Franz Gürtner

Germany state institutions Fascists and Nazis Conservatism and Christian democracy Counter-revolutionary forces Germany Germany 1881–1941 ○ Died in office

Hitler's justice minister who backed the Reichstag Fire Decree and legalised the Night of the Long Knives after the fact

Bavarian Minister of Justice from 1922 to 1932 and a member of the anti-Weimar German National People's Party, he indulged Hitler at the 1924 Beer Hall Putsch trial and then obtained his early release and the re-legalisation of the Nazi Party. Reich Minister of Justice from June 1932, he stayed on under Hitler, fully supported the Reichstag Fire Decree, wrote the law that retroactively legalised the Night of the Long Knives, and nationalised the state judiciaries, being credited with coining the term Gleichschaltung. He extended Paragraph 175 in 1935 and became a Nazi Party member in 1937. He dismissed a judge who protested that the T4 killings were illegal, and died in office in 1941.

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