Felix Hall

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Felix Halle (born  May 1, 1884 in Berlin ; †  November 5, 1937 in Butowo / Moscow ) was a German lawyer during the Weimar Republic .

Life

Halle was the son of the Jewish businessman Albert Josef Halle. From 1902 to 1905 he studied political science and law in Berlin. It is not certain whether he completed a legal clerkship, in any case he did not appear as a lawyer. In 1913 he founded the Neue Deutsche Verlag (which he sold to Willi Münzenberg in 1924 ).

In 1912 he became a member of the SPD , in 1917 the USPD and worked for their press service. During this time he became a member of the Freemasons Association . During the First World War, Halle published ideas for a peace order in which he saw the League of Nations overcoming nationalism through a “European Economic Community”.

In 1919 he became a law professor at the University of Berlin and traveled to Soviet Russia the following year on the recommendation and recommendation of Ernst Däumig and Clara Zetkin . He worked there in the Science Council of the People's Commissariat for Justice ( NKJu ) and returned to Germany in 1921 with a research assignment (criminal and procedural law). Since the end of 1920 a member of the KPD , from 1922 to 1926 he was head of the legal central office of the KPD parliamentary group and parliamentary group and from 1927 of the legal central office of the Red Aid . His legal guide How the Proletarian Defends Himself in Political Criminal Matters (1924) became famous during the Weimar Republic .

At the KPD suggestion, he was a member of the State Court of the Weimar Republic in 1928 and 1930 . He provided expert opinions on political processes, such as the case of the convicted Soviet diplomat Towia Axelrod ( Munich Soviet Republic ), the retrial of Max Hoelz and the Bülowplatz affair , in which Erich Mielke was also involved. In addition, Hall worked closely with the Institute of Sexology to Magnus Hirschfeld and the World League for Sexual Reform together and engaged for the decriminalization of homosexuality and abortion and the reform of marriage and family law . In the KPD, Halle was exposed to anti-Semitic prejudices.

Halle taught criminal law at the Marxist Workers' School (MASCH) and was co-founder of the International Legal Association in 1929 . He was arrested on the night of the Reichstag fire and released a month later. Via Ascona (where he met the women's rights activist Helene Stöcker ), Prague and Paris , he emigrated to the Soviet Union, where he worked at the Moscow Institute for Criminology from 1934. In 1935 he stayed temporarily in Switzerland to (successfully) work against the German extradition application against Heinz Neumann to the Third Reich. In 1936, on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Comintern (EKKI) in the Paris Kun Commission, he developed a defense strategy from Ernst Thälmann's indictment .

Back in Moscow, Halle was arrested on August 5, 1937 as part of the German operation of the NKVD and charged with counterrevolutionary, Trotskyist activity. Excluded from the KPD, he was sentenced to death on November 1, 1937 and shot on November 5. The Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK) of the SED rehabilitated him in 1956.

Publications (selection)

  • The inviolability of the ambassadors under international law. A legal opinion on the high treason trial against the representative of the Russian Soviet Republic Dr. Axelrod. Rätebund, Berlin 1921.
  • Preface. In: [Max Hölz]: Hölz's indictment speech against bourgeois society. Held before the Moabit Special Court on June 22, 1921 in Berlin. According to the shorthand report. With a foreword by Felix Halle. Frankes Verlag, Leipzig / Berlin [1921], pp. 3–5.
  • How does the proletarian defend himself in political criminal matters before the police, the public prosecutor's office and the court? Neuer Deutscher Verlag, Berlin 1924. - (2nd unchanged edition 1924. Third edition 1929. Fourth expanded edition 1931.)
  • Charges against the judiciary and the police. To ward off persecution against the proletarian aid organization for political prisoners and their families. Mopr Verlag, Berlin 1926.
  • Sex life and criminal law. Preface v. Magnus Hirschfeld . Mopr Verlag, Berlin 1931.

literature

  • Volkmar Schöneburg : Forensic legacy of the KPD. 1919 - 1933. State publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-329-00468-1 .
  • Hans-Jürgen Schneider, Erika Schwarz: The lawyers of the Red Aid Germany. Political defense attorney in the Weimar Republic. History and biographies . Pahl-Rugenstein-Verlag, Bonn 2002, ISBN 3-89144-330-7 .
  • Josef Schwarz: Wrongly forgotten. Felix Halle and the German judiciary . GNN, Schkeuditz 1997, ISBN 3-929994-87-9 .
  • Ulrich Stascheit, Felix Halle ( 1883-1937 ), legal advisor of the Communist Party. In: Streitbare Juristen, p. 153 ff.
  • Carola Tischler: Between self-styling and self-abandonment. Felix Halle and the KPD. In: Sabine Hering, Kurt Schilde (ed.): Die Rote Hilfe. The history of the international communist “welfare organization” and its social activities in Germany (1921-1941) . Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2003, ISBN 3-8100-3634-X , ( Social Work ), p. 233ff. online .
  • Halle, Felix . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hermann Weber , Jakov Drabkin, Bernhard H. Bayerlein (ed.): Germany, Russia, Comintern. Part: 2., Documents (1918-1943): after the archive revolution: newly opened sources on the history of the KPD and German-Russian relations. De Gruyter, Berlin Munich Boston 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-033976-5 , p. 1450, limited preview in the Google book search. - In: German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945 (see literature) deviates from November 3rd as the date of death.
  2. ↑ Carola Tischler: Between self-styling and self-abandonment. Felix Halle and the KPD . In: Sabine Hering, Kurt Schilde (ed.): Die Rote Hilfe. The history of the international communist "welfare organization" and its social activities in Germany. With a foreword by Rudolph Bauer . Leske + Budrich edition. Opladen, ISBN 978-3-8100-3634-6 , pp. 234 .
  3. ↑ Scholle, Thilo: Another Tradition - Remembrance of Critical Jurists (Felix Halle, Max Hirschberg, Hans Litten, Elisabeth Kohn) Forum Law: 04/2003 (Journal: 139–141)
  4. ↑ Helene Stöcker: Memoirs, ed. by Reinhold Lütgemeier-Davin u. Kerstin Wolff. Cologne: Böhlau, 2015, 271.
  5. ↑ Alexander Vatlin : “What a devil's pack”: The German operation of the NKVD in Moscow and in the Moscow region from 1936 to 1941. Metropol, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-090-5 , p. 307.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Halle, Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1937
Place of death Butowo