Franz Eichenberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Friedrich Franz Eichenberg , from 1946 Frank F. Eaton ( August 14, 1899 in Hamburg - August 7, 1981 in Lake Oswego , Oregon ) was a German lawyer who received a professorship in German studies in the United States .

Live and act

Franz Eichenberg attended the Christianeum in Altona until he graduated from high school in 1917 . During the First World War he participated as a war volunteer in the naval artillery of the Imperial Navy . After the war he studied law at the universities in Freiburg, Munich and Hamburg. During his studies he was politically committed to the liberal DDP and was active in the AStA in Munich . He passed the first state examination in Hamburg in 1922. After graduating as Dr. jur. and the legal traineeship with the second state examination, he became a lawyer in Hamburg in 1925. He was one of the founders of the Leuchtenburgkreis in 1924, but resigned from it in 1930 because it increasingly turned from liberal to socialist convictions. As a Jew in Hamburg, Eichenberg was increasingly boycotted as a lawyer by the National Socialists and therefore emigrated to the United Kingdom in autumn 1936 . Here he was interned as an alien enemy in the camp near Seaton when the Second World War broke out .

The Arandora Star
before leaving for Canada

In June 1940 he was taken with about 1200 German and Italian prisoners on board the Arandora Star of the Blue Star Line , which was supposed to bring them to Canada. After two days at sea, the Arandora Star was torpedoed and sunk by the U 47 submarine commanded by Günther Prien . Among the more than 800 dead were a large number of Germans who, like Eichenberg, had fled into exile in Britain. Eichenberg floated above water and was picked up after a few hours by the Canadian destroyer HMCS St. Laurent (H83) and brought to Scotland with the other rescued survivors . Just a few days later he came on board the troop transport HMT Dunera with 3,000 prisoners and took part in an infamous prisoner transport to Australia ; during this trip he was elected by the prisoners as their spokesman. The journey of the Dunera was later filmed several times. His Australian internment record is in the Australian National Archives . In Australia he served in the Australian Army at the end of the Second World War and immigrated to the United States in 1946 , where he adopted the new name Frank F. Eaton . He became a professor in Oregon at the Portland State College for German Language and Literature , founded in 1946 (initially to train war returnees) and in 1957 co-founded the German Summer School on the Pacific, which still exists today .

Fonts

  • Is the physical or scandalous parliamentary obstruction according to § 105 StGB. punishable? , Dissertation 1924

Awards

literature

  • Federal Bar Association (Hrsg.): Lawyer without law. Fate of Jewish lawyers in Germany after 1933. Berlin 2007, pp. 223/224 (with Eichenberg's images)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Percy E. Schramm (Ed.): War diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Vol. 2. p. 1170
  2. ^ Lars-Broder Keil : Germans against Germans . In: Die Welt from August 2, 2010; Fled from Hitler In: The Time of October 10, 1980
  3. ↑ Ben Lewin (II): The Dunera Boys . With Joseph Spano, Bob Hoskins, Joseph Fürst, a. a. 1995: 150 min .; John Burgan: Friendly Enemy Alien . Documentary (ZDF) 2006: 90 min.
  4. ↑ Australian National Archives records on the family's private genealogy page , accessed May 25, 2016
  5. ^ German Summer School on the Pacific on the Portland State University website
personal data
SURNAME Eichenberg, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eichenberg, Friedrich Franz; Eaton, Frank F.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH 7th August 1981
Place of death Lake Oswego , Oregon