In the German legal system, a Gerichtsassessor (plural Gerichtsassessoren) was a candidate who had successfully passed the examination before the central board, and who was therefore eligible for the position of a judge or prosecutor (though most were not appointed as a judge or prosecutor). [1] They are sometimes described as assistant judges. The obsolete designation Gerichtsassessor was held by judges or federal prosecutors, whose employment status today would be "on probation". Attainment of the second state legal qualification (the so-called "Competence to the Justiceship") was always a pre-requisite. The appointment took place with the intention that the Gerichtsassessor would be employed later in his lifetime as a judge.
The Gerichtsassessor usually held this designation for one year after receiving his Certificate of Appointment, before being appointed as a judge.
The number of Gerichtsassessoren was 3,855 in 1933, and 5,696 in 1935. [1]
Hans Josef Maria Globke was a German administrative lawyer, who worked in the Prussian and Reich Ministry of the Interior in the Reich, during the Weimar Republic and the time of National Socialism and was later the Under-Secretary of State and Chief of Staff of the German Chancellery in West Germany from 28 October 1953 to 15 October 1963 under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. He is the most prominent example of the continuity of the administrative elites between Nazi Germany and the early West Germany.
The Federal Court of Justice is the highest court of civil and criminal jurisdiction in Germany. Its primary responsibility is the final appellate review of decisions by lower courts for errors of law. While, legally, a decision by the Federal Court of Justice is only binding with respect to the individual case in which it enters, de facto the court's interpretation of the law is followed by lower courts with almost no exception. Decisions handed down by the Federal Court of Justice can only be vacated by the Federal Constitutional Court for violating a provision of the German constitution, the Basic Law.
Wolfgang Walter Arnulf Abendroth was a German socialist, jurist, and political scientist. He was born in Elberfeld, now a part of Wuppertal in North Rhine-Westphalia. Abendroth was a radical social democrat and an important contributor to the constitutional foundation of post-World War II West Germany. In 1943 he was forcibly drafted into one of the 999th Division's "probation units" and while stationed in Greece he deserted to the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS).
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