Two Companions Also Sentenced; Official ews Agency Statement Stresses Leniency Berlin, Jan. 11.
The German writer, Dr. Ernst Niekiscb, a former Communist, whose trial on a charge of high treason opened a week aco, has been found guilty and sentenced to penal servitude for life. He has been under alleging that Niekisch had planned attempts against leading figures of the Reich and that, therefore, he would be condemned to death"—
Reuter, arrest since 1936.
Niekisch was declared guilty of "preparing high treason and con-traveling the law forbidding the for-motion of new parties."
Dr. Josef Drexel, tried on the same charges as Niekisch, was sentenced to 3% years of hard labour, while a third accused, Karl Troeger, was sentenced to a year and nine months imprisonment on the second charge.
Drexel's sentence was reduced and Troeger's was cancelled by the year and nine months which they had already spent in prison, while awaiting trial.
The official German News Agency stated today that "the judgment has put an end to the suppositions made in various foreign newspapers, which wanted to exaggerate, in a sensational manner, the performance of this case,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.