Erich Cohn-Bendit

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Erich Cohn-Bendit (born November 26, 1902 in Berlin as Erich Cohn ; † August 14, 1959 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German lawyer .

Life

Erich Cohn came from a wealthy Berlin merchant family; the father Alex Cohn ran a textile trade . Erich Cohn was of Jewish origin, but professed atheism . After graduating from high school , he studied law and was awarded a Dr. jur. PhD.

As a lawyer, he opened a law firm in Berlin-Friedrichstadt , approved for the Berlin I-III regional courts and the Schöneberg district court . When he became self-employed, he took the maiden name "Bendit" from his mother. In 1932 he was one of the defense lawyers in the so-called Felseneck trial . Alongside Hans Litten , he was one of the most important supporters of the KPD- related aid organization Rote Hilfe Deutschlands (RHD). He rejected Stalinism , which was judged as totalitarian , and was a supporter of Trotsky .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he was banned from his profession in April 1933 for alleged "communist activity" ; he was on a persecution list with other unwelcome lawyers such as Alfred Apfel , Ludwig Bendix and Hilde Benjamin . He was later forcibly expatriated from Germany by the National Socialists .

In 1933 he emigrated to France because of the threat of arrest by the Gestapo ; his partner Herta David (1908–1963), a law student, followed him a little later and they married in exile. His parents fled to Paris in 1939 and the sister went to Kenya . As a hostile foreigner , Cohn-Bendit was initially interned and then worked as a sales representative. In Paris he lived statelessly with false papers as a Catholic and belonged to Hannah Arendt's close circle of friends . He cultivated this friendship until the 1950s. In the French capital he socialized with other left-wing intellectuals such as Walter Benjamin , Carl Heidenreich , Fritz Fränkel , Chanan Klenbort and Heinrich Blücher in the 1930s . He was also active in the Trotskyist Fourth International , founded in 1938 . After the German occupation of northern France in 1940 , he lived in Montauban in southwestern France under the Vichy regime . There he worked as a day laborer ; his wife largely supported the family through manual labor. Due to his depressing situation, he became temporarily addicted to alcohol.

In 1952 he returned to Germany and opened a law firm at Freiherr-vom-Stein-Straße 48 in Frankfurt's Westend . He himself lived as a sublet with the singer Nanny Becker , whom he had represented as a lawyer in 1954 in compensation proceedings. His wife Herta David and his younger son Daniel Cohn-Bendit , who later became the protagonist of the Paris May 1968, followed him in 1958. In Frankfurt, too, he was in contact with representatives of the Frankfurt School such as Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno as well as Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel . Among his clients was Bruno Bettelheim . He also dealt critically with the Federal Compensation Act (BEG) in a publication by Hendrik van Dam , Secretary General of the Central Council of Jews in Germany . In the last years of his life he lived in the private apartment of a former client in Frankfurt.

Another son is the educationalist Gabriel Cohn-Bendit (* 1936).

publication

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anne Siemens: Through the institutions or into terrorism: The ways of Joschka Fischer, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Hans-Joachim Klein and Johannes Weinrich. Bischoff, Frankfurt am Main 2006, p. 55. (= Dissertation, University of Munich, 2005)
  2. ^ A b c d e f Anne Siemens : Through the institutions or into terrorism: The ways of Joschka Fischer, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Hans-Joachim Klein and Johannes Weinrich . Bischoff, Frankfurt am Main 2006, pp. 56/57. (= Dissertation, University of Munich, 2005)
  3. ^ Sabine Stamer : Cohn-Bendit. The biography . Europa-Verlag, Hamburg / Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-203-82075-7 , p. 32.
  4. ↑ a b c Sabine Stamer : Cohn-Bendit. The biography . Europa Verlag, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-203-82075-7 , p. 29.
  5. ↑ Daniel Cohn-Bendit , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 11/2013 from March 12, 2013 (fl) Supplemented by news from MA-Journal until week 17/2013, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
  6. ↑ a b Berlin Bar Association (ed.): Lawyer Without Law: The Fate of Jewish Lawyers in Berlin after 1933 . 2nd Edition. be.bra-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89809-075-9 , p. 137.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Heinz Jürgen Schneider, Erika Schwarz, Josef Schwarz: The lawyers of the Red Aid Germany: Political defense lawyers in the Weimar Republic. History and biographies . Pahl-Rugenstein, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89144-330-7 , p. 104.
  8. ↑ Michael Hepp, Hans Georg Lehmann: The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . Volume 1: Lists in chronological order . Saur, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-598-10538-X , p. 121.
  9. ↑ Knut Bergbauer, Sabine Fröhlich, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum : Monument figure. Biographical approach to Hans Litten, 1903–1938 . Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0268-6 , p. 232.
  10. ^ Elisabeth Young-Bruehl : Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World . 2nd Edition. Yale University Press, New Haven 2004, ISBN 0-300-10588-6 , p. 122.
  11. ↑ Werewolves who scorn Karl Marx . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1968, p. 1 ( online ).
  12. ↑ Petra Bonavita: Bomb applause: the life of Nanny Becker. Helmer Verlag, Königstein im Taunus 2005, ISBN 3-89741-173-3 , pp. 147-148.
  13. ^ Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 18: Correspondence 1949–1973. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-596-27392-7 , p. 426.
  14. ^ Anne Siemens: Through the institutions or into terrorism: The ways of Joschka Fischer, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Hans-Joachim Klein and Johannes Weinrich. Bischoff, Frankfurt am Main 2006, p. 59. (= Dissertation, University of Munich, 2005)
  15. ↑ Bruno Bettelheim (1903–2003): Early biographical roots in Vienna and his psychoanalytical-pedagogical work . haGalil , March 9, 2010.
  16. ↑ cf. Hendrik van Dam: The Federal Compensation Act: Federal Supplementary Act on Compensation for Victims of National Socialist Persecution (BEG) with relevant federal laws, ordinances and international treaties. Systematic presentation and critical explanations by van Dam, Hendrik George with the collaboration of Baasch, Conrad, Neumann, Georg and Cohn-Bendit, Erich. Publishing general weekly newspaper of the Jews in Germany, Düsseldorf 1953.
  17. ↑ Petra Bonavita: Bomb applause: the life of Nanny Becker. Helmer Verlag, Königstein im Taunus 2005, ISBN 3-89741-173-3 , p. 163.
personal data
SURNAME Cohn-Bendit, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cohn, Erich (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1959
Place of death Frankfurt am Main