Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte Österreichs 2 / 2017, pp. 169-180, 2017/12/20
Privatrecht in unsicheren Zeiten
Zivilgerichtsbarkeit im Nationalsozialismus
To what degree do civil law judgments from the period of National Socialism in Austria reflect Nazi ideology? How did judges comply with the Nazi regime's racist and totalitarian legal policies? Did Nazi judges prefer to rely on a positivist application of National Socialist legislation or did they instead use an extensive interpretation of the 'general clauses' of Civil Law to promote the National Socialist ideology? The article presents the state of research with regard to these questions and points out in which ways the analysis of still extant holdings of Viennese civil law courts from 1938 to 1945 contributes to a better understanding of the possibilities and constraints of judicial 'autonomy' in Private Law jurisdiction in Austria 1938 to 1945. Historical research using the preserved documents from the Viennese Regional Court (Landgericht Wien) reveals a broad variety of methodological approaches and highlights the difficulty of associating one specific legal methodology with a National Socialist partisanship of judges.
Keywords: Civil Law Jurisdiction - Interpretation of Law - Legal Methods - Legal Theory - National Socialist Legal Policy - National Socialist Private Law
