Alfred Baum (lawyer)

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Alfred Baum (born November 9, 1881 in Tarnowitz , Upper Silesia , † June 15, 1967 in Zurich ) was a German lawyer who worked in particular for the international record industry.

Life

Baum studied law at the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms University in Breslau and passed the first state examination in 1906.

After passing the second state examination, he became a lawyer and worked as a Syndicus a. a. for Deutsche Grammophon and Polydor . After the seizure of power , he was persecuted because he was of Jewish descent. An anti-Semitic attack on April 10, 1933 is guaranteed. The conductor and president of the Prussian Academy of the Arts Max von Schillings denounced him in a letter to the Prussian Minister of Justice as a "Jew" in order to obtain his dismissal as a lawyer. Because the National Socialists had just decided on April 7th to withdraw the legal profession from Jews .

A short time later, Baum had to flee to Switzerland from the Nazi regime. There he took up a position at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry , for which he conducted numerous test cases for the performance rights to records in various countries in the years to come. The reason was that broadcast companies in different countries had broadcast recordings by artists without respecting the copyright of the artists and the companies. The successful completion of these processes in these countries meant that the record producers acquired a right to royalties against the broadcasters if they used their phonograms in their programs. Since radio in Germany was state-owned, Baum had to file a lawsuit against Nazi Germany. Such a copyright claim was controversial in German jurisprudence, because Nazi jurisprudence was of the opinion that when pursuing the claim of the author of a work of art, “natural boundaries must be observed”, which the artist drawn through his “ideal connection with the national community “Would. Baum's eventual success before the Reichsgericht led to severe anti-Semitic attacks against him in the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps on November 16, 1936. After pointing out the 'unfortunate' situation that due to copyright law composers or musicians were sending internationally organized record companies via music reserves that had been made by "German workers with German managers in German factories", Alfred Baum was approached, who was not tangible because he lived in Switzerland:

“The Jew Baum plays a very big role ... Our national cultural interests are put into the corner ... while the interests of the internationally organized record companies, with their Jew Baum at the top, are almost raised to state interests by a German court become."

In addition to his work for the record industry, Baum was a specialist author. He wrote many publications on international copyright law . He has published articles in GRUR , UFITA and Intellectual Property on the rights of phonogram manufacturers . He understood the regulations of the Bern Convention for the Protection of Works of Literature and Art . After the time of National Socialism , he earned services in reforming the copyright law in Germany. He died at the age of 85.

According to Michael Blum, Baum, who married in Paris in May 1945, had been legal advisor to the French military administration in Baden-Baden since July 1945.

Honors

Works (selection)

  • About "corporate characters" , GRUR 1928, 852 ff.
  • Bern Convention and State Laws [I] , GRUR 1928, 684 ff.
  • Bern Convention and State Laws [II] , GRUR 1929, 186 ff.
  • About "corporate logos" and the "independence of the right to the brand" , GRUR 1929, 275 ff.
  • The revised Bern Convention and the more favorable state laws , UFITA 3 (1930), 400 ff.
  • Radio and record , GRUR 1932, 259 ff.
  • Bern Convention, State Law and International Private Law , GRUR 1932, 921 ff., 1012 ff.
  • The judgments in the lawsuits between broadcasting and the record industry and their criticism , Intellectual Property 3 (1937/1938), 239 ff.
  • Protection of Records, Protection of Artists, and Copyright , Copyright 5 (1939/1940), 1 ff.
  • The Brussels Conference on the Revision of the Revised Berne Convention , GRUR 1949, 1 ff.
  • The relationship of § 22a LUG to Art. 13 RBÜ (Rome version) , GRUR 1952, 511 ff.

literature

  • Simon Apel: Alfred Baum (1881-1967) . In: Simon Apel, Louis Pahlow, Matthias Wießner (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of intellectual property . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2017, pp. 29–31
  • Günther Gentz: Alfred Baum , UFITA 50 (1967), pp. 4–6 [obituary]
  • Horst Göppinger : Jewish lawyers in the “Third Reich”. Disenfranchisement and persecution , 2nd edition, Munich 1990, p. 268
  • Heinz Kleine: Alfred Baum , GRUR 1967, p. 389
  • HH from Rauscher on Weeg: Alfred Baum. A life for international copyright law , UFITA 41, 1964, 76 ff.
  • Curt Riess : Knaurs world history of the record . Droemersche Verlagsanstalt, Zurich 1966, p. 276 ff.
Fiction

Individual evidence

  1. Simon Apel: Das Reichsgericht, copyright and the party program of the NSDAP (PDF; 65 kB), ZJS 2010, p. 141 ff.
  2. RGZ 153, 1 ff.
  3. ^ Curt Riess: Knaurs world history of the record . Droemersche Verlagsanstalt, Zurich 1966, p. 276 ff.
  4. a b Information from the Office of the Federal President
  5. ^ Report in GRUR 1966, 666, 667.