lüritz, in 1979, the average penalty under § 249 was 18 months in prison. By comparison, the overall average penalty, including sentences under § 249, was eight months in prison.
19. See MARKOVITS, supra note 3, at 38.
20. On the training of East German lawyers, see DANIEL JOHN MEADOR, IMPRESSIONS OF LAW IN EAST GERMANY: LEGAL EDUCATION AND LEGAL SYSTEMS IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC (1986);
21. Inga Markovits, Book Review, 36 AM. J. COMP. L. 198 (1988).
22. On the feminization of the GDR's legal profession and its continued impact in the new East German states, see Gisela Shaw, Juristinnen in den neuen Bundesländern, 15 ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR RECHTSSOZIOLOGIE 191 (1994).
23. See Helmut Steiner, Social Origin and Structural Pattern of the Body of Judges in the GDR, 67 LAW & LEGIS. G.D.R. 49 (1967).
24. My figures applied to Lüritz judges in 1980. For data reflecting somewhat lower payscales for trial court judges and prosecutors in 1975 (DM 1200 to DM 1430) see Andreas Gängel, Richter in der DDR - Wunschbild und Realitätsausschnitte, in STEUER DER JUSTIZ IN DER DDR. supra note 2, at 395, 407.
25. In 1980, 18.4% of all East German attorneys were women. See Hubert Rottleuthner, Das Ende der Fassadenforschung: Recht in der DDR (Teil 1), 15 ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR RECHTSSOZIOLOGIE 208, 236 (1994).
26. A 1988 statute introducing judicial review in a very limited number of cases came into force only on July 1, 1989, and remained totally ineffective. See Gesetz über die Zuständigkeit und das Verfahren der Gerichte zur Nachprüfung von Verwaltungsentscheidungen of Dec. 14, 1988, GBl. I 327 (G.D.R.) [hereinafter Nachprüfungsgesetz].
27. See Nachprüfungsgesetz § 8, ¶ 2, GB1. I 327 (1988).
28. On the workings of the East German complaint system see Inga Markovits, Rechtsstaat oder Beschwerdestaat? Verwaltungsrechtsschutz in der DDR, 31 RECHT IN OST UND WEST 265 (1987).
29. In 1982, 66.8% of all plaintiffs and 93.3% of all defendants in first instance civil law disputes in the GDR were citizens. See UNPUBLISHED JUDICIAL STATISTICS OF THE GDR. FIRST INSTANCE - CIVIL LAW 2 (1982). In Lüritz, in the same year, 70.8% of all civil law litigation took place between citizens.
30. In the Lüritz District Court, out of 154 civil lawsuits in 1982, 31% pursued the delivery or return of some object (e.g., apartment, garage, TV), 16% tried to induce certain kinds of behavior (e.g., primarily, to prevent undesirable behavior like noise, trespassing), and 53% asked for money (e.g., damages, rent payments, payment for sales or services).
31. On the workings of East German social courts, see Inga Markovits, Pursuing One's Rights Under Socialism, 38 STAN. L. REV. 689, 701 (1986).
32. The director of the District Court Stralsund, for instance, reported at a district court directors' meeting in December 1987 that at his court "for the first time in years" a prosecutor's request for an arrest warrant had been rejected.
33. To educate the judiciary about important policy developments and changes, the GDR Ministry of Justice or the Supreme Court would convene workshops and so-called "judges' conferences," at which representatives of the Ministry or the Court would spell out the policy in question and discuss its implications. One such conference deal-ing with arrest warrants and issues of preliminary detention was a conference of district court directors on February 9-12, 1988, in Fuhlendorf.
34. See STRAFPROZESSORDNUNG [StPO] (Code of Criminal Procedure) § 64 (version of June 28, 1979), GBl. I 139 (G.D.R.).
35. See StPO § 126, ¶ 1 (1979), GB1. I 139.
36. See StPO § 61, ¶ 1 (1979), GB1. I 139.
37. In Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), the Supreme Court held that a person in custody has to be advised by the police of his right to remain silent, to consult with an attorney, to have an attorney appointed for him if he cannot afford one, and to be warned that any of his statements might be used against him.
38. See StPO § 63, ¶ 1 (1979), GB1. I 139.
39. See StPO § 63, ¶ 1 (1979), GB1. I 139 (stating that defense counsel should be appointed "if the issue requires it"); ZIVILPROZESSORDNUNG [ZPO] (Code of Civil Procedure) (1975), GBl. I 533 (G.D.R.) (stating that the court shall appoint a "procedural representative" for a minor or handicapped defendant without legal guardian, or for any party unable "to intelligibly participate in the proceedings").
