Friedrich Hoffmann (lawyer)

Friedrich Hoffmann (born January 19, 1875 in Goldberg i. Silesia , † March 7, 1951 in Lugano ) was a German administrative lawyer. He became known as the last and longest-serving curator at Albertus University.

Life

Hoffmann visited the Augustum in Görlitz . From the summer semester of 1893 he studied law at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . There he became a member of the Rupertia Association , "from which a great many important high administrative officials emerged". He was happy to hear from Kuno Fischer . He moved to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin and the Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Breslau . There he passed the trainee exam with "good". In 1896 he joined the judicial service of the Higher Regional Court in Breslau . In 1905 he was appointed district judge