The Inner Temple Yearbook 2021–2022
Helmuth von Moltke and the Rule of Law
SOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE LAW:
HELMUTH VON MOLTKE AND THE RULE OF LAW By Master Patrick O’Connor. Master O’Connor traces the disintegration of the ‘rule of law’ and of the legal profession in Nazi Germany after January 1933. One of the very few lawyers to engage in ethical resistance was Count Helmuth von Moltke, an Inner Templar. He paid with his life.
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Helmuth in Vienna. Inset: General von Moltke
Helmuth von Molkte and Family, 1932
EARLY LIFE Count Helmuth James von Moltke was born in 1907, to a distinguished German military family. His great-uncle was Chief of the German General Staff until 1914. His great granduncle, von Moltke the Elder, was the Field Marshal who modernised the Prussian army. He led it to victory against Austria and France before the unification of Germany in 1871. With Bismarck’s support, he acquired Kreisau, an estate in Silesia, later of historic significance. Since 1891, the Moltke Bridge has spanned the River Spree in central Berlin. And yet, on 23 January 1945, Helmuth was executed in Plötzensee Prison by the Nazi regime. He had been convicted of ‘treason’ by the so-called ‘People’s Court’ in Berlin. We will explore how the ‘rule of law’ collapsed under the Third Reich after 1933, and how Helmuth came to this fate. His ethical confrontation with the Nazi dictatorship may have enduring significance for us. Helmuth fully qualified as a lawyer in 1934. He refused a judicial career, because of the Nazi regime’s requirement to join their party. He pursued a very early commitment to human rights, entering private practice, from a small office in Berlin, specialising in private international law. He assisted those trying to leave Germany, including dissidents and Jews. The young Helmuth was noted for his boundless energy and seriousness of purpose. 26
His choices were informed by several early progressive influences. His maternal grandfather, a member of The Inner Temple, had been a notably liberal politician and Chief Justice of South Africa, and his grandmother an early feminist. The family was active in various relief programmes for workers in Silesia during the economic crises of the late 1920s. He mixed in creative circles in Berlin and Vienna, including Arnold Schoenberg and Bertolt Brecht. He was a very charismatic young man, as he appears in 1928 in Vienna. In Austria, he met future wife, Freya Deichmann, also to be a law student. Helmuth’s studies in international law led him to London and Oxford. He visited the League of Nations in Geneva and the Court of International Justice in The Hague. Whenever he could, and especially to the complacent English upper classes, he warned against appeasement of the Nazi regime.
Whenever he could, and especially to the complacent English upper classes, he warned against appeasement of the Nazi regime.
