Franz Unikower

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Franz Siegbert Unikower (born May 11, 1901 in Breslau ; † September 29, 1997 in Langen (Hesse) ) was a German lawyer. Unikower was a co-founder of the Jewish State Community of Mecklenburg , President of the Higher Regional Court and a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany .

Life

Franz Unikower came from a family of tailors. He finished high school with a secondary school diploma and from June to November 1918 took part in the First World War as a trooper .

Unikower became secretary of the Jewish workers welfare in 1919 . He studied law and political science at the universities of Berlin and Breslau and received his doctorate in December 1922 with the dissertation Das Delikt § 327 Str.-Ges.-B. (Disease Act). He completed his legal traineeship at the courts in Oels and Breslau.

In 1921 he became a member of the SPD and was involved in the association of socialist lawyers, the socialist youth workers and trade union organizations. From 1926 Unikower worked as a district judge and from 1929 to 1933 as a lawyer.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he was banned from working in 1933 and then denied a. a. making a living as a property manager and accountant. After the November pogroms he was imprisoned on November 11, 1938, initially in Buchenwald concentration camp until January 6, 1939 . He then worked as a sales representative and from 1940 did forced labor for the municipal garbage disposal in Wroclaw. From summer 1941 to February 1943 he worked at Fahrzeug und Motorenwerke (FAMO) GmbH in Breslau.

On March 6, 1943, he was in the concentration camp Auschwitz deported and remained there with the prisoner number 107132 January 1945 concentration camp prisoner . First he did forced labor in Auschwitz-Monowitz in the wood yard. In October 1943 he became a prisoner clerk in the Political Department in Auschwitz-Monowitz . After the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in January 1945, Unikower was transferred to the Boelcke-Kaserne satellite camp on February 2, 1945 and a few days later to the Mittelbau concentration camp , where he was again a prisoner clerk in the Political Department. In mid-April 1945, he in the concentration camp handed over and from there to the concentration camp Wöbbelin (Mecklenburg), where he early May 1945 US troops freed was.

In September 1945 he became president of the Schwerin Higher Regional Court . He held this office until November 1946. With the forced unification of the KPD and SPD in April 1946, Unikower became a member of the SED . From September to December 1946 he led a people's judge course in Schwerin. At the end of 1946 Unikower was arrested by the occupying forces, but released after rehabilitation in August 1947.

In 1947 Unikower was a co-founder of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Jewish State Community of Mecklenburg Kdö.R. with the parish hall in Schwerin and its president since 1948. From February 1948 to July 1952, Franz Unikower was chairman of the criminal senate at the higher regional court in Schwerin and from September 1952 chief judge at the district court . In February 1953 he was dismissed from the judicial service, which resulted in a dispute with state and SED representatives that lasted until 1956. Unikower was asked to speak out against the "aggressor Israel ". After his refusal, he feared repression and fled to West Germany at the end of October 1956. Here he was again a member of the SPD.

Franz Unikower worked on the board of the Jewish community in Frankfurt am Main . From 1958 he was the legal advisor of the State Association of Hesse and a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. On January 29, 1959, Unikower sent a “directory of September 4, 1958 concerning SS men who had served in Auschwitz” to Fritz Bauer , who played an important role in the preliminary investigations with regard to the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial .

On May 29, 1925 Unikower married Ilse Gerson for the first time. From this marriage he became the father of a daughter: Eva (born October 15, 1926). The marriage was divorced in 1928 (marriage certificate dated May 16, 1961, registry office Dortmund-Ost, No. 383/25). From 1931 he was married to the actress Helene Nowak, and both were divorced in 1939. In January 1942 he married the nurse Charlotte, née Bremer, who died as a prisoner sister in Auschwitz of typhus . In February 1949 Unikower married the widowed district judge Ursula Bauer from Mecklenburg, a former student in his law courses.

Honors

literature

  • Rolf Bartusel: Franz Unikower . In: Contemporary History Regional , messages from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, 2nd year, 1998, No. 2, pp. 56–61, ISSN  1434-1794
  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 .
  • Axel Seitz: Tolerated and forgotten: The Jewish State Community of Mecklenburg between 1948 and 1990 . Edition Temmen, Bremen 2001, ISBN 978-3-86108-773-1
  • Beatrice Vierneisel: Memento: Franz Siegbert Unikower. A portrait . Ed. Association of the Friends of Mahn- und Gedenkstätten Wöbbelin e. V., Wöbbelin o. D. [2011], ISBN 978-3-934411-55-5 .
  • Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01301-6 , p. 10273 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Beatrice Vierneisel: Memento: Franz Siegbert Unikower. A portrait , p. 8
  2. ↑ a b Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices and victims and what became of them. A personal dictionary , Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 410
  3. ↑ Beatrice Vierneisel: Memento: Franz Siegbert Unikower. A portrait , p. 41f.
  4. ↑ Werner Renz: The 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial - Two Prehistory . (PDF) also published in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , vol. 50, issue 7, July 2002, pp. 622–641, Metropol Verlag, ISSN  0044-2828
  5. ↑ Beatrice Vierneisel, Memento: Franz Siegbert Unikower. A portrait . Friends of the Wöbbelin memorials and memorials V., Wöbbelin 2010, p. 36.
personal data
SURNAME Unikower, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Unikower, Franz Siegbert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH September 29, 1997
Place of death Langen (Hesse)