Karl Engert

Passions

Vocation

German lawyer, magistrate, vice-president of the "People's Court" and SS-Oberführer. In Schweinfurt, he held the position of a district court president. In the Bavarian Ministry of Justice he was promoted to ministerial council. In the First World War he served as a lieutenant and became a court judge. Early on, he took up relations with the Nazis, and was a co-founder on 21 March 1921 of the NSDAP (Nazi party) chapter in northern Bavaria and Franconia. This was followed by several years of employment as a writer for newspapers and magazines. He also had contact with Adolf Hitler, whom he visited on 3 November 1924 during his detention in Landsberg. His legal career culminated with his appointment as Vice President of the People's Court and chairman of the 2nd Senate in Berlin. At a meeting of the leading lawyers of the German Reich, he was informed on 23 and 24 April 1941 in Berlin about how the "annihilation of unworthy life" (Nazi jargon) could be practised by inhaling gas. According to his Nazi opinion, the death sentence before the People's Court could be applied to people under 18 years of age, although the legal provisions did not allow the death penalty in such cases. He drew a special provision as an exception, which stated that the death sentence would be possible if the young person had the mental and moral maturity of an eighteen-year-old. Thus on 11 August 1942 he condemned Helmuth Hübener to death, who belonged to a youth resistance group. Likewise, Walter Klingenbeck, the leader of a group of young people, was sentenced to death in September 1942 in this way. In autumn 1942 he became ministerial director in the Reich Ministry of Justice. There he was head of the secret special department XV, which decided which penitentiary prisoners were sent to the concentration camps due to their so-called "antisocial" actions. By February 1944, 2464 prisoners were handed over to the police because of his decisions. From June 1943 he also took over the management of the Department V (Prison) of the Reich Ministry of Justice. Under his responsibility, until the end of the war, thousands of prisoners died as a result of forced labour, poor nutrition and poor hygiene conditions in the penitentiaries, prisons and prison labour camps of the German Reich. Engert was charged with war crimes at the Nuremberg trials but was not convicted due to illness. He died on 8 September 1951, aged 73. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)