Karl Wieck was Justice Minister of Germany during the Weimar era until 1935, preceding Ernst Janning.
Biography[]
Karl Wieck was born in the German Empire, and, as a lawyer, he served as a mentor to Ernst Janning. Wieck rose to be Justice Minister of the Weimar Republic, but, in 1935, he resigned as Justice Minister rather than wear the Nazi insignia on his robe. At Justice Minister Ernst Janning's trial at Nuremberg in 1948, Wieck testified that, under Nazi Germany, the right of appeal was eliminated, the supreme court of the Reich was replaced by speical courts, the concept of race was made a legal concept for the first time, judges were stripped of their indepedence and entrusted with punishing dissent against Nazism, the Ministry of Justice was given into the hands of a dictatorship, that criminal law was characterized by an inflation of the death penalty (particularly targeting Poles, Jews, and political rivals), sexual sterilization was mandated for "asocials", and judges had to wear the insignia of the swastika on their robes during the Nazi era. However, Janning's counsel Hans Rolfe had Wieck confirm that sterilization had been used to punish crimes in other countries, such as the United States, and Rolfe also suggested that Wieck's perspective on the inner workings of the Nazi justice system could have been distorted by his absence from government. Rolfe also questioned why Wieck didn't refuse to swear a loyalty oath to the Nazis as a means of preventing the Nazis from coming to power, insinuating that Wieck had remained loyal to the Nazis out of concern for his pension; this resulted in an objection from Colonel Tad Lawson and a heated argument between the counsels before Wieck was allowed to be dismissed.