Several lawsuits against Bundeskanzleramt for its files on Globke & Abs (initiated in 2017)
These new law suits are a continuation of my lawsuit against National Archives in Germany for inactivity (initiated in 2011). I am interested in the papers of Hans Globke that are not in the Federal Archive, where they belong legally. Globke was not only commentator of the Nuremberg racial laws, but also a high ranking officer in Hitler's Reich Ministry of the Interior and later all-powerful secretary of Konrad Adenauer. I am also interested in the records of Hermann Josef Abs, one of the most loyal business leaders of Hitler, negotiating for the Federal Government in 1952 the so-called compensation agreements and, eight years later, the 630-million payment with Israel. These documents are at the Historical Institute of the Deutsche Bank. Both (private) institutions refused to show me these documents.
On 12 July 2017, the Federal Constitutional Court (BverfG) rejected my complaint. The judges gave a formal explanation: that I should have directed my request to the Chancellery and not to the Federal Archives. The judges admit, however, that official records remain property of the state – also in the case that they are privately administrated and not distributed in accordance with egalitarian principle. This is contrary to the rights guaranteed in the Constitution.
In May 2019, the hearing regarding the Abs files took place before the Administrative Court in Berlin and ended with a settlement. The German Chancellery promised formally to provide me with the Abs-files in the building of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. I agreed to this, but I made clear in the settlement that I did not want to recognize the unlawful tradition of hiding official files in private archives, but only want to solve one case. The other contentious legal issues - the duty of restitution of official files by the Chancellery and the provision to finding aids (search registers) – will be clarified in other pending cases. The lawsuit for the Abs files is thus completed. The procedure concerning the Globke files is pending.
On March 5, 2021 the britisch The Times published a very interesting Podcast about Globke Times
After that decision, I made a new request to the Chancellery´s (Bundeskanzleramt), but the office of Mrs. Merkel ignores the decision of the highest Court in Germany. So, I opened new law suits against her office.