Roland Freisler
Nazi Judge
Died when: 51 years 96 days (615 months)Star Sign: Scorpio
Roland Freisler (30 October 1893 – 3 February 1945), a German Nazi jurist, judge, and politician, served as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1934 to 1942 and as President of the People's Court from 1942 to 1945.
As a prominent ideologist of Nazism, he influenced the Nazification of Germany's legal system as a jurist.He attended the Wannsee Conference, the 1942 event which set the Holocaust in motion.
He was appointed President of the People's Court in 1942, overseeing the prosecution of political crimes as a judge, and became known for his aggressive personality, his humiliation of defendants, and frequent use of the death penalty in sentencing.
Although the death penalty was abolished with the creation of the Federal Republic in 1949, Freisler's 1941 definition of murder in German law survives to date in the Strafgesetzbuch § 211.