40. See StPO § 72 (1979), GBl. I 139.
41. Consider one example: a 1982 Lüritz case involving an appeal against a tort award resulting from a car accident. The appellant, an insolvent father of four children who at the time of the appeal was serving a prison sentence, asked for the assignment of an attorney to argue his case before the Regional Court. The Regional Court rejected the request "since obviously, the appellant has other options for asserting his rights either himself or with the assistance of other persons."
42. In 1982, out of 12,323 district court labor law proceedings in the GDR, 14% involved the participation of union counsel, 44% the participation of union representatives providing collective input into the deliberations, and 12% involved both union counsel and union representatives. See UNPUBLISHED JUDICIAL STATISTICS OF THE GDR - FIRST INSTANCE, LABOR LAW 24 (1982).
43. In 1982, attorneys were involved in 8% of all district court labor law cases. See UNPUBLISHED JUDICIAL STATISTICS OF THE GDR - FIRST INSTANCE, LABOR LAW 24 (1982). id. Presumably, those data were of official interest, since attorneys were perceived as competitors to the more numerous, and ideologically favored, union representatives.
44. See Howard de Nike, Die Vereinigung demokratischer Juristen in der DDR. Ein Modell der Professionalisierung?, 14 GESCHICHTE UND GEGENWART 139, 143 (1995).
45. Both East German judicial statistics and the only Supreme Court case law collection published since 1977, the Informationen des Obersten Gerichts der DDR (Supreme Court Informations), were classified "nur für den Dienstgebrauch" ("for internal use only") and were distributed on a need-to-know basis. Although the classification "nur für den Dienstgebrauch" was abolished on January 1, 1988, sensitive instructions by the Ministry of Justice continued to be labeled "Dienstsache" (official matter) and were numbered, and thus presumably distributed in restrictive fashion.
46. On East German social courts, see Markovits, supra note 26, at 701.
47. See ZPO § 28, ¶ 2 (1975). GB1. I 533 (G.D.R.), under which a plaintiff could be asked for an Aussprache in court, in the course of which he could be encouraged to alter, amend, or "if so warranted" withdraw his claim. None of this was mandatory.
48. See supra note 24 and accompanying text.
49. DIE VERFASSUNG DER DDR (Constitution) art. 96, ¶ 1 (G.D.R.) (as amended on Oct. 7, 1974).
50. See Anforderungen an die Absolventen der Sektion Rechtswissenschaft der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin of Febr. 22, 1987, cited in Gängel, supra note 19, at 400.
51. Occasionally, one catches glimpses of such self-disdain. The Lüritz files, for instance, contain a 1986 petition of one of the court's former directors, now legal counsel to a state-owned enterprise, in which she asks the GDR Council of State, and its Chairman, Erich Honecker, to overrule the local denial of a travel visa to West Germany to attend a parent's eighty-fifth birthday. Since East German judges and prosecutors were not allowed to have any "contacts" with the West, the writer, during her time on the bench, had broken off relations with her family members in the Federal Republic. In her letter to Honecker, she confesses to being ashamed of her compliance. "Sometimes, when thinking back on the meaning of our lives, we think that we have lost respect for ourselves," she writes of herself and her husband. Her petition is denied, because the "no-contact rule" applied not only to current, but also to former officeholders.
52. See Falco Werkentin, Die Strafjustiz im politischen System der DDR: Fundstücke zur Steuerungs- und Eingriffspraxis des zentralen Parteiapparates der SED, in STEUERUNG DER JUSTIZ IN DER DDR, supra note 2, at 93, 111.
53. For example, in Lüritz in 1987 out of a total of 126 arrest warrants issued, 23 were challenged by complaints to the Court of Appeals, none of them successfully.
54. See StPO § 63, ¶ 1 (1979), GB1. I 139 (G.D.R.); supra text accompanying note 33.
55. The term was coined by HAROLD J. BERMAN, JUSTICE IN THE U.S.S.R.: AN INTERPRETATION OF SOVIET LAW 282 (rev. ed. 1963).
56. In its decision In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967), the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the parental informality of the American juvenile justice process as well-meaning but illusory and insisted instead that juvenile defendants, like adults, were in need of, and en titled to, the basic constitutional protections of due process.
