The Summations of the Lawyers for Both Parties in the Appellate Court (Frankfurt am Main Higher Regional Court)
“Your Honors, the plaintiff is battling an almost omnipotent industrial concern […] The plaintiff has nothing but his good and just cause and his trust in the administration of justice by the German courts.”[1]
While the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) and I.G. Farben i.L. had already established contact and begun initial negotiations regarding a settlement, the appeal proceedings were under way before the second-instance court. On March 1, 1955, the attorneys of both sides delivered their concluding arguments. What was true of the trial-court summations applies here as well: the written pleadings of Wollheim’s representatives Henry Ormond and Otto Küster have been preserved; only that of Wollheim’s third attorney, is not available in written form. The summations of the defense attorneys must be reconstructed from contemporary press reports, as Joachim Rumpf[2] has done. Following the speeches of the I.G. Farben lawyers, which lasted more than three hours, Wollheim’s attorneys, Ormond, Werner, and Küster, made their summations.
On March 15, the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court (OLG, Oberlandesgericht) issued an order to hear evidence and clarification of facts, in the wake of which Presiding Judge Müller pressed emphatically for a settlement between Wollheim and I.G. Farben.
(SP; transl. KL)