Franz Gürtner

Franz Gürtner (1881 to 1941) was a German jurist and Minister of Justice under Franz von Papen, Kurt von Schleicher and Adolf Hitler. Born in Regensburg, the son of a locomotive engineer, he studied law at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, passed his state examinations in 1904 and 1908 and entered the Bavarian ministry of justice in 1909 after service as a reserve officer in the First World War. Bavarian Minister of Justice from 1922 to 1932, he was nominated Reich Minister of Justice in June 1932 and kept the post under Hitler, adding the Prussian justice ministry in 1934. He was responsible for coordinating jurisprudence in Nazi Germany, folded the state justice administrations into the Reich ministry in 1935, amended Paragraph 175 of the penal code to widen its scope and raise the penalties, and wrote the law that gave a legal veneer to the killings of the Night of the Long Knives. Although he tried at first to protect the independence of the courts, he joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and provided official sanction and legal grounds for repressive measures until his death in Berlin in 1941.