As time went on, Katzenberger did indeed become her adviser, helping her, in particular, in her financial difficulties. Delighted with the friendship and kindness shown her by Katzenberger she came to regard him gradually as nothing but a fatherly friend, and it never occurred to her to look upon him as a Jew. It was true that she called regularly in the storerooms of the rear house. She did so after office hours, because it was easier then to pick out shoes. It also happened that during these visits, and during those paid by Katzenberger to her flat, she kissed Katzenberger now and then and allowed him to kiss her. On these occasions she frequently would sit on Katzenberger’s lap which was quite natural with her and had no ulterior motive. In no way should sexual motives be regarded as the cause of her actions. She always thought that Katzenberger’s feelings for her were purely those of a concerned father.
Basing herself on this view she made the statement to the investigating judge on 9 July 1941 and affirmed under oath, that when exchanging those caresses neither she herself nor Katzenberger did so because of any erotic emotions.
The defendant Katzenberger—He denies having committed an offense. It is his defense that his relations with Frau Seiler were of a purely friendly nature. The Scheffler family in Guben had likewise looked upon his relations with Frau Seiler only from this point of view. That he continued his relations with Frau Seiler after 1933, 1935, and 1938, might be regarded as a wrong [Unrecht] by the NSDAP. The fact of his doing so, however, showed that his conscience was clear.
Moreover, their meetings became less frequent after the action against the Jews in 1938. After Frau Seiler got married in 1939, the husband often came in unexpectedly when he, Katzenberger, was with Frau Seiler in the flat. Never, however, did the husband surprise them in an ambiguous situation. In January or February 1940, at the request of the husband, he went to the Seiler’s apartment twice to help them fill in their tax declarations. The last talk he ever had in the Seiler apartment took place in March 1940. On that occasion Frau Seiler suggested to him to discontinue his visits because of the representations made to her by the NSDAP, and she gave him a farewell kiss in the presence of her husband.
He never pursued any plans when being together with Frau Seiler, and he therefore could not have taken advantage of wartime conditions and the black-out.
II
The court has drawn the following conclusions from the excuses made by the defendant Katzenberger and the restrictions with which the defendant Seiler attempted to render her admissions less harmful:
When, in 1932, the defendant Seiler came to settle in Nuernberg at the age of 22, she was a fully grown and sexually mature young woman. According to her own admissions, credible in this case, she was not above sexual surrender in her relations with her friends.
In Nuernberg, when she had taken over her sister’s laboratory in 19 Spittlertorgraben, she entered the immediate sphere of the defendant Katzenberger. During their acquaintance she gradually became willing, in a period of almost 10 years, to exchange caresses and, according to the confessions of both defendants, situations arose which can by no means be regarded merely as the outcome of fatherly friendliness. When she met Katzenberger in his offices in the rear building or in her flat, she sat often on his lap and, without a doubt, kissed his lips and cheeks. On these occasions Katzenberger, as he admitted himself, responded to these caresses by returning the kisses, putting his head on her bosom and patting her thighs through her clothes.
To assume that the exchange of these caresses, admitted by both of them, were on Katzenberger’s part the expression of his fatherly feelings, on Seiler’s part merely the actions caused by daughterly feelings with a strong emotional accent, as a natural result of the situation, is contrary to all experience of daily life. The subterfuge used by the defendant in this respect is in the view of the court simply a crude attempt to disguise as sentiment, free of all sexual lust, these actions with their strong sexual bias. In view of the character of the two defendants and basing itself on the evidence submitted, the court is firmly convinced that sexual motives were the primary cause for the caresses exchanged by the two defendants.