Arnold Buchthal

Arnold Buchthal, probably around 1930

Arnold Buchthal (born November 28, 1900 in Dortmund ; died August 5, 1965 in Pesaro , Italy ) was a German public prosecutor.

Life

Arnold Buchthal was the son of Rosa and Felix Buchthal. Rosa Buchthal was the first woman on the Dortmund city council, and her father ran a coffee roastery with a few branches in the city. grew up in the new building built by his parents at Bornstrasse 19, where the roastery was also located. He passed the Abitur in 1918 at the municipal high school. From June 21, 1918 to February 3, 1919 he completed his military service in Dortmund. As part of his law studies , he came to the Langendreer District Court as a trainee lawyer on July 28, 1922 , to the Dortmund Regional Court on January 28, 1923, to the public prosecutor's office there at the end of 1923, to the Blumenthal notary's office in Dortmund in February 1924, which gave him an award on August 23 Issued a certificate. On September 1, 1924, Buchthal returned to the Dortmund District Court. On March 28, 1925, he continued the "preparatory service" at the Hamm Higher Regional Court and Gelsenkirchen District Court and after the "major state examination" on December 1, 1925 (grade good), he became a judge. In 1926 he changed positions several times, including as assistant judge at the Buer regional court and until 1927 in Bochum. During this period he was absent twice for several weeks due to illness. The employment in Bochum ended after several extensions in 1928. He later became a district and district judge. On February 26, 1929, the Dortmund regional court president spoke to the higher regional court president in Hamm in favor of preferring Buchthal because of his "extraordinary ability". As a district and regional judge in Dortmund from August 1929, he received a basic annual salary of 4400 Reichsmarks. He spoke five languages.

When the National Socialists came to power in January 1933, all Jewish citizens were dismissed from civil servant positions within a few months. So did Buchthal, the son of Jewish parents, “full Jew” in Nazi jargon. He was given compulsory leave and on July 7, 1933, he was dismissed by the Prussian Ministry of Justice for November. On July 10th reached Buchthal, which was then in Landgrafenstr. 83 lived, a registered letter from the OLG Hamm that the transfer to retirement would take place immediately and his name would be deleted from the register of judicial officers. He and his wife Grete could barely pay for the childbirth costs (332 Reichsmarks) for the second daughter in September 1933. The family emigrated to Austria at the end of 1933. After Austria's annexation to the German Reich in 1938, the survival of Jews there became problematic too. In order to save their daughters' lives, their parents sent them from Vienna to England on a Kindertransport in 1939 . Renate, born in 1929, emigrated to Australia much later, Vera became one of the most successful entrepreneurs in England in 1962 and has been called Dame Stephanie since 1980 .

Buchtal and his wife Grete (née Schlick), born in Krems , Austria , separated. The main reason for the falling out was Grete's accusation that, as a non-Jewish woman, she had to suffer from his previous stress. Buchtal emigrated to Switzerland and a little later to England. Like all male adults who fled Nazi Germany, Buchthal was considered an " enemy alien ". The British deported him along with around 2,000 Jewish refugees and 400 German and Italian prisoners of war to Australia in 1940, where they were taken to the prison camp in Hay, New South Wales. Only a debate in the British Parliament ensured that the survivors came back to England. From 1941 Buchthal belonged to a relief team of the British troops.

After the Second World War , Buchthal was called in as a translator for the Nuremberg war crimes trials . He had to explain words such as “Polish subhumanity” to the US judges.

Buchthal moved to Offenbach and entered the civil service. Until October 1957 he was a senior public prosecutor at the Frankfurt Regional Court. In this function he was involved in the pending proceedings against the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann and his deputy Hermann Krumey . In this matter, Buchthal worked with his colleague Fritz Bauer , who as Hessian attorney general was preparing the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt . Buchthal also received criticism: As a public prosecutor, he rashly took action against an election advertisement for the 1957 federal election that was printed in various newspapers and was transferred to Darmstadt as Senate President at the Higher Regional Court. Buchthal died in Italy in 1965.

Web links

Commons : Arnold Buchthal  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The archives of the OLG Hamm contain essential files on Buchthal. The Dortmund City Archives provide photocopies of some of these documents. The legal biography can be found in file 16843 of the State Archives NRW in Münster
2. ↑ The OLG Hamm as the highest authority issued the trainee lawyer Buchthal the salary as a "maintenance allowance". The monthly payments show the inflation: December 1922 9,923 marks, January 1923 22,724 marks, February 1923 24,143 marks, a few days later increased to 30,335 marks, in March 1923 retroactive to February 70,525 marks, then 86,295 marks, in June 1923 353,675 Mark, July 757,392 Nark, July 1,390,390 marks, August 7,231,230 marks, second half of August 53,002,950 marks, September 1,106,122,017 marks.
3. ↑ A certificate from the internal clinic of the municipal hospitals of March 29, 1927 speaks of a serious illness with fever, on April 28, 1927 Buchthal asks for continued salary payment in order to cover "the extremely high costs I incurred through hospital treatment".
4. ↑ Askwith, Richard .: Let it go: the entrepreneur turned ardent philanthropist . Andrews, Luton 2012, ISBN 978-1-78234-282-3 .
5. ↑ In Buchthal's personal file of the OLG Hamm, Grete Schlick is named as the “daughter of chief engineer Richard Schlick and his wife Auguste, geb. Lang "called.
6. ↑ His address in Offenbach was Friedrichsring 2.
7. ↑ Fred G. Bär: Meusch, Matthias, From the dictatorship to democracy. Fritz Bauer and the processing of Nazi crimes in Hesse (1956–1968) . In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History. German Department . tape 120 , no. 1 , 2003, ISSN  0323-4045 , p. 887-889 , doi : 10.1515 / zrgga.2003.120.1.887 ( degruyter.com [accessed on December 31, 2018]). Meusch, Matthias, From dictatorship to democracy. Fritz Bauer and the processing of Nazi crimes in Hesse (1956–1968) ( Memento of the original from January 1, 2019 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ The advertisement showed a Trojan horse, pulled by the SPD and FDP, in whose belly agents of the socialist East were hiding. See, among others, the time