You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (November 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the German article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Max Merten]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Max Merten}} to the talk page.
He was arrested during a visit to Greece in 1959, which caused a political scandal, the "Merten Affair" (Greek: Υπόθεση Μέρτεν). He was convicted in Greece and sentenced to a 25-year term as a war criminal. After a short, two-year imprisonment, political pressure by West Germany and personal intervention by Chancellor Adenauer, led to his extradition to his homeland, where he was set free.[1][2]
According to Spiliotis,[1] the handling of the Merten case was defined by both Greek and German political and economic interests, as was the question of war crimes in postwar Greek-German relations in general.
On 28 September 1960 the West German newspapers Hamburger Echo and Der Spiegel published excerpts of Merten's deposition to the German authorities, where Merten claimed that the Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis was an informer during the Nazi occupation of Greece. These statements caused a reaction by the leader of the opposition, Georgios Papandreou, and the Greek Left against Karamanlis.
Karamanlis rejected the claims as unsubstantiated and absurd. Merten's accusations against Karamanlis were never corroborated in a court of law.
Literature
Gerrit Hamann: Die Rosenburg und der Kriegsverbrecher: Der Fall Max Merten, in: Gerd J. Nettersheim/Doron Kiesel (Hrsg.): Das Bundesministerium der Justiz und die NS-Vergangenheit. Bewertungen und Perspektiven, Göttingen 2021, S. 123–152, ISBN978-3-666-35218-8, doi:10.13109/9783666352188.
Gerrit Hamann: Max Merten. Jurist und Kriegsverbrecher. Eine biografische Fallstudie zum Umgang mit NS-Tätern in der frühen Bundesrepublik, Göttingen 2022, ISBN978-3-525-35224-3, doi:10.13109/9783666352249.
References
^ abcSpiliotis, Susanne-Sophia (2001). "An Affair of Politics, Not Justice: The Merten Trial (1957–1959) and Greek-German Relations". In Mazower, Mark (ed.). After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation, and State in Greece, 1943-1960. NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 293--302. ISBN9781400884438.
