Eduard Dietz

Eduard Dietz as a student

Eduard Dietz around 1905

Eduard Dietz (born November 1, 1866 in Karlsruhe , † December 17, 1940 in Stuttgart ) was a German lawyer and politician. He is considered to be the creator of the republican constitution of the state of Baden .

Live and act

Dietz came from a humble background, his father was a worker at the state mint in Karlsruhe . Nevertheless, the parents made it possible to attend the humanistic grammar school in Karlsruhe . After graduating from high school in 1885, he studied law at the University of Heidelberg and one semester in Berlin , where he received his doctorate in 1889 . During his studies he was active in the fraternity Frankonia Heidelberg , was its spokesman for several semesters and wrote numerous contributions for years for magazines of the fraternities, including in the fraternity papers . Above all, he felt connected to their original democratic tradition and the revolution of 1848 . Among other things, he wrote the history of the German fraternity in Heidelberg in 1895 . Dietz later became a founder and member of the Burschenschaftlichen historical commission .

After completing his studies and legal preparatory service , Dietz was initially employed for some time in the Baden Ministry of Justice before he became a district judge in Offenburg in 1894 and in Karlsruhe in 1897. In 1900 he was appointed district judge at the Karlsruhe district court .

Dietz had meanwhile professed Marxism and had joined the SPD . At his own request, he resigned from the civil service and became a lawyer in Karlsruhe. Dietz made a name for himself as a criminal defense lawyer in 1907 when he defended Carl Hau , who had been accused of killing his mother-in-law. This was one of the most spectacular murder cases in Karlsruhe and provided material for feature films and the novel The Maurizius case by Jacob Wassermann was influenced by him. On the basis of circumstantial evidence, the accused was sentenced to death and later pardoned for life. For Dietz, the experiences in the process were a starting point for calling for a comprehensive reform of criminal law and a reform of the training of lawyers.

In addition to his legal work, he was involved in the garden city movement and was involved in the development of the garden city settlement in Karlsruhe-Rüppurr . Since 1911 he sat for the SPD in the city council.

After the November Revolution he was a representative of the SPD in the so-called Fourth Commission for the drafting of a new Baden constitution. In addition to him, Johann Zehnter ( center ), Karl Glockner ( National Liberal Party ) and Friedrich Weill ( Progressive People's Party ) were represented. Dietz played a leading role in this body. He was also a member of the constitutional committee elected by the Baden National Assembly on January 5, 1919, of which he became chairman. He was also a member of the executive committee of the social democratic group. Dietz also had a decisive influence on the negotiations of the constitutional committee. So he succeeded in pushing through a unicameral parliament against the resistance of the center. A strong position for parliament was also anchored in Dietz's draft. In contrast, the executive was relatively weak, so the prime ministers (referred to in the draft as the president) should be re-elected every year.

Ultimately, the draft constitution, largely drafted by Dietz, was adopted by the National Assembly in March 1919 with almost no changes, but after the draft it still had to be confirmed by a referendum. Since Dietz apparently thought that he had done his job, he gave up his mandate before the referendum in April 1919. In 1920 Dietz resigned from the SPD and also resigned his seat on the city council.

Dietz strongly advocated the compatibility of Christianity and socialism and was involved in various organizations of religious socialism . He was one of the founders of the Evangelical People's Church Association. Dietz later became a member of the Association of Religious Socialists . Dietz continued to work as a lawyer and was chairman of the Baden Bar Association from 1922 to 1933 .

His urn grave is in the main cemetery in Karlsruhe .

literature

• Hermann Heisler : Why didn't I become a social democrat? Open letter to Eduard Dietz . Wölfing, Constance 1919.
• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I Politicians, Part 1: A – E. Heidelberg 1996, pp. 201-202.
• Dietz, Eduard , in: Friedhelm Golücke : Author's lexicon for student and university history. SH-Verlag, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-89498-130-X . Pp. 82-83.
• Detlev Fischer : Eduard Dietz (1866–1940). Father of the Baden state constitution from 1919. A Karlsruhe lawyer life . Publishing house of the Society for Cultural History Documentation, Karlsruhe 2008, ISBN 978-3-922596-77-6 , ( series of publications of the Legal History Museum 16).
• Andreas Hunkel: Eduard Dietz (1866–1940). Judge, lawyer and creator of the constitution . Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-58523-8 , ( Legal History Series 384), (Also: Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 2008).

Web links

• Literature by and about Eduard Dietz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Eduard Dietz's biography . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP)
• Biography (Legal History Museum)
• Biography (fraternity Frankonia)
• Speeches by Eduard Dietz in the Baden state parliament in the digital collections of the Badische Landesbibliothek