DR. SIEMERS: Herr Minister, please tell the High Tribunal what role you played in the Social Democratic Party up until the year 1933 and the principal ministerial posts you held up until the year 1933.
SEVERING: At the age of 16½ I entered the labor union movement and when I was 18 years old I entered the Social Democratic Party and as a result of that fact I held honorary positions in the Party at a relatively early age.
In the year 1905 I became councillor in the city of Bielefeld. I was member of the Reichstag from 1907 until 1912; and I again became a member of the Reichstag and at the same time a member of the Prussian Diet in 1919. I was in the Reichstag and in the Prussian Diet until 1933. I was Minister in Prussia from 1920 until 1921; then again from 1921 to 1926, and from 1930 until 1933; from 1928 until 1930 I was Reich Minister of the Interior.
DR. SIEMERS: When and why did you leave public life?
SEVERING: I retired from official public life in July 1932, and from political life when the Social Democratic Party was prohibited.
DR. SIEMERS: Were you arrested when leaving public life in 1933, or perhaps at a later date and, if so, at whose order?
SEVERING: I was arrested on the very same day on which the Enabling Act was scheduled to be read and passed in the Reichstag. The order for my arrest was signed by the then Minister of the Interior, Herr Göring, who at that time was also President of the Reichstag and, if I may utter an opinion, who would have had the obligation, as President of the Reichstag, to protect the immunity of the members of the Reichstag. Under breach of this immunity I was arrested the moment I entered the Reichstag building.
DR. SIEMERS: But you participated in the vote on the Enabling Act?
SEVERING: The Chairman of the Social Democratic Reichstag faction had complained to Göring against the treatment to which I was subjected with the result that I was given leave to vote. But the voting had already come to a close. However, Reichstag President Göring still permitted me to give my “no” vote for the Enabling Act.
DR. SIEMERS: You were arrested thereafter but only for a very short time?