Alfred Oppler

Alfred Christian Oppler ( Japanese オ ペ ラ ー, AC ) (born February 19, 1893 in Alsace-Lorraine ; died April 24, 1982 in the USA ) was a lawyer and, after 1945, legal advisor on the formulation of the new Japanese constitution.

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1893 to 1939 - Germany

Alfred Christian Oppler was born the son of Jewish converts to Christianity and was raised Protestant. He attended a grammar school and then studied law at the universities of Munich, Freiburg, Berlin and Strasbourg. He served in the army from 1914 to 1918, experienced fighting in Ypres and Verdun and rose to the rank of lieutenant. While on vacation in 1915, he passed the first of two exams required for admission to the German Bar.

After the end of the First World War, Alsace-Lorraine became French territory. The family moved to Berlin, where Oppler passed the second examination required for admission to the bar and worked as a lawyer for a short time. From 1922 he was a judicial officer until he was transferred to the Ministry of Finance in 1923, where he acted for the next four years as legal advisor to the officials who were tasked with mediating a financial agreement between the Reich government and the abdicated Hohenzollern family . Between 1927 and 1930, Oppler worked as a research assistant at the Prussian Higher Administrative Court. Then he was a senior councilor of the provincial government in Potsdam for a year. In 1931 he was appointed assessor at the Supreme Administrative Court. At the time of his appointment, he was 38 years old and the youngest to ever hold the position. A year later he became vice president of the service penal court.

After Adolf Hitler came to power , Oppler got into trouble. First he was downgraded to a provincial position in Cologne in 1933, then in 1935 he was defined as a Jew under the Nuremberg Laws and excluded from the public service. After the Reichspogromnacht , he and his wife decided to emigrate to the United States.

1939 to 1982 - USA and Japan

Oppler, whose birth in Alsace-Lorraine enabled him to come to the United States within the framework of the French immigration quota, was able to leave in March 1939 and initially settled with relatives. His wife and daughter followed a few months later. In the next few years he got by with various teaching activities.

In early 1945, Oppler and his wife became citizens of the United States. Later that year, Alfred Oppler was asked to join the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). When he arrived in Tokyo in early 1946, he initially played a minor role in drafting the new Japanese constitution. In early 1947 he was then appointed head of the newly formed department for courts and law, which was transferred to the legal department of the SCAP on June 1, 1948. In this capacity, he maintained links with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Tanaka Kōtarō , and other prominent Japanese lawyers, and played a key role in reforming the Japanese judicial system and civil law codes. As a passionate civil rights activist, he also helped set up the "Japan Civil Liberties Union", the "Jiyū Jinken Kyōkai" (自由 人 権 協会).

The SCAP was dissolved in April 1952 when the Allied Powers' peace treaty with Japan came into force, but Oppler remained with the G-5 unit (later J-5) within the Far East Command (FEC). He was the head of the Department of Politics and Law in the Department of Government Affairs. The FEC was dissolved in 1957, Oppler switched to the newly created "United States Forces Japan" (USFJ) and acted as their liaison officer. According to his memoirs, he spent much of his time with the FEC and the USFJ drafting reports that analyzed political developments in Japan, the Ryūkyū Islands, and Korea.

Oppler returned to the United States in 1959, but continued to be interested in Japanese law, politics, and society. He has attended numerous academic conferences devoted to the study of Asian law. He wrote several articles on the Japanese legal system and wrote a treatise on legal reform in occupied Japan in the 1970s: "Legal Reform in Occupied Japan: A Participant Looks Back". He also advocated the defense of civil liberties and supported numerous liberal political causes, including the abolition of the death penalty and legalized abortion. He spoke repeatedly about relations between Japan and the United States and made his last public address a week before his death.

literature

• S. Noma (Ed.): Oppler, Alfred Christian . In: Japan. An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Kodansha, 1993, ISBN 4-06-205938-X , p. 1157.

Web links

• Oppler CV, English (German-Jewish Archive, University at Albany, The State University of New York )