57. Julian W. Mack, The Juvenile Court, 23 HARV. L. REV. 104, 120 (1909) (articulating the hopes of early reformers for a warm and parental juvenile justice system). The phrase is cited, almost nostalgically, by the Supreme Court in Gault, 387 U.S. at 15.
58. See Jutta Limbach, Der Aufbau des Rechtswesens in den östlichen Bezirken Berlins, 46 NEUE JURISTISCHE WOCHENSCHRIFT 2499 (1993).
59. Gregor Gysi, Über die Rechtsanwaltschaft im System der DDR, 24 WIRTSCHAFTSRECHT 43, 44 (1993).
60. Id. at 43.
61. A report on the meeting is contained in a collection of documents on East German lawyers' collectives, or "colleges," now held by the Federal Archives in Potsdam.
62. See Thomas Lorenz, Die "Kollektivierung" der Rechtsanwaltschaft - als Methode zur systematischen Abschaffung der freien Advokatur, in STEUERUNG DER JUSTIZ IN DER DDR, supra note 2, at 409, 426.
63. Thomas Lorenz, Die "Kollektivierung" der Rechtsanwaltschaft - als Methode zur systematischen Abschaffung der freien Advokatur, STEUERUNG DER JUSTIZ IN DER DDR, 409, Id.
64. See Lorenz, supra note 57, at 427 ("The majority of (East German) attorneys had made their peace with the circumstances in which they found themselves; only a fraction fought aggressively for the preservation and extension of civic rights.").
65. The complaints, and the responses, were investigated and filed by the Ministry of Justice of the GDR and are now held by the Federal Archives in Potsdam.
66. In the early 1980s, attorneys from Lüritz wanting to check up on Supreme Court case law had to travel to the regional capital to use the only copy of the "Supreme Court Informations" available to lawyers in the region, which was kept at the head office of the regional lawyers' college.
67. See, e.g., Watts v. Watts, 405 N.W.2d 303 (Wis. 1987); Marvin v. Marvin, 557 P.2d 106 (Cal. 1967).
68. In Potsdam, for instance, the district court in 1989 moved back into its turn-of-the-century courthouse that for many years had been occupied by the Stasi. See MARKOVITS, supra note 3, at 165.
69. See also Andreas Gängel, Die DDR-Justiz im Prozess der "Wende," in STEUERUNG DER JUSTIZ IN DER DDR, supra note 2, at 429.
70. See Der Rechtsstaat und die Aufarbeitung der vorrechtsstaatlichen Vergangenheit, Berichte und Diskussionen auf der Tagung der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer in Giessen vom 2. bis 5. Oktober 1991, 51 VVDSTRL 9 (1992).
71. See Horst Sendler, Gesamtdeutscher Juristentag?, 25 ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR RECHTSPOLITIK 449 (1992). Sendler also reports that at the previous annual convention in September, 1991 - post-Wende but pre-unification - of the roughly 3500 participants, about 300 had come from East Germany - evidence of the cautious optimism East German lawyers, at that time, still felt when considering their own role in the establishment of the Rechtsstaat.
72. See Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, Rechtsbewusstsein im wiedervereinigten Deutschland, 16 ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR RECHTSSOZIOLOGIE 121, 123-25 (1995).
73. See Uwe Ewald, Strafrecht und Umgang mit der staatssozialistischen Vergangenheit in Ländern Mittel- und Osteuropas, in "UNRECHTSSTAAT"? POLITISCHE JUSTIZ UND DIE AUFARBEITUNG DER DDR-VERGANGENHEIT 64 (Lothar Bisky et al. eds., 1994).
74. First-instance civil law case loads in the five new East German states rose from a total of 76,800 new suits filed in 1991 to 317,600 suits filed in 1994. See Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, Wege zur Justizentlastung, 48 NEUE JURISTISCHE WOCHENSCHRIFT 2441 (1995).
75. In 1988, in the then-GDR, a total of 62,210 first-instance civil cases were filed. See STATISTISCHES JAHRBUCH DER DEUTSCHEN DEMOKRATISCHEN REPUBLIK 1989, at 399.
76. The figures include cases from civil, family, and criminal law, but exclude labor law disputes, which no longer are adjudicated in Lüritz, but now go to a special labor court in a nearby town serving a much larger area than the present Lüritz Amtsgericht.
77. Gisela Shaw, East German "Rechtsanwälte" and German Unification, 67 GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, NEW SERIES no. 2, at 211, 224 (1994).
78. WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 1348 (16th ed. 1971).