High German Court Orders Provisional Release of Rabbi Ohrenstein

The West German Supreme Constitutional Court, in what was described here as a sensational move, has ordered the provisional release from jail of Dr. Aron Ohrenstein, former Chief Rabbi of Bavaria, pending determination of whether his constitutional rights had been infringed. The Supreme Court sits in Karlsruhe.

The point at issue in the new move is not directly concerned with Dr. Ohrenstein’s guilt or innocence of charges involving fraudulent certification of indemnification claims for applicants supposedly residing at the Wildflecken DP camp, for which he had been sentenced to one year’s imprisonment in 1952. His defense attorneys argued before the Supreme Court that, when his sentence was, in the main, confirmed by another Munich court in 1954, he had been “deprived of his lawful judge.”

The 1954 case against Dr. Ohrenstein had been in the hands of Dr. Josef Mulzer, a notoriously Nazi-minded judge, who also presided over the trial of the late Dr. Philip Auerbach, post war leader of German Jewry. When Dr. Ohrenstein charged Judge Mulzer with prejudice, the latter could not deny it and disqualified himself. Although he was thus no longer permitted to deal with the case, he went out of his way to assign Judge Loohner to the trial, disregarding the fact that two other judges were next on the Munich roster at that time.

In their pleas before the Supreme Constitutional Court, the Ohrenstein attorneys argued that their client had been entitled, under the German constitution, to be tried by his lawful judge” and that he had been deprived of his right through the illegal intervention of a disqualified judge and through the assignment, without sufficient reason, of a judge who was not next on the duty roster.

The Supreme Constitutional Court has never before ordered that a prisoner be released from jail. That it did so last Friday, a week after hearing the defense attorneys, makes it likely that it will, in the near future, sustain the claim that Dr. Ohrenstein was “deprived of his lawful judge.” Such a verdict will not acquit him, since the German Supreme Court had already confirmed his conviction before the disputed second trial. However, a new trial will have to be held.

Dr. Ohrenstein was arrested at the airport here nine weeks ago, after boarding a plane bound for Switzerland. He is a forty-six year old native of Poland who lived in Berlin before and during the early years of the Hitler regime. He was appointed rabbi of the Munich community and “Chief Rabbi of Bavaria” in 1946, but his right to the title of “rabbi” is in dispute. He has been the storm center of Jewish affairs in Munich for many years.