Arthur Lenhoff

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Arthur Lenhoff (born on October 25, 1885 in Teplitz , Austria-Hungary as Arthur Löwy ; died on June 20, 1965 in New York City ) was an Austro-American lawyer , university professor and constitutional judge . Lenhoff was an associate professor for Austrian civil law at the University of Vienna from 1927 to 1938 , a member of the Austrian Constitutional Court from 1930 to 1933, and from 1939 an emigrant professor at the US University at Buffalo . He is considered to be one of the first lawyers of his time to understand and teach labor law as an independent field of law.

Career

Arthur Lenhoff was born as Arthur Löwy on October 25, 1885 in the Bohemian city ​​of Teplitz and graduated from school there. In 1903 he passed his school leaving examination and subsequently began studying law at the University of Vienna . Five years later, in 1908, received his doctorate Lenhoff up there to the doctor of law and then turned to his training as a lawyer to. In 1912 he passed the bar exam and was added to the bar list in Vienna in 1915. In the fall of 1915 Lenhoff applied to the Vienna professors' college for admission to the habilitation . As a result, he submitted his habilitation thesis on the subject of “The right of permanent employees. A Treatise on the employment contract with timing "before and completed in July 1916, the colloquium and a sample lecture on" The heirless estate ". The venia legendi was finally awarded to him for Austrian civil law.

In December 1916, Arthur Lenhoff asked for a transfer from the court of the Innsbruck Military Command, where he had meanwhile been active due to the war, to a Viennese military court in order to be able to give his lectures. In 1927 he was appointed associate professor, where he concentrated in research and teaching in particular on Austrian labor law , which was not regarded as an independent field of law until then . After the so-called “depoliticization” of the Constitutional Court in 1930, Arthur Lenhoff was proposed by the Federal Council as a member of the Constitutional Court. He remained a member of the Constitutional Court until it was "eliminated" by the government in 1933. During the period of the authoritarian corporate state , Lenhoff worked several times as a lawyer for criminally accused socialists, as well as in government-related commissions.

When Austria was annexed to the National Socialist German Reich in March 1938 , Arthur Lenhoff happened to be on a lecture tour in Switzerland. As a result, he did not return to Austria, where, as a formerly exposed Jewish member of the Constitutional Court, he was threatened with persecution by the National Socialists. Instead, he first tried to emigrate to Great Britain with his family and, after the failure of this project, made his way to the United States. Once there, Felix Frankfurter , whose parents were also Jewish emigrants from Austria-Hungary , helped him to gain a foothold at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo , New York State . On April 8, 1938, he was relieved of his position as associate professor in Vienna and on April 22, 1938, the National Socialists revoked his license to teach at the University of Vienna in his absence.

In the spring of 1939, Lenhoff was able to study American common law and hold several smaller seminars on labor law thanks to a special employment relationship at the university there . In 1943 he received a three-year contract, which finally resulted in a permanent contract and in 1955 in a professorship as "Distinguished Professor of Law" at the Law School of the University at Buffalo. Two years later, in 1945, he was also inducted into the New York Bar Association. After the Second World War, Arthur Lenhoff developed a lively publication activity in both English and German on labor law issues, which he continued until his death in 1965.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Zavadil: The elimination of the Constitutional Court in 1933 . Vienna 1997 (diploma thesis in the humanities at the University of Vienna).
  2. ^ Arthur Lenhoff in the memorial book for the victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna in 1938.
  3. ^ Rudolf B. Schlesinger : Arthur Lenhoff (1885-1965) . In: Rabel's Journal for Foreign and International Private Law . tape 30 , 1966, pp. 202 .
personal data
SURNAME Lenhoff, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Löwy, Arthur (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer, university professor and constitutional judge
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Teplice
DATE OF DEATH June 20, 1965
Place of death New York City