THE RUDOLF REPORT

GERMAR RUDOLF · THE RUDOLF REPORTagainst the revisionist Günter Deckert had shown.Several days after the beginning of the trial, the expert witness Dr.Joachim Hoffmann was interrogated as to whether the book Grundlagenzur Zeitgeschichte was scientific. Dr. Hoffmann, for decades a historianin the Militärgeschichtliche Forschungsamt (Military HistoryResearch Department) of the German Bundeswehr in Freiburg, wrotean expert report on request of the defendant Germar Rudolf (see below).During his interrogation, the expert witness stated that terms suchas “presumed” or “supposed” did not please him, yet he did not considerthat they put the scientific merit of the book in question.The public attorney’s pleading was next. The phrases in the bookthat offended her most—“supposed annihilation camp”, “Auschwitzbludgeon”, “Holocaust religion”, “identity-forming group fantasies”,“supposed genocide”, “established Holocaust scene”, “lead ad absurdum”—althoughtaken partly from established publications, deny theNational Socialist murder of Jews and therefore qualify as incitementto racial hatred. According to the public attorney, the expert witnessDr. Hoffmann was no more competent to judge whether the book wasscientific than a judge or a state attorney is, and his expert reportshould therefore be disregarded. The publisher Grabert should be sentencedto 9 months prison on probation.On the last day of the trial, held on a Saturday(!), 582 June 15, 1996,in his pleading the defense attorney referred to the denunciations of thepublic attorney, whereby the book was allegedly a pseudoscientifichack-job of the vilest sort, saying that this sort of speech was “pseudolegalbrowbeating” without content or definition. The defense pointedto the high degree of scientific expertise that had been necessary toproduce the book and also to the fact that the expert witness had unreservedlyconfirmed the book’s scientific quality. He also pointed outthat sec. 130 para. 3 of the German Penal Code (StGB, incitement toracial hatred) was unconstitutional when it served to deliver provenscientific publications up to book-burning.The judge sentenced the publisher Grabert to pay a fine of DM30,000 ($15,000) and ordered the seizure—in effect, the burning—ofall copies of Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte as well as all materialsneeded to produce it. In the written verdict, he stated that although582 In Germany, courts of law do not hold sessions on Saturdays—with this exeption.370