The president of the Federal Constitutional court at Karlsruhe has asked the Federal Minister of Justice and the various provincial Ministers of Justice in West Germany for an opinion on whether the German constitution legally protects the rights of members of religious groups to absent themselves from legal proceedings during their holy day, it was learned here today.
Thequestion was occasioned by a plea filed with the court in behalf of Philip Auerbach, former head of the Bavarian Restitution Office, who is now on trial in Munich on charges of fraud in office. His attorneys are appealing a ruling of the Munich court that forced him to go to trial during Passover.
The West German Federal Court at Karlsruhe today ordered the re-trial of two former Nazi Party members on charges of having ordered the destruction of Jewish property during the Nazi pogroms of November 9-10, 1938. The men were previously acquitted by a German court at Stuttgart.
Meanwhile, the court feud of Veit Harlan, anti-Semitic producer of films for the Nazis, and Erich Lueth, West German official and initiator of the “peace with Israel” movement, reached a new point today. A local court granted Lueth’s plea and ordered Harlan to refrain from making public allegations that Lueth committed high treason and that he had written songs honoring Hitler.
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