Ernst Buchholz (lawyer)

Robert Otto Ernst Buchholz (born July 10, 1905 in Hamburg ; † April 5, 1967 there ) was a German lawyer .

Live and act

Ernst Buchholz was a son of Franz Buchholz. The father worked as a post director in the Hamburg Oberpostdirektion . Ernst Buchholz attended a secondary school in Eydtkuhnen from 1912 . With the outbreak of the First World War , he moved to a secondary school in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel in 1914 , where he graduated from high school in 1924. According to the testimony, he had the "pronounced talent for perfectly formed representation, rich knowledge, confident judgment, various inclinations and pronounced artistic interests". He then worked for half a year at the export company FD Breit , but did not enjoy a commercial position.

From 1925 Buchholz studied law at the University of Hamburg and moved to the University of Berlin a year later . In November 1929 he passed the first state examination in law. Then he worked as a trainee lawyer in the public service in his hometown. He joined the NSDAP in May 1933 and passed the second state examination a month later. Since he had belonged to the Democratic Student Union in 1927/28 , the National Socialists observed him at times in 1937. Buchholz initially worked for a year at the Hamburg District Court , where he was promoted to assistant judge. From 1937 he worked as a public prosecutor, later as senior public prosecutor and senior senior public prosecutor.

In 1933 Buchholz married the artist Ruth Maetzel , with whom he had three children between 1935 and 1944, all of whom worked in the artistic field. The family spent the last months of the Second World War in 1944/45 in the Künstlerhaus Maetzel in Hamburg-Volksdorf .

After the end of the war, Buchholz headed the mercy department from September 1945 and was responsible for the judicial press office. This enabled him to pursue his artistic inclinations. He wrote radio plays and essays, acquired graphics and maintained contacts with Alfred Kubin , Ludwig Meidner , Joachim Ringelnatz , Arno Holz , Stefan Zweig and Heinrich Mann . He also collected works of art by Paul Klee , Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Lyonel Feininger and George Grosz . The painter Conrad Felixmüller created a double portrait, which he called "Even with Ernst Buchholz". Buchholz was a member of the board of directors of the Hamburger Kunstverein and supported the Griffelkunst-Vereinigung Hamburg .

In the following years Buchholz campaigned for the freedom of art. In doing so, he took part in political discussions on assessing the risk to young people, the “healthy people's feeling”, “obscenity” and “fornication”. The debate was about whether the moral feeling of the “normal person”, according to Buchholz, or the constitutionally provided freedom of art should be used as a criterion in the public presentation. Discussions were triggered by works of art by Horst Janssen and Georg Baselitz , books by Jean Genet and Hans Henny Jahnn , stage sets by Gustaf Gründgens in Düsseldorf or Hans-Ulrich Schmückle in Augsburg or the film Das Schweigen . From 1948 to 1966, Buchholz wrote numerous pleadings and expert reports and gave lectures in which he advocated a liberal approach to art. The Federal Court of Justice followed his assessments in 1962. After a plea by the lawyer, the Hamburg district court first applied liberal practice to the novel “Notre Dame des Fleurs” and classified it as “not indecent”.

In 1959 Buchholz married Ruth Delia Kurth, née Kahns, for the second time. His second wife wrote for Die Zeit under the name Ruth Hermann . During this time, the lawyer opened exhibitions and appeared as a combative speaker. On March 31, 1958, he was promoted to prosecutor general before the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court . In his inaugural address, he said that "the absolute instruction to the law" is preferable to all instructions. In the context of the Mariotti trials , the lawyer from the press bank spoke out and demanded that the defendant Eva Mariotti should exercise her right to remain silent and that this should not be seen as an admission of guilt.

Buchholz burial site , Ohlsdorf cemetery

In 1965, Buchholz was made an honorary member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg . He was also involved in the advisory board of the German Writers' Association .

Appreciation

At the burial in the Ohlsdorf cemetery (grid square AD 25, west of Chapel 6), Rudolf Augstein described Ernst Buchholz as a legal guarantor for citizens and accused. “This public prosecutor defended freedom of speech and art like no other,” said the publisher in his funeral speech.

The writer Horst Janssen later mentioned Buchholz in his book Hinkepott . He was a seasoned man, "1.90 m high, compactly shaped, with the eerie blue in the iris". Buchholz was a “very important person” who saw himself as “the free democrat - who he was” and was considered a “protector and promoter of the arts”, according to Janssen.

literature

• Karin von Behr: Buchholz, Ernst . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 6 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1025-4 , p. 50-51 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Celebrity Graves