- Yg. 1927, No. 14 -

"At the time of the Thirty Years' War, when the battle formations of the Landsknechts confronted each other with felled lances and halberds, close combat could only be opened by a troop of volunteers breaking into the closed wall of enemy weapons, with ruthless dedication to their own lives. This squad was called the "lost bunch". , , Nothing but such a "lost bunch" are the now condemned to death "Fememörder". , , If we . , , Now after the verdict for the "lost heap" to enter, not with the call of amnesty and pardon, but out of the conviction that for legal reasons a higher instance must recognize on acquittal, we do not do so because we To approve of the deed and perpetrators in every direction, but because we, who fight in the battle line for the patriotic idea, should not abandon those who made the greatest sacrifices, the "lost heap". That's why we are committed to declare despite the death sentence: The act was a pure act of self-defense. "

Thus the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" (evening edition of the 28, March) can be written from Berlin; So it will probably have been in other sheets.

Others may worry about the purely legal side; But as far as the moral side is concerned, I have to say: That is the only upright, sympathetically pleasing and rational judgment I have read about the verdict of the last Fememord trial.

Schulz and Klapproth, and what they are called, may be very rough fellows: murderers are not; at least that can never be proven. They have acted according to the moral principles with which our states have been founded and preserved. And one of the most important laws of this morality is that in times of need the individual may (may not) have to override the laws that apply in private life if it demands the interest of the general public; the statesman must lie, the citizen (as a soldier) murder. (I do not want to comment on this or that state morality with this sentence;

"Yeah, but it was not an emergency at the time, 1921 or 1923 or when the Fememorde happened." - Oh yes; at least the convicts believed it, and they had to believe it, because the government surely considered the situation in the East to be very threatening, otherwise it would not have entertained the 25 000 Man Black Reichswehr. The members of the "work commandos" have rightly felt themselves to be legal but secret troops; In the year 1923, they guarded the house of Reich President Ebert. Treachery of their existence meant the greatest danger to them. In order to counter this danger, since the conviction before a court, even before a court-martial, was out of the question of secrecy, there was only one means: to eliminate traitors in silence. The higher authorities of the Reichswehr and the government have undoubtedly known and approved of this procedure. The verdict is an unprecedented hypocrisy: even today, people who have written about the Black Reichswehr, German courts sentenced for treason, but German courts condemn people who four years ago treason in the then only possible and undoubtedly approved by the Reich Ministry of Defense way have prevented to death.

This is also part of the morality on which our state life rests, without which it would collapse; and therefore, it is essentially a great naivety to demand that the guilty ones, the ministers and generals, should be called to account, or to demand that Wirth, Gessler, Severing and their secret councils should now confront the murderers and say: "We, only we are to blame, we have set up in times of need, we have brought you to the opinion, you are a legal force, soldiers before the enemy, we have left you on the belief that traitors have to be killed in self-defense "They do not do that; they can not do that.

These convicts are the victims of sacrifices made by the ministers, secret councils and officers to the God "public opinion". They have been abandoned by the backers, betrayed: a lost heap.

1927, 14 Hermann List