The Rosenburg Files: The German Elite after 1945 and their Nazi-Past

After the end of the second world war, Germany went through an ambitious De-Nazification process. Despite this, the elites of pre-1945 managed to get hold of high-ranking positions in all areas of social life. Handa Center Visiting Scholar Christoph Safferling will present an extensive study on the establishment of the German Federal Ministry of Justice and its staff in the years 1949 to 1974. His study unveiled the enormous figure that 77% of those working in the Ministry in the late 1950s were former members of the National Socialist Party. This of course raises general questions of the development of the “Rechtsstaat” (Rule of Law) in Germany and lessons learned for lustration processes in modern states in transition.

Dr. Christoph Safferling holds the Chair of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and International Law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He is also one of the Vice-Presidents of the Advisory Council of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy. He is author of the book “International Criminal Procedure," published 2012 by OUP. He is currently conducting research on the History of the Federal General Public Prosecutor’s Office in Germany.