Talk:Sondergericht

Wikify and Globalize

I added Wikify and Globalize banners to the article. Here's why:

• Wikify: I think the article would benefit from additional links to other Wikipedia articles.
• Globalize: Did the Sondergerichte operate only in Germany or in Nazi-occupied territories as well?

I'd appreciate input from other editors. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 23:43, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Re 2nd question, no, they were quite active in occupied Poland where they were responsible for many judicial murders. Particularly after 1941, when a special law was introduced which allowed the courts to sentence Poles and Jews to death essentially on a whim.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:19, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Nazi de ange du blanc pur

This article not only has a German bias, but a Nazi bias. The Bavarian Volksgericht was a Sondergerichte (per its German language article), and apparently was around since the before the Wiemar Republic, possibly being the type of court used in Hitler's trial for the Beer Hall Putsch. I would hazard a guess that similar courts existed in the German Empire and are still around (or at least legal) in modern day Germany. What is the difference between this and the Volksgericht? Int21h (talk) 22:07, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not knowledgeable enough about the topic to address your question but perhaps you should ask the article's creator about it.Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:47, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I did manage to track down some sources on the People's Court (Bavaria) (Volksgericht) and created its article. It is also a Sondergerichte, or am I wrong? This leads me to believe that there were other "special courts" that predate the Nazi use and preexisted when the Nazis came to power. (Indeed, the article states "The number of Special Courts increased from 26 in 1933 to 74 in 1942." but this is unsourced.) If so, I think it unsound to call them Nazi courts, and probably best to just call them "German". Also, is "Sondergerichte" not just a generic German word for special court? Int21h (talk) 09:17, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

You ask several questions, I'll try to answer them one by one.

1. Is Sondergerichte the German word for Special courts? Yes, it is a direct translation. Sonder = special, Gerichte = courts.

2. Is the People's Court (Bavaria) a Sondergerichte? No, it is not, and yes, you are wrong. Am I correct in assuming that you used the google translation functionality to read the German (historisches lexicon) source that you used when creating the English article on peoples courts in Bavaria? Gerichtsbarkeit means jurisdiction, while gericht means court. If you read through the german original text of the source you used to cite this claim in the article you created you will see that the reference you give never uses the word Sondergerichte, only the word Volksgerichte (meaning peoples courts). You are correct in that the German wiki article on the Bavarian peoples court says that they were Sondergerichte, but from the context it is clear that they mean "courts that were special", i.e. courts that were not normal courts, not the specific category "special-courts". Note that they also never link the word sondergericht to the German wiki article on special courts, which would have been the logical thing to do if that was what they meant.

3. Were there "special courts" that predate the Nazi use? In Germany yes, and probably elsewhere too. Special courts were set up in Germany for the last 4 months of 1932 by the conservative government, but they were a different thing to the Nazi courts, although both were (broadly) aimed at the respective political opposition. The Sondergerichte this article is about were set up by the new national socialist government soon after Hitler coming into power. They were initiated on 21.03.1933. In a typical example of non-improvement links to other special courts were recently removed from the article (with a confused motivation/motive), if you'd read through the article before that you'd been aware of them and understood that it is a quite generic term. We use the term Sondergerichte as a title in this article because when it comes to the special courts run by the Nazis this is a commonly used name for them also in English literature and avoids confusion with the many other special courts.

4. Does this article have a Nazi bias? The fact that you would claim so about an article where it is clearly mentioned that the Sondergerichte were used to quash opposition to the Nazis through the use of arbitrary psychological terror, and the killing of 12,000 Germans in the process, makes me question both your motives and the logic you use.

All the best. --Stor stark7 ^Speak 20:31, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

The German language Wikipedia de:Volksgericht (Bayern) article says "Die Volksgerichte waren Sondergerichte,...". So is "Sondergerichte" a pronoun or just a generic word (Sonder = special, Gerichte = courts)? If it is a generic term, using it for only the Nazi courts will preclude a sensible naming scheme for the non-Nazi courts, which poses a major problem; what else would they be named? Also, if it indeed is a generic term, the article should be generic for the same reasons. If it a pronoun specifically used to refer only to this Nazi court, what is the equivalent generic term? This is my (intended) major question, and I don't think its been answered fully.

Also, from what I am learning, the Nazis were not the only governments spreading havoc and terror through government mechanisms in Germany during the era. (This was my other major point.) The Volksgericht appearently handed down 31,000 sentences in 4-5 years in just one state; I think killing 12,000 Germans from 1933 on may be viewed as just a progression of what was already in the works in 1919. Suffice to say, I would guess the Volksgericht took many lives in the process. I think too much blame is placed on the Nazis for the terror spread by the government, to the determent of other similar events, since I think it is becoming (to me) evident they were not the only terrorists in town, nor the first. If this previous statement about 26 active courts is right, that there were quite a few similar courts before the Nazis, and the non-Nazi death count is likely high if not higher. They deserve articles, and these articles need names. I think my logic is sound.

As for my motivations (which I believe are largely irrelevant), I am trying to suss out just what the court procedures were at the time (which allowed such travesties), how uniform such procedures were at the time, and how they compare to court procedures in German courts today. At first glance, it appears that they are ridiculously similar, to the point of being largely indiscernible. Which, I don't know about you, but to me this seems important. Int21h (talk) 17:41, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

how they compare to court procedures in German courts today. At first glance, it appears that they are ridiculously similar, to the point of being largely indiscernible. - wait, what? Are you sat that the courts of today's Germany are comparable to Nazi special courts? Or did I misunderstand you?Volunteer Marek (talk) 16:39, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

No, you did not misunderstand me. Like I said, at first glance. I was actually really surprised by this, and I may turn out to be wrong. The more verifiable material I am finding on the judiciary, the more I am finding the current structure predates (and was utilized by) the Nazis. It is all still a little murky, but the Wiemar Republic seemed to have been under a permanent state of emergency (I have verified there were 136 specific state of emergency decrees from 1918 to 1925 for example), and it appears to me that the judicial structural differences between Nazi Germany and the Wiemar Republic are really not that major. In other words, it does not appear it changed much from its Wiemar Republic structure but was/is just more of the same. They all used/use a mixed system of judges and lay judges (the jury), which seem to be (both then and now) short term political appointees. I am unsure if special courts have been utilized like they were in the Wiemar Republic and Nazi Germany, but my guess is that they were/are. What little right Germans had to a jury trial was abolished during a state of emergency when Hitler was in jail (which would likely not have helped Hitler anyways, because like I said little right.) This Sondergericht seems structurally identical to the People's Court Hitler was tried under. There were also possibly more lay judges as a percentage of the Nazi and Wiemar courts then compared to the current ones, but I have not yet verified the makeup of the Nazi and Wiemar courts. There is still alot more to ferret out. Int21h (talk) 17:58, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

1. The "sort of permanent state of emergency" of the Weimar Republic ended in something like 1924/25; the following years up to the Black Friday (= Black Thursday; the effects were seen one day later in Germany) of 1929 were quite stable. 2. Part of the emergency then in existence was that Bavaria had a so-called "People's Court" to deal with political crimes. It was disputed at the time whether it had the right to do so under Reich law, if I remember correctly, but they did anyway. 3. There is no human right in natural law to a jury trial (though citizens of countries where this has long been established in positive law may think otherwise). It may be a reasonably good procedure to find out truth by way of legal proceeding; but that is it. Or again it may not: the very fact that a factual question is put to the black box of the jury suggests, though they are explicitly admonished otherwise, a "do you believe the defendant guilty?" question rather than the actually needed "are you certain that the claim of the defendant to be not guilty is preposterous?" (for this is what "beyond reasonable doubt" should mean: "beyond any doubt, other than a preposterous one"). - It was abolished in Germany, by way (it is true) of the emergency law procedure, but these emergency laws had to find at least the tacit approval of the Parliament, which they got, and afterwards were (by everyone) assumed to be just as valid laws as any other. The reason was a) that the procedure was costly and b) that the jury rules prohibited the jurors from deciding on what, people felt, they could really be of use, to wit, the length of the punishment if guilty; it was preferred for the judges (professional and non-professional) to decide together on both guilt and punishment.--2001:A61:20FC:7B01:E80B:CDD9:66DD:18A0 (talk) 23:31, 7 August 2017 (UTC)