Trials against Germans in the foreign countries of Europe: Reference files of Counselors

The collection consists of 390 file volumes with documents from defence lawyers from trials against German defendants in court in Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. The largest proportion of the documents is from trials in France and Luxembourg. The trials took place between 1946 and 1960. About 90 % of the files come from law firms of the following lawyers: Dr. Kurt Behling, Berlin (148 volumes), P. H. Gordan, Gießen (8 volumes), Prof. Dr. Carl Haensel, Freiburg (11 volumes), Dr. Kurt Heim, Trier (82 volumes), Prof. Dr. Erich Schwinge, Marburg (5 volumes), Dr. Robert Servatius, Cologne (103 volumes). In addition to the defence counsel documents, this collection also contains copies of documents from various other collections of the German Federal Archives, from public prosecutors as well as from other archives. Includs minutes of meetings, final speeches of the defence and of the prosecution, first of all there are legal protection documents, in particular correspondence with the defendants, their relatives and also with state-run and church-based legal protection offices and the legal protection office of the German Red Cross, furthermore interrogation protocols of defence witnesses, declarations in lieu of oath, transcripts and photocopies from prosecution files as well as personal documents of defendants.