Frankfurt Court Completes Written Verdict in “jewish Bank’ Case

Twenty weeks after the sentences were announced, a local court this week concluded the drafting of a written verdict in the case of the former “Jewish Restitution Bank” in Frankfurt. Later in the month copies will be transmitted to the parties concerned.

In German judicial practice, the judge generally issues his written decision not long after he has pronounced the oral sentence. Presiding Judge Hofmeyer, whose neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic utterances from the bench in another case caused a nationwide outcry three years ago, labored five months to give reasons for the unexpectedly severe jail terms and fines he handed down last simmer, at the end of a trial stretching over ten months.

The heaviest penalty he imposed upon Dr. Joseph Klibansky, Germany’s best-known Jewish attorney, who was mainly charged with the violation of foreign-currency control regulations. This action evoked strong criticism in-democratic German papers, which intimated that the sentence showed the earmarks of anti-Jewish prejudice and of personal antagonism toward Dr. Klibansky.

After they receive the “written grounds,” the defendants will have two weeks to file detailed appeals briefs with the German Supreme Court in Karlsruhe. That body, because of its overcrowded docket, can hardly pass on them before 1955. If they are sustained, as most observers, expect, the entire case will have to be referred back to a Frankfort court for retrial of those 1949-50 transactions, by which “blocked accounts” were transferred to their Jewish owners abroad at a time when such transfers could not yet be accomplished in legal fashion.

Dr. Klibansky, who serves as legal adviser to the Association of Jewish Communities in Hesse and defended the late Dr. Philipp Auerbach during the latter’s sensational trial in Munich, continues to practice law.