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 1934 to 1942 and as President of the People's Court from 1942 to 1945.

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, as opposed to the less severe crime of manslaughter, survives in the Strafgesetzbuch § 211.

[6] He saw active service in the German Imperial Army during the war after enlisting as a Fahnenjunker (officer cadet) in 1914 with the 167th Infantry Regiment (1st Upper Alsatian) in Kassel,[7] and by 1915 he was a Leutnant.

Oldendorf, 1974, the SDP newspaper Vorwärts of 3 May 1924 ran an article entitled SPIRITUAL KINSHIP: JEWISH–COMMUNIST, POPULAR REICHSTAG CANDIDATE, in which it stated that Freisler had been "until rather recently a member of the German Communist Party" and that this was interesting because "his grandmother was a full Jewess."

[11] In the late 1930s, during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the Soviet Union, Freisler attended the Moscow Trials to watch the proceedings against the condemned.

That might have been because he was a lone figure, lacking support within the senior echelons of the Nazi hierarchy, but he had also been politically compromised by his brother, Oswald Freisler, also a lawyer.

He published a paper entitled Die rassebiologische Aufgabe bei der Neugestaltung des Jugendstrafrechts ("The racial-biological task involved in the reform of juvenile criminal law").

[23] Freisler considered Jim Crow racist legislation "primitive" for failing to provide a legal definition of the term black or negro person.

It also led to a clash with his superior Franz Gürtner,[25] but Freisler's ideological views reflected things to come, as was shown by the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws within two years.

"[26] Between 1933 and 1945, the Reich's courts sentenced at least 72 German juveniles to death, among them 17-year-old Helmuth Hübener, found guilty of high treason for distributing anti-war leaflets in 1942.

The adoption of racial biological terminology into law portrayed juvenile criminality as "parasitical", implying the need for harsher sentences to remedy it.

"[26] On 8 July 1940, the Justice Ministry received a written complaint from a senior local court judge protesting against the euthanasia killings of physically or mentally disabled individuals that had claimed his wards.

Freisler met with him and explained that the ministry was establishing orderly procedures for the program with "expert committees" and "grievance councils", but he did not dispute the legality of the killings, arguing that the Nazi state had brought about a new concept of law.

He also worked closely with the Reichsstatthalter of Reichsgau Wartheland, Arthur Greiser, on standardizing penalties for Jews and Poles in the occupied eastern territories.

They concluded that the death penalty or concentration camp imprisonment, imposed by special courts-martial, were the only acceptable punishments for these categories of individuals, even for minor offenses.

[28] On 20 January 1942, Freisler, representing Acting Reichsminister of Justice Franz Schlegelberger, attended the Wannsee Conference of senior governmental officials in a villa on the southwestern outskirts of Berlin to provide expert legal advice for the planning of the destruction of European Jewry.

[30][additional citation(s) needed] He chaired the First Senate of the People's Court wearing a blood scarlet judicial robe, in a hearing chamber bedecked with scarlet swastika-draped banners and a large black sculpted bust of Adolf Hitler's head upon a high pedestal behind his chair, opening each hearing session with the Nazi salute from the bench.

The proceedings were filmed in order to be shown to the German public in cinema newsreels, and portray how Freisler ran his court; he would often alternate between questioning the defendants in an analytical manner, then suddenly launching into a furious verbal tirade, even going so far as to shout insults at the accused from the bench.

The shift from cold, clinical interrogation to fits of screaming rage was designed to psychologically disarm, torment and humiliate those on trial while discouraging any attempt on their part to defend or justify their actions.

The footage taken shows Freisler drowning out Schwerin's weak and muted testimony, prompted by his concern over the Wehrmacht's "numerous murders in Poland", by roaring at him in an exaggerated and theatrical manner, declaring "Sie sind ja ein schäbiger Lump!"

[6] On the morning of 3 February 1945, Freisler was conducting a Saturday session of the People's Court when United States Army Air Forces bombers attacked Berlin, led by the B-17 of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Rosenthal.

A bomb struck the court building at 11:08,[6] causing a partial internal collapse, and a masonry column came crashing down on Freisler, crushing and killing him instantly.

In 1943, he tried and handed down death penalties to Otto and Elise Hampel, who were both guillotined for distributing anti-Nazi postcards, and whose true story inspired Fallada's novel.

In the novel Fatherland (1992) by Robert Harris, which takes place in an alternate 1964 in which Nazi Germany won World War II, Freisler is mentioned as having survived until winter 1954, when he is killed by a maniac with a knife on the steps of the Berlin People's Court.