Background
Hans Globke was born in Düsseldorf on 10 September 1898.
Hans Globke was born in Düsseldorf on 10 September 1898.
A loyal servant of the Weimar Republic, Globke became administrative councillor to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior in 1929.
He was also the author of the law concerning the dissolution of the Prussian State Council in 10 July 1933 and of further legislation which ‘co-ordinated' all Prussian parliamentary bodies. The exercise of civil rights in Nazi Germany was henceforth to be founded on völkisch concepts of the natural inequality and the ‘dissimilarity of races, peoples and human beings’. Since all political rights depended on membership of the Volk, the commentary made it clear that ‘all persons of alien blood - hence especially Jews - are automatically excluded from attaining Reich citizenship' and therefore from holding any public office. Globke was also the initiator of the idea of compelling all German Jews to adopt the middle names of Israel and Sarah.
During the war, Globke was further involved in the elaboration of laws that provided a juridical basis for the persecution of Jews and guidelines for the ‘Germanization' of conquered peoples in the occupied territories. His past record did not prevent Globke from prospering in the post-war Federal Republic, where he was appointed State Secretary of the Chancellery and Chief of its Personnel Division in 1953, a position he held for the next ten years. His earlier involvement in the Third Reich made him a prime target of East German propaganda - the communist regime had tried him in absentia and given him a life sentence - and on several occasions he offered to resign. He was, however, vigorously defended by the Federal Chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer, who, though himself an impeccable anti-Nazi, chose to believe Globke’s claim that he tried to mitigate the legal measures demanded by Hitler.
After his retirement from public life in 1963, Globke moved to Switzerland. He died in Bad Godesberg on 13 February 1973 at the age of seventy-five.
Though never a member of the NSDAP, Globke applied his legal skills to consolidating the Nazi hold on power by helping to formulate the emergency legislation that gave Hitler unlimited dictatorial powers.