Roland Freisler

Karl Roland Freisler (30 October 1893 – 3 February 1945) was a German jurist, judge, and politician who served as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1935 to 1942 and as president of the People's Court from 1942 to 1945. As a prominent ideologist of Nazism, he influenced as a jurist the Nazification of the German legal system. He was appointed president of the People's Court in 1942, overseeing the prosecution of political crimes as a judge. Freisler became known for his aggressive personality, his humiliation of defendants, and his frequent use of the death penalty in sentencing.

A law student at Kiel University, Freisler joined the Imperial German Army on the outbreak of the First World War and saw action on the Eastern Front, where he was wounded and taken prisoner of war by the Imperial Russian Army. On his return to Germany, he completed his law studies at the University of Jena and was awarded a Doctorate of Law in 1922. Freisler joined the Nazi Party in 1925, upon which he began defending Party members in court for acts of political violence.

After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Freisler was appointed State Secretary of the Prussian Ministry of Justice; two years later he became State Secretary in the unified Reich Ministry of Justice. Through his zealotry as well as his legal and verbal dexterity, he quickly established himself as the most feared judge in Nazi Germany and the personification of the Nazi ideology in domestic law. In 1942, representing Acting Reichsminister of Justice Franz Schlegelberger, Freisler attended the Wannsee Conference, the event which set the Holocaust in motion.