Stuckart, Wilhelm

Lawyer, State Secretary, Gauobmann of the Federation of National Socialist Lawyers

Born: 16.11.1902 in Wiesbaden

Died: 15.11.1953 near Hanover

After completing his state law examinations and doctorate in Frankfurt am Main, Stuckart was offered a trainee lawyer position at the Liebmann-Hallgarten law firm in Wiesbaden. In 1931, a dispute arose when Stuckart, quite unexpectedly for his Jewish employer, uttered anti-Semitic Nazi slogans. A short time later, he faced expulsion as a lawyer from the Wiesbaden district court for favoring a National Socialist.

Stuckart then set up as a lawyer in Stettin. On April 1, 1932, he joined the NSDAP, advanced to Gauobmann of the Bund Nationalsozialistischer Juristen (National Socialist Lawyers' Association) and, after the seizure of power in 1933, became provisional Lord Mayor of Stettin, six months later State Secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Culture and finally, in March 1935, State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of the Interior.

In September of that year, during the Nuremberg Party Congress, he worked with Hans Globke to draft the "Nuremberg Laws", which denied Jews their "Reich citizenship rights" and prohibited marriages between "Aryans" and "Jews". Stuckart was involved in the discriminatory Naming Law (compulsory additional names Israel and Sara) as well as the introduction of the "Racial Disgrace Paragraph". During the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, as State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, he played a decisive role in the planning of measures that were to lead to the deportation and extermination of millions of Jews in Europe. His statements on the "mixed-blood question" dominated large parts of the conference. Before the Nuremberg Tribunal, Stuckart claimed that he had known nothing about the fate of the Jewish deportees. Despite this, he was convicted of crimes against humanity; however, as a "desk murderer" classified as seriously ill, he only received a prison sentence, which was considered to have been served by the pre-trial detention.

After his release, Stuckart became treasurer in Helmstedt and later managing director of the Institute for the Promotion of Lower Saxony's Economy. In October 1951, Stuckart was elected the third state chairman of the Association of Displaced and Disenfranchised Persons (BHE) in Lower Saxony. In 1952, he joined the Socialist Reich Party, which was banned in 1954 as a successor organization to the NSDAP.

He died in a car accident in 1953.