Hans Filbinger

Filbinger was born on 15 September 1913 in Mannheim, Grand Duchy of Baden. He studied law and economics at the University of Freiburg, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and in Paris. Having earned his doctorate in 1939 with the dissertation "Limits to majority rule in stock and corporation law", he worked as a lecturer at the University of Freiburg. In 1940 he passed his final examination.

Filbinger, a Catholic, was married to Ingeborg Breuer and had four daughters and a son. One of his daughters, Susanna Filbinger-Riggert (born 1951) wrote a book: Kein weißes Blatt. It is a father-daughter biography. (2013).

Filbinger first came into contact with Nazi organisations as a student.

He was a member of the Jugendbund Neudeutschland (Youth Federation New-Germany), which he had joined in grammar school. As this Catholic students' federation with political leanings to the Centre Party opposed their being integrated into the Hitler Youth, it was banned. Filbinger, who was a leading member in the district of Northern Baden, in April 1933 called his fellow members to continue their work with their previous intentions and issue a programme for the upcoming future.[1] As a result, the NSDAP deemed him "politically unreliable".

On 1 June 1933, Filbinger joined the Sturmabteilung (SA), and later also the National Socialist students federation, but largely remained an inactive member. Attorney General Brettle advised Filbinger, as he was applying for his first examination in January 1937, that he could not expect to be admitted to the Referendariat, the preparatory service required for future state employees without having cleared himself from these political complaints.[2] Seeing himself barred from the second examination and hence blocked from any further professional career, Filbinger asked to be admitted to NS party membership in spring.[3]

In 1940, Filbinger was conscripted into the German Navy. He was promoted to the rank of Oberfähnrich and later to that of lieutenant. In 1943 he was ordered to enter the military legal department – according to his own account, against his will. Two attempts at avoiding this by volunteering for U-boat service in the Kriegsmarine didn't succeed.[4] Filbinger served in the legal department until the end of the war in 1945. This period of his life was later raised to prominence in the Filbinger affair.

During that time he was a member of the Freiburg Circles, a group of Catholic intellectuals centred around the publisher Karl Färber. Filbinger used his periods of leave to return to Freiburg and attend lectures by Reinhold Schneider, a writer critical of the Nazi regime.

Without his knowledge, two of the conspirators of the 20 July Plot—Karl Sack and Berthold Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg—recommended Filbinger for employment after a successful coup, adding that one could always rely on Filbinger's "principled anti-Nazi stance and loyalty". [5]

In 1946, Filbinger resumed his academic work at the university of Freiburg, subscribing to Walter Eucken's ordoliberalism, and settled down as lawyer. In 1947, he was coopted into the International anti-trust commission, chaired by Eucken and Karl Gailer.

In 1951 Filbinger joined the Christian Democratic Union and rose to be chairman of the CDU of Southern Baden.

In 1953, Filbinger was elected to the city council of Freiburg.

In 1958, minister-president Gebhard Müller appointed him an honorary state council. As such he was a member of the state government, mainly concerned with the interests of Southern Baden in the young state of Baden-Württemberg.

In 1960, Filbinger was appointed Minister of the Interior. In the same year, he was elected into the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg, in which he represented the city of Freiburg. He remained a member of parliament until 1980.

In 1966, minister-president Kurt Georg Kiesinger was elected Chancellor of Germany and Filbinger succeeded him as minister-president of Baden-Württemberg.

At that time, the CDU's coalition partner FDP broke with the CDU in order to form a government with the SPD. Dramatic negotiations resulted in Filbinger forming a CDU-SPD government, mirroring the Federal Great Coalition.

The Great Coalition continued after the state elections of 1968 and went on to reform the administrative system. This reform merged many towns and districts to create more viable units. According to Filbinger, towns are "true sources of power for the state and provide the citizen with the feeling ... of having a home". The results transcended the historical borders of the historic regions of Baden and Württemberg.

The two regions had only been united in 1952 after a referendum. Their relationship had never been easy and the opposition against the new "South-West State" remained strong in Baden. Proponents of Baden's independence raised concerns about the legitimacy of the 1951 referendum because of the controversial voting modalities. In 1956, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the modalities and the merger of the states legal but added that the will of the people of Baden had indeed been glossed over by political machinations. The decision had no immediate consequences until Filbinger became Minister-President. He himself hailed from Baden and after the court had reiterated its earlier verdict in 1969, the Filbinger administration in 1970 held a second referendum in Baden, which resulted in an overwhelming approval of the merger. Filbinger has been dubbed "architect of Baden-Württemberg's unity" for this.

Filbinger also pushed his party, that still was organized as four distinct regional parties to unite into a single CDU of Baden-Württemberg and was duly elected the first chairman.

In the 1972 state elections, the Filbinger's CDU achieve 52,9% of the vote, gaining an absolute majority for the first time. In 1976, campaigning under the slogan "Freedom instead of socialism", he increased his party's vote to a hitherto unsurpassed 56,7%.

Filbinger was a staunch opponent of leftist tendencies in politics and the universities, and figured prominently in the struggle against terrorism. Against nationwide trends, he opposed comprehensive schools and expanded the state's tripartial school system (Hauptschule, Realschule, Gymnasium) and also vocational schools.

As minister-president of Baden-Würrtemberg, he was President of the Bundesrat, the representation of the states on the federal level, from 1973 to 1974.

During the 1970s, Filbinger enjoyed a tremendous popularity as a patriarchal figure. He was elected a member of federal CDU executive board and also deputy chairman. Analysts even deemed him a possible candidate for the presidential elections in 1979, when his career suddenly ended in 1978 due to the Filbinger affaire (see below), an event from which his reputation has never recovered.

The first criticism of Filbinger's war time record dates back to 10 April 1972. Two weeks before the Baden-Württemberg state elections, the Der Spiegel magazine published one of Filbinger's verdicts. On 29 May 1945, Filbinger presided at the trial against artillery man Petzold and sentenced him to six months imprisonment for incitement of discontent, refusal of obedience and resistance. In an editorial, the Spiegel also claimed that, based on Petzold's memories, Filbinger had referred to Hitler as "our beloved Führer ... who has brought the fatherland back up". Filbinger immediately reacted by filing a lawsuit against the Spiegel, demanding that the Spiegel desist from making such a claim. The court decided in favour of Filbinger, since it found Petzold an unreliable witness and the alleged quote in conflict with Filbinger's other utterances and actions.

Nonetheless, allegations against Filbinger continued at various occasions, e.g. in 1974 when Filbinger as President of the Bundesrat spoke at the tricennial of the 20 July Plot, or in 1975 during the debate about a nuclear facility at Wyhl. Debaters often twisted or neglected the existing evidence or confused the circumstance, Petzold's anti-Nazi stance in particular, with the actual verdict.[6]

Filbinger's verdict against Petzold was especially criticized for having occurred after the surrender of the German military on 8 May 1945. However, the British military command had charged German officers in Norway with maintaining order among the German prisoners-of-war. Later the Petzold trial was confused with other cases involving Filbinger, creating the legend that Filbinger had sentenced a soldier to death for having spoken out against Nazism after German surrender.

The controversy was brought to the boiling point by the controversial German author Rolf Hochhuth. On 17 February 1978 the German weekly Die Zeit published a preview from Hochhuth's novel A Love in Germany (published October 1978), the backbone of which was the case of seaman Walter Gröger. Hochhuth accused Filbinger of having "participated" in four death sentences as a navy lawyer. The Petzold trial, though not involving a death sentence, Hochhuth deemed "outrageous" for having been held after the end of war.[5]

In his allegations, Hochhuth called Filbinger "such a dreadful lawyer, so that one has to presume that ... he is only living in freedom because of the silence of those who knew him." As in the previous case, Filbinger filed a lawsuit against Hochhuth and Die Zeit, seeking to have the claim quoted above banned as libel. In contrast to the previous case, the court did not take the incriminated sentence as a unit but analysed and judged it bit by bit. On 13 June 1978 the court decided that Hochhuth's claims about illegal behaviour were indeed a libellous charges and banned the author from repeating them. However, The term "a dreadful lawyer" was deemed a judgement of opinion protected by freedom of speech. The court has been criticized for mistaken the causal connection between the two statements for a simple addition.[7] Filbinger abstained from appealing the court's decision, and though Hochhuth did not repeat his "illegality" charges (and later even claimed that no one ever made such charges) the other allegation were echoed and variegated by the media.

After his withdrawal from politics, Filbinger in 1979 founded the conservative think tank Studienzentrum Weikersheim (Weikersheim Centre of Studies), which he chaired until 1997.

In 1987, Filbinger published his memoirs titled Die geschmähte Generation (The slandered generation), in which he again defended himself against his critics. In a review of this book, historian Golo Mann called the events of 1978 a "masterly orchestrated hunt against Filbinger".[14]

After the collapse of the GDR in 1989/90, two Stasi lieutenants revealed that they had been involved in the campaign against Filbinger:

"We have fought against Filbinger actively, that means we have collected material and have leaked forged or manipulated material into the west. The fight against Filbinger was a substantial part of "Action Black", a long lasting campaign against conservatives, CDU/CSU, Fascists."

Stasi document P3333 reveals that Filbinger had been spied on since the end of the 1960s.[15] Note that the use of the word Fascist adheres to usage prevalent in Communist states.

Filbinger's case sparks controversy even to this day.

On 16 September 2003, a day after his 90th birthday, Filbinger was honoured by a reception at Ludwigsburg Palace. The 130 guests included most government ministers of Baden-Württemberg and his successors Lothar Späth and Erwin Teufel. Protests accompanied the Ludwigsburg reception and had previously resulted in the cancelling in of a similar reception in Filbinger's home town Freiburg.

Filbinger has been elected to the Federal Convention as a representative of Baden-Würrtemberg's parliament in 1959, 1969, 1974, 1994, 1999, and 2004. The last occasion in 2004 caused controversy, as SPD, Greens, PDS, the German PEN and the Central Council of Jews in Germany protested this choice. However, on 31 March 2004, all candidates, including Filbinger, were unanimously confirmed by all parties in the state parliament, including the SPD and Green groupings.

Filbinger died on 1 April 2007 in Freiburg im Breisgau.

On 11 April 2007, Günther Oettinger, at that time the Minister President of Baden-Württemberg, held a controversial eulogy during the memorial service for his predecessor. In his speech Oettinger described Filbinger as "not a National-Socialist" but "an opponent of the Nazi regime", who could flee the constraints of the regime as little as million others". About Filbinger's role as navy judge, Oettiner pointed out that no one lost his life because of a verdict by Filbinger and had not the power and freedom supposed by his critics.[16] Oettinger was subsequently accused by politicians and the media of diminishing the significance of the Nazi dictatorship. German Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted with public admonishment, stating that she would have preferred if "the critical questions" would have been raised.[17] Oettinger was also criticized by opposition politicians and the Central Council of Jews; some of his critics even called for his demission.

Oettinger at first defended his speech but added that he regretted any "misunderstanding" about his eulogy, but did not withdraw his comments on Filbinger's past.[18] However, on April 16 he distanced himself from his comments.[19]

• Wolfram Wette (Hrsg.): Filbinger, eine deutsche Karriere. zu Klampen, Springer 2006, ISBN 3-934920-74-8.
• Susanna Filbinger-Riggert, Liane Dirks: Kein weißes Blatt: eine Vater-Tochter-Biografie. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-593-39803-7.

• Filbinger, Hans (1987): Die geschmähte Generation. Politische Erinnerungen. Universitas-Verlag, München. ISBN 3-8004-1154-7
• Filbinger-Riggert, Susanna (2013): Kein weißes Blatt. Eine Vater-Tochter-Biographie. (in German) Frankfurt: Campus-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-593-39803-7.
• Gillessen, Günter (2003): Der Fall Filbinger. Die Politische Meinung 408: 67–74. PDF fulltext
• Hürten, Heinz; Jäger, Wolfgang & Ott, Hugo (1980). In: Heck, Bruno [ed.]: Hans Filbinger – Der Fall und die Fakten: eine historische und politologische Analyse. v. Hase und Koehler, Mainz. ISBN 3-7758-1002-1.
• Neubauer, Franz (1990): Das öffentliche Fehlurteil – Der Fall Filbinger als ein Fall der Meinungsmacher. S. Roderer Verlag, Würzburg. ISBN 3-89073-487-1.
• Sepaintner, Fred Ludwig [ed.] (2003): Hans Filbinger – Aus neun Jahrzehnten. DRW / G. Braun Buchverlag, Leinfelden-Echterdingen/Karlsruhe. ISBN 3-87181-536-5.
• Wette, Wolfram: Filbinger: eine deutsche Karriere. Springe: Zu Klampen 2006, ISBN 3-934920-74-8.

• Hans Filbinger in the German National Library catalogue
• Personal homepage of Hans Filbinger.
• Gillessen, Günter (2003): Der Fall Filbinger. Die Politische Meinung 408: 67–74.
• Noth, Harald (2004): Hans Filbinger und seine selbstgerechten Richter.
• Wette, Wolfram (2003): Zusammenfassung des "Falls Filbinger".