Lawyers in the wrong

The "Palandt", a short commentary on the German Civil Code first published in 1939, and the "Schönfelder", a collection of laws published from 1932 onwards, have accompanied generations of German lawyers. But who were the namesakes of these two standard works? What legal thinking and legal self-image did Otto Palandt (1877-1951) and Heinrich Schönfelder (1902-1944) stand for? What was their attitude towards the Nazi state, which perverted law and justice? In his study, Lutz Kreller uses a broad range of sources to show that Palandt and Schönfelder integrated themselves into National Socialism out of conviction. These two biographies exemplify how easily the principles of the independence of law and justice and the separation of powers could be destroyed in 1933 and replaced by a National Socialist ideology.