“The experience of the candidate within the (Nazi) movement and its evaluation (by the Nazi movement) is fundamental in any evaluation of the candidate’s qualifications. If such experience does not exist, he will be disqualified.”[65]
In the early stages of this prostitution of German legal education, the Prussian Ministry of Justice took a leading part. The Prussian Minister of Justice was a Nazi zealot named Hanns Kerrl, a budget clerk without legal education who attained this high position under the Nazis, and who became the Reich Minister for Churches after the Prussian Ministry of Justice was absorbed by the Reich government. In April 1933 Kerrl issued a decree concerning the selection of candidates for positions as judges, public prosecutors, and attorneys in the State of Prussia, which provided in part that—
“The applicant for appointment as a junior judge (assessor), admission as attorney, or appointment as notary public will in future have to prove in a special hearing that his consciousness of being a member of the national community, his social understanding, and his understanding of the entire race development of the German people in the present and future constitute the basis of his personality. * * * for this purpose applicants will have to undergo a special post-examination which has the aim to convey an impression of his being rooted in the national community (Volksverbundenheit).
“The result of this post-examination will be evaluated in my decision about the appointment or qualifications of the candidate equally with the other statutory requirements.”[66]
Two months later, Kerrl issued another decree which required that all candidates for the final State legal examination had to attend a special “Community Camp” for 6 weeks before they would be admitted to the final examination. This Prussian decree provided, in part, as follows:
“The National Socialist State must know above all that the man whom the State, as a sovereign, intends to entrust with the execution of the most important tasks of judge or prosecutor, must have character and be a typical German.
“One cannot get an idea of this from an examination as it has been conducted up to now, * * *.
“I therefore decree that:
“1. In the course of the final legal State examination, each candidate, during the period following the written and preceding the oral examination, that is for about 6 weeks, is to live together with other candidates under the direction of civil servants of the Prussian Administration of Justice, appointed by me * * *.”[67]
This preposterous institution for the perversion of young lawyers was established, and given the name “Gemeinschaftslager Hanns Kerrl,” after its creator. It was located at Jueterbog, near Berlin. An illustrated pamphlet describing the activities in this lawyers’ madhouse will be introduced in evidence. According to the basic statute of the camp, the inmates were to become familiar with the leadership principle and would “experience the ideas of the Fuehrer.” The commandant of the camp was a lawyer named Spieler, who had become favorably known to the Nazis through his activities as defense counsel in their behalf. He was an old Party member and a colonel in the Storm Troopers (SA). He was assisted in supervision of the young lawyers by a motley group of storm troopers and army officers. The extracts from this pamphlet will bear quotation: