Arnold Brecht

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Arnold Brecht

Arnold Brecht (born January 26, 1884 in Lübeck , † September 11, 1977 in Eutin ) was a German-American lawyer and political scientist . He was a leading official in the Weimar Republic . He was one of the few top democratically minded officials who actively advocated the preservation of the Weimar Republic.

Life

Brecht's parents were Walther Brecht , director of the Lübeck-Büchener railway and member of the Lübeck citizenship, and his wife Regina Erdmuthe Marie (born June 9, 1856 in Weißenfels, † March 8, 1928 in Berlin), a daughter of Theodor Weishaupt . He had two sisters, including Editha (1878–1957), who married the administrative lawyer Martin Richter , and two brothers, including Gustav Brecht , who worked in the lignite industry.

After graduating from high school at the Katharineum in Lübeck at Easter 1902, Brecht began to study law at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität . He became a member of AMV Makaria Bonn , a musical student association in the Sondershäuser Association . He moved to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin , the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and the Universität Leipzig . In 1906 he was promoted to Dr. iur. PhD. In the Free State of Prussia he was a Reichsbeamter from 1918–1933 and - after his politically motivated dismissal from the Reichsdienst - as Ministerialdirektor and "full-time deputy member" voting leader of the votes of the Prussian State Ministry in the Reichsrat .

In the constitutional lawsuit Prussia versus Reich in 1932, Brecht represented the Braun III cabinet before the State Court of Justice for the German Reich . After the decision of the State Court of Justice confirmed the Braun / Severing government's right to continue to represent Prussia in the Reichsrat, Brecht resumed voting for the Prussian State Ministry. In this function he responded to Adolf Hitler's inaugural address in the Reichsrat on February 2, 1933. He urged Hitler to respect law and order. After the speech, Hitler left the meeting - obviously indignant. The process led to an angry comment from the Nazi party organ Völkischer Beobachter . A few days later he was released from civil service. The "sovereign government" Braun / Severing , whose interests Brecht had to represent in the Reichsrat, could not prevent this, because the personnel sovereignty due to the "Prussian strike" was exercised by the "commissariat government" set up by the Reich government. His sister Gertrud was married to Ossip Schnirlin . She committed suicide with him in the summer of 1939. Arnold Brecht emigrated to the United States, where he taught at the New School for Social Research in New York .

Before the end of the Second World War he was a sought-after advisor on American foreign policy and, in the early 1950s, co-founder of political science in Germany. Brecht advised on the drafting of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany . In 1953 he was retrospectively retired State Secretary. D. appointed. In 1959 he received the Great Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany . This honor was bestowed on him with Else Staudinger, her husband Hans Staudinger and Hans Simons ; all three were exiles in New York.

A memorial plaque for him was unveiled on January 18, 2016 at his last parents' house at Moislinger Allee 22 in Lübeck.

  • Parental home in Lübeck

  • Plaque

Arnold Brecht as namesake

What he called the law of the progressive parallelism of expenditure and population massing , now known as Brecht's law, states that larger municipalities receive a disproportionately large amount of money in relation to the population in financial equalization. This means that the higher the population density, the higher the public per capita expenditure. The law is therefore closely related to the concept of the refined population according to the city-state privilege .

Fonts

  • System of contractual liability (impossibility of performance, positive breach of contract and default) (= Jhering's year books for the dogmatics of civil law. Volume 53). 1908, p. 213 ff.
  • In memory of Walther Rathenau. Celebration of the Walther Rathenau Foundation for the 60th birthday on September 29, 1927 / Gerhart Hauptmann; Wilhelm Marx; Arnold Brecht; Edwin Redslob. Dresden 1928.
  • International comparison of public spending. Leipzig 1932.
  • Prussia versus Reich before the State Court. Shorthand report of the negotiations before the State Court in Leipzig from October 10th to 14th and October 17th, 1932. Dietz, 1933. With a foreword by Arnold Brecht.
  • Prelude to Silence. The End of the German Republic. New York 1944.
  • Federalism and Regionalism in Germany. The Division of Prussia. Oxford University Press, New York 1945.
  • Silence foreplay. The end of the German republic. Publishing house for history and politics, Vienna 1948.
  • Federalism, regionalism and the division of Prussia. Bonn 1949.
  • Walther Rathenau and the German people. Munich 1950.
  • The dissolution of the Weimar Republic and political science. In: Journal of Politics. NF, vol. 2, issue 4, December 1955, p. 291ff.
  • Political Theory, The Foundations of Twentieth-Century Political Thought. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1959.
    • Political theory. The basics of political thought in the 20th century. German edition revised and supplemented in places, translated by Irmgard Kutscher and the author. Mohr, Tübingen 1961.
    • 2., through Edition: Political Theory . Mohr, Tuebingen 1976.
  • At close range. Memoirs 1884–1927. Memoirs, Volume I, Stuttgart 1966.
  • With the power of the spirit: Memoirs of life 1927–1967. Memoirs, Volume II, Stuttgart 1967.
  • Lyrical legacy. Reichert, Kornwestheim 1974.
  • Can Democracy Survive? The challenges of the future and the forms of government of the present. Stuttgart 1978.

literature

  • Hannah Bethke: Arnold Brecht's political thinking. A Transatlantic History of Ideas in the 20th Century (Contributions to Political Science, Volume 178). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-13998-9 .
  • Volker Depkat : Turns of Life and Turning Times. German politicians and the experiences of the 20th century. Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57970-3 ( Order systems. Studies on the history of ideas in modern times. Volume 18).
  • Hannah Bethke: Arnold Brecht. In: Rüdiger Voigt, Ulrich Weiß (Hrsg.): Handbuch Staatsdenker. Steiner, Stuttgart 2010, pp. 64-66.
  • Morris D. Forkorsch (Ed.): The Political Philosophy of Arnold Brecht. Essays, presented to Arnold Brecht by His Former and Present Students to Commemorate the Completion of Twenty Years of Devoted Service at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. Exposition Press, New York 1954.
  • Claus-Dieter Krohn : Science in Exile. German social and economic scientists in the USA and the New School for Social Research. Frankfurt / New York 1987, ISBN 3-593-33820-3 , pp. 78-79, 84, 106-107, 139, 141, 164-165, 187, 197, 202-204, 207-210.
  • Claus-Dieter Krohn, Corinna R. Unger (Eds.): Arnold Brecht 1884–1977. Democratic official and political scientist in Berlin and New York. Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-515-08883-1 ( Transatlantic Historical Studies of the GHI Washington. Volume 27).
  • Joachim Lilla : The Reichsrat - Representation of the German states in the legislation and administration of the Reich 1919–1934. Droste, 2006, ISBN 978-3-7700-5279-0 .
  • Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 , p. 353.
  • Michael Ruck : Patriotic Institutionalism and Bureaucratic Modernization. Arnold Brecht as an administrative reformer in the Weimar Republic. In: Eberhard Laux, Karl Teppe (ed.): The modern state and its administration. Contributions to the history of development since 1700. Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-515-07168-7 , pp. 177–202 ( Nassau discussions of the Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gesellschaft. Volume 5).
  • Michael Ruck: Arnold Brecht and the constitutional development in West Germany. In: Claus-Dieter Krohn, Martin Schumacher (Ed.): Exile and new order. The influence of emigrants on constitutional development in post-war Germany. Düsseldorf 2000, ISBN 3-7700-5230-7 , pp. 207-229.
  • Michael Ruck: Against the “imperfect alternativeism”. Arnold Brecht's recommendations on Germany and détente policy after 1945. In: Claus-Dieter Krohn, Corinna R. Unger (Ed.): Arnold Brecht, 1884-1977. Democratic official and political scientist in Berlin and New York. Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-515-08883-1 , pp. 151-195 ( Transatlantic Historical Studies of the GHI Washington. Volume 27).
  • Michael Ruck: German-American Perspectives. The political intellectual Arnold Brecht as a transatlantic mediator in the Cold War. In: Alexander Gallus, Axel Schildt (Ed.): Looking back into the future. Political public and intellectual positions around 1950 and around 1930. Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8353-0871-8 .
  • Ernst C. Stiefel , Frank Mecklenburg : German lawyers in American exile (1933–1950). Tübingen 1991, ISBN 3-16-145688-2 , pp. 87-88.
  • Corinna R. Unger: From civil service law to political culture. Brecht's proposals for the reform of the civil service in the Federal Republic. In: Critical Justice. 36, 2003, ISSN  0023-4834 , pp. 82-94.
  • Klaus D. Weber : Brecht, Arnold. In: Manfred Asendorf, Rolf von Bockel (eds.): Democratic ways. German résumés from five centuries. Stuttgart / Weimar 1997, ISBN 3-476-01244-1 , pp. 95-97.
  • Jürgen Wirtz : Brecht's law. Origin and evidence with special consideration of the agglomeration process in the Federal Republic of Germany. Dissertation. Friborg (Switzerland) 1975.

Web links

Commons : Arnold Brecht  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karsten Blöcker: Eighty years ago: Arnold Brecht instructs Hitler. In: Lübeckische Blätter 178 (2013), p. 33.
  2. ↑ Hedwig Seebacher: Brecht, Walther . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck , Vol. 7. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1985, p. 32.
  3. ^ Hermann Genzken: The Abitur graduates of the Katharineum in Lübeck (grammar school and secondary school) from Easter 1807 to 1907. Borchers, Lübeck 1907. (Supplement to the school program 1907) ( digitized version , University and State Library Düsseldorf ), No. 1164.
  4. ↑ Harald Lönnecker : "... to hold up the core of this whole being and ... to love". Theodor Litt and the student connections . In: Dieter Schulz, Heinz-Werner Wollersheim (ed.): Theodor-Litt-Jahrbuch , Vol. 4 (2005), pp. 189–263.
  5. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book. Membership directory of all old men. As of October 1, 1937. Hanover 1937, p. 26.
  6. ^ A b Arnold Brecht in the Göttingen City Archives
  7. ↑ Dissertation: On the sale of someone else's thing .
  8. ↑ a b press release from the city of Lübeck
  9. ↑ Judgment of October 25, 1932 - StGH 15, 16, 17 u. 19/32 - RGZ 138, appendix p. 1.
  10. ↑ Heiko Holste: Between Reich Reform and "Preussian Strike". Ministerial official in the service of the Republic . In: Claus-Dieter Krohn, Corinna R. Unger (eds.): Arnold Brecht 1884–1977. Democratic official and political scientist in Berlin and New York. Stuttgart 2006, pp. 55-82, here pp. 79-80.
  11. ↑ Claus-Dieter Krohn, Corinna R. Unger (ed.): Arnold Brecht, 1884–1977: democratic official and political scientist in Berlin and New York (2006).
  12. ↑ Theodor Heuss honored these emigrants on the occasion of his 75th birthday. See Wolfram Werner: Emigrants in the Parliamentary Council. In: Claus-Dieter Krohn, Martin Schumacher (Ed.): Exile and new order. Contributions to constitutional developments in Germany after 1945 (= documents and texts. Ed. By the Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties in cooperation with the Herbert and Elsbeth Weichmann Foundation. Volume 6). Pp. 161–174, here p. 173 f.
personal data
SURNAME Brecht, Arnold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American lawyer and political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH September 11, 1977
Place of death Eutin