Botho Laserstein

Botho Laserstein (born July 31, 1901 in Chemnitz , † March 9, 1955 in Düsseldorf ) was a German judge and publicist.

Life

Laserstein, son of a Jewish businessman, grew up in Berlin , where he studied law and political science after graduating from high school . After completing his studies , he received his doctorate from the University of Halle in 1925 and then settled as a lawyer in Berlin. He wrote for the “ Weltbühne ” and wrote numerous time-critical writings. Because of his "non-Aryan descent" he lost his license to practice law in May 1933. He emigrated to Czechoslovakia , in 1934 to France , where he made his way as a German teacher. In 1936 his German citizenship and his doctoral degree were revoked. In 1939 he converted to Catholicism and hid in a monastery after the invasion of the Wehrmacht . From 1940 to 1951 he worked as a high school professor at Catholic boarding schools, most recently in Dijon . His entire family - parents, brother, wife and daughter - were murdered in the Riga-Kaiserwald and Auschwitz concentration camps .

After the end of the war, Laserstein returned to Germany in 1951. He got his appointment in the judicial service in North Rhine-Westphalia and initially worked as a public prosecutor in Düsseldorf . While the brisk and entertainingly written guides he wrote, in which, for example, he gave the accused advice on their preliminary investigation, were unconventional for a member of the judiciary, he was particularly against the reintroduction of the death penalty and for a reform of the homosexual criminal law ( Section 175 ) Exposed to hostility. After critical remarks about the public prosecutors being bound by instructions, he was transferred to the Essen regional court in 1953 as an assistant judge . After he had published the book Strichjunge Karl with realistic descriptions of the stick boy milieu in the following year , he was dismissed from the civil service in February 1955. Deprived of his professional existence, he asked to join the Benedictine Abbey of Maria Laach . When he was denied this, he took his life.

Works

• Ludwig Börne or: Overcoming Judaism. Vienna 1931.
• Against the clairvoyant fraud! The case of the "clairvoyant" Harschmann Steinschneider called Erik Jan Hanussen. Berlin 1933.
• Judicial murder of Catiline. Models for Hitler's fall. Paris 1934.
• Just Cause Wins - How Do I Conduct My Civil Litigation? Duisburg, 1953.
• Defendant stand up. A funny and serious helper in criminal matters. Duisburg 1953.
• Let's kill something again! For and against the death penalty. Hamburg 1954.
• Stick boy Karl. Hamburg 1954, ISBN 3-925443-35-5 .

literature

• Laserstein, Botho. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 15: Kura – Lewa. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-22695-3 , pp. 174-179.
• The monks refused . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1955 ( online ).
• Herbert Hoven (ed.): The unstoppable suicide of Botho Laserstein. A German résumé. Frankfurt / Main 1991, ISBN 3-630-61914-2 .
• The Laserstein case. In: Legal Tribune. November 14, 2010 ( lto.de ).
• A fate after 1945: Terrible justice. In: The time . May 19, 1991 ( zeit.de ).
• Bernhard Rosenkranz, Gottfried Lorenz: Botho Laserstein - fighter for a humane criminal law . In: Hamburg in other ways: The history of gay life in the Hanseatic city . Himmelstürmer Verlag, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-86361-261-0 , p. 76-80 ( books.google.de ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Botho Laserstein in the catalog of the German National Library
• Partial estate of Botho Laserstein in the German Exile Archive of the German National Library

References and comments

1. ^ Herbert Hoven (ed.): The unstoppable suicide of Botho Laserstein. A German résumé. P. 10.
2. ↑ Laserstein never fled to the USA , as is claimed in some sources (e.g. Caplan, Hannah et al. Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933–1945 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945. Munich 1983 .)