ABSTRACT
After World War II, in 1950/60s West Germany, not only (alleged) communists were legally prosecuted but also their memory of the National Socialist years played no role in public. Focusing on proceedings and reports about trials against communists, this contribution deals with different activists who, however, all used memory for various reasons. It will analyze how communist activists tried to elucidate West German society about their anti-fascist past. But it will also show how they – with the support of the GDR – used memory as an argument for fighting West German justice and the state in general by making the Nazi past of some judges and prosecutors a subject of discussion. To prevent this kind of memory-political argumentation these jurists insisted to just deal with the law. In the beginning of the 1960s, non-communist, more liberal lawyers tried to pave the way for a change by starting to link the legal level with a memory-political one. They aimed to ensure the rights of their communist clients by trying to reform political justice. Thereby, they not only mediated between the judges and prosecutors, on the one hand, and their clients, on the other hand, but also helped to create a memory-political area for them in public.
