The first step was taken in April: The reference library of the lawyer and former judge at the Higher Regional Court of Braunschweig, Dr Helmut Kramer, has moved to Bochum!
Helmut Kramer (*30 March 1930) joined the judiciary in Hanover in 1962. After working for the Braunschweig Public Prosecutor General’s Office and the Braunschweig Regional Court, he became a judge at the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court in 1975.
Helmut Kramer’s commitment to coming to terms with the history of justice and National Socialist crimes is unmistakable and is reflected in his reference library and his own numerous publications. He was honoured for his commitment with both the Hans Litten Prize (1994) and the Fritz Bauer Prize (2010) and was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class in 2002.
It was only two years ago, in June 2024, that he was rehabilitated by Lower Saxony’s Minister of Justice Kathrin Wahlmann after disciplinary proceedings were opened against him in 1978. In the same year, Kramer had sent parts of the dissertation (1936) of the then Minister of Justice Hans Puvogel to colleagues after Puvogel did not distance himself from the statements contained therein, namely the advocacy of the castration of people who were considered inferior in Nazi thinking. Kramer thus criticised both Puvogel himself and the treatment of incriminated lawyers in the early Federal Republic.
After a long planning phase, the books travelled from Wolfenbüttel to Bochum in a total of 122 boxes in April. Over the coming weeks, the books will be added to the Fritz Bauer Forum’s library collection one by one.
In addition to specialist legal literature, the reference library includes a wide range of historical and legal-historical literature with a focus on Nazi crimes, Nazi justice, post-war justice, coming to terms with the past, resistance in the Nazi era, „euthanasia“ and forced labour with a large collection of original literature from the Nazi era, as well as specialist legal literature.
We would like to thank Dr Helmut Kramer for his generous donation to the Fritz Bauer Library and are delighted to be able to make the books available to the general public here.
