Die weniger ruhmreiche Seite der Ruhmreichen

[matrixmann]

Ein paar interessante, durch Zufall entdeckte Fakten:

Richard von Weizsäcker (1920-2015) war von 1981 bis 1984 Bürgermeister von (West-)Berlin, ab Juli 1984 bis 1994 6. Bundespräsident der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Sein Vater, Ernst Heinrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (1882-1951), wurde im Zuge der Nürnberger Prozesse wegen Mitwirkung an der Deportation französischer Jugen nach Ausschwitz als Kriegsverbrecher verurteilt.

Richard von W. war seinerzeit als Assistent für dessen Verteidiger bei dem Gerichtsprozess tätig und sogar als "Hilfsverteidiger" vor dem Gericht zugelassen.
Gleiches traf auch beim Prozess von Franz von Papen, in Form seines Sohnes Friedrich Franz von Papen, zu.



Quelle: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Weizsäcker, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_von_Weizsäcker, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_von_Papen, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Franz_von_Papen

Comments

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is interesting that things like that started happening in the late socialist countries right before the collapse. I guess it shows how people in the socialist society lost control over politics and naturally reversed back to free market and private property.

[matrixmann]

Err, I hope that this is sarcasm because otherwise I don't get it how you get upon this being a subject from "late socialist countries".
Bundesrepubik Deutschland (BRD) never was one of that. It was the successor or the Reich state.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Oops, sorry, my bad. I thought it was in the GDR somehow. My poor German, I misunderstood. Then yeah, it is more or less expected although appalling. I also read about the NATO officials who were former Nazis. So not surprised. Another thing I found out recently that the founder of IKEA was involved with some Nazi organization in Sweden. Nonetheless, not much backlash or anything.

[matrixmann]

Hm... I don't know when IKEA was founded. If it originates in that time episode, it might be possible.

The big two points I'm aiming at here is - and this is partly a question of if you know a bit about German history after WWII:

1) I don't know if that practice still was common/legitimate in that time that you could be a family member's defending lawyer in court - but even if, it puts a very negative light upon the Nuremberg Trials.
Like - what kind of real trials for war criminals were they, if family members of the Nazis still were able to work on their defense scheme in court? Family will always very likely try to wash family's hands clean of every crime, even if it took place.
It's a scandal because of the obvious bias being present here and it didn't seem to concern anybody the influence this would very likely have upon the outcome of the court proceeedings.

2) Richard von Weizsäcker, as acting Bundespräsident, gets a lot of positive credit for a speech held in the parliament in his term (on May 8th, by the way) in which he's the first one of German politicians to officially call WWII a "liberation from the Nazi regime".
Before, the tenor was like "*grumble, grumble* - we lost... *grumble, grumble*" in West Germany.
In that time episode, they were also quite a bit of people, also from political ranks, which scolded him for doing that.

If you also happen to know about the behind-the-scenes politics going on at that time - "Wandel durch Annäherung" ("change through rapprochement") - that had been started since Willy Brandt's term as a chancellor (1969-1974), and how calculated this strategy was in the background - well, how believable is the honesty of this, if it adds on top that Richard von Weizsäcker was able to work on the defense strategy of his own father in the Nuremberg Trials?
How really, really honest and coming from heart was this, could this have been?

You know, the picture that unfolds here is: It was a very calculated chess move, not more.
Choosing R. v. W. for the position that he occupied later was a chess move - and so was this speech. It was part of a longer-aimed strategy to crack open the Soviet block - via pretending to them "we have learned our lesson - we are Nazis no more".

If you take these facts of history into the consideration, it looks like this celebrated move of v. Weizsäcker was a pure tactival move inside the frame of this plan.
But, unlike Brandt, which even had to flee from the Nazis, maybe they put a possible dormant Nazi in charge of this move - maybe on purpose, maybe not.

These tactics can be seen in the light of "ambitions of West Germany" as well as in the context of ambitions the American elites (political and economical) had.

[onb2017.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am familiar in general but didn't know the details. Thanks. May even use you as a reference some time because I was going to write some stuff. Mostly about big business involved with Nazis during WWII and still in business but politicians afterwards are interesting too.

[matrixmann]

Errr, I was pretty surprised about stumbling over this because I was simply looking for something different about that person. Something more trivial, I think...

It's a bit difficult to explain because it requires some knowledge about German history, especially the part of history as two German states still existed.
I'm not that familiar with that time episode myself as I didn't experience it myself, neither the events which took place in that episode.
But even if reading this as a technical outsider, it raises big questions for me about what this is supposed to mean concretely.
Judging from my view as an outsider, the context from between the lines that I get from those facts is no good one.
But I don't know if I'm also missing some details on this through the lack of familiarity with this time episode and the people being active in it...