Roland Freisler

Roland Freisler (1893 to 1945) was a German jurist, judge and Nazi politician, State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1935 to 1942 and president of the People's Court from 1942 until his death in 1945. Born in Celle, he interrupted his law studies at Kiel to serve in the First World War, was wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians, and completed his studies at Jena, taking a doctorate of law in 1922. He joined the Nazi Party in 1925 and used his legal training to defend its members in court, sat in provincial parliaments and from 1933 in the Reichstag, and after the seizure of power became a state secretary in the Prussian and then the Reich Ministry of Justice. He chaired the criminal law committee of the Academy for German Law and attended the Wannsee Conference in 1942 as a representative of the acting minister. As president of the People's Court he handed out over 5,000 death sentences and presided over the show trials of the White Rose group and the 20 July plot, until he was killed in an American bombing raid on Berlin in February 1945.