Lex van der Lubbe, 29 March 1933 - a death penalty made retroactive by four weeks
event
The man arrested at the burning parliament could not be executed under the law as it stood when the fire happened. So the law was changed and backdated.
Who they are
The Hitler cabinet; Marinus van der Lubbe as the intended defendant.
What they do
On 29 March 1933 a statute applied the death-penalty clause of the February emergency decree to acts committed in the period between 31 January and 28 February 1933 — and allowed the government to order execution by hanging instead of the traditional beheading.
How it works
The statute text was read for this page. The dates are the finding. A penalty created on 28 February was reached backwards to cover a window that opens on 31 January — the day after Hitler took office. It is not written around one fire. It is written around the government's first month.
Why it matters
This is the middle link in a chain of three. Eight days before it, a clause made the exclusion of the Communist members legal after the vote that needed them gone. Fifteen months after it, a one-sentence law declared three days of political murders lawful after they were carried out. The same move, three times, in sixteen months: do the thing, then write the permission.
The engine's record — word for word
[Report #202] **In plain terms:** the man arrested at the Reichstag could not be executed under the law as it stood when the fire happened, so the law was changed and backdated.
THE STATUTE, read this pass in the Wikisource text: Gesetz ueber Verhaengung und Vollzug der Todesstrafe, dated Berlin 29 March 1933, promulgated 31 March, Reichsgesetzblatt 1933 I Nr. 28 S. 151. Section 1 applies paragraph 5 of the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 to acts committed, verbatim, 'in der Zeit zwischen dem 31. Januar und dem 28. Februar 1933' - in the period between 31 January and 28 February 1933. Section 2 permits the government responsible for carrying out a death sentence to order execution by hanging, displacing the traditional method.
WHAT THAT MEANS AS A MECHANISM: a penalty created on 28 February was applied backwards to cover a window opening on 31 January - the day after the chancellorship was taken. The window is the finding. It is not drafted around one fire; it is drafted around the government's first month.
WHERE IT SITS IN THE CHAIN. This is the second of three retroactive-legalisation instruments now held in canon within sixteen months: section 10 of the Gleichschaltung law of 31 March 1933 validating the Enabling Act's own quorum after the fact; this statute, backdating a capital penalty by four weeks; and the Staatsnotwehr law of 3 July 1934, which canon already holds, declaring the purge killings of 30 June to 2 July lawful after they were carried out. Canon's existing reading of the third - 'the state performs the killings, then authors the statute exempting itself from its own penal code' - is the same move in all three. Whether that chain warrants its own concept, distinct from Concept #146's carve-out-in-advance, is a new-noun decision left to the engine-maker and recorded as open in this ripple's scorecard row.
HELD OPEN: the trial and acquittal of the co-defendants Torgler and Dimitrov, and the creation of the Volksgerichtshof said to have followed, arrived [PRIOR] in the research pass and are not minted. Held as legal fact; name no holder.
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