Roland Freisler (30 October 1893 – 3 February 1945), a German Nazi jurist, judge, and politician, served as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1934 to 1942 and as President of the People's Court from 1942 to 1945. As a prominent ideologist of Nazism, he influenced the Nazification of Germany's legal system as a jurist. He attended the Wannsee Conference, the 1942 event which set the Holocaust in motion. He was appointed President of the People's Court in 1942, overseeing the prosecution of political crimes as a judge, and became known for his aggressive personality, his humiliation of defendants, and frequent use of the death penalty in sentencing. Although the death penalty was abolished with the creation of the Federal Republic in 1949, Freisler's 1941 definition of murder in German law, as opposed to the less severe crime of killing, survives in the Strafgesetzbuch § 211. Early life Roland Freisler was born on 30 October 1893 in Celle, Lower Saxony, the son of Julius Freisler (born 20 August 1862 in Klantendorf, Moravia), an engineer and teacher, and Charlotte Auguste Florentine Schwerdtfeger (30 April 1863 in Celle – 20 March 1932 in Kassel). He was baptized as a Protestant on 13 December 1893. He had a younger brother, Oswald, and another brother who was a doctor. World War I Freisler was attending law school at Kiel University upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, which interrupted his studies. He saw active service in the German Imperial Army during the war after enlisting as an officer cadet in 1914 with the Ober-Elsässisches Infanterie-Regiment Nr.167 in Kassel, and by 1915 he was a lieutenant. Whilst in the front-line with the 22nd Division, he was awarded the Iron Cross both 2nd and 1st Class for heroism in action. In October 1915, he was wounded in action on the Eastern Front and taken prisoner of war by Russian forces. While a prisoner, Freisler learned to speak Russian and developed an interest in Marxism after the Russian Revolution had commenced. The Bolshevik provisional authority which took over responsibility for Freisler's prisoner of war camp made use of him as a "Commissar" (as he was described by them in his repatriated prisoner of war paperwork in 1918) administratively organizing the camp's food supplies from 1917 to 1918. It is possible that, after the Russian prisoner of war camps were emptying in