On Saturday afternoon, 22 April 1933, members of the lawyers' chamber for the Court of Appeal district of Celle convened at 3:00 p.m. in the city of Hannover for a special meeting to elect a new executive board. This extraordinary and irregular assembly met at the order of the Prussian Ministry of Justice in Berlin, controlled since 30 January by the National Socialist Party. On 3 April the sitting executive board had refused the ministry's demand to resign en masse, and it had further declined to accept the tendered resignation of its single Jewish member, “in consideration of [his] long years of meritorious service.” As a result, the ministry of justice had deposed the executive board and appointed a local National Socialist lawyer, Focko Meiborg, as “Commissar” to run the lawyers' chamber until the 22 April meeting could be held to choose a new board that would presumably be more willing to “take its part in the fulfillment of the great tasks that face the administration of justice in the new state.”

At the express order of the justice minister, the assembly was open to the public, and in the intimidating presence of a large number of SA brownshirts who lined the back of the room where the meeting was held, the members of the lawyers' chamber elected a National Socialist-dominated slate, chaired by Meiborg.