Hans Filbinger - Filbinger Affair

Filbinger Affair

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 law suit 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 July 20 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.

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.

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 law suit 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 June 13, 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. 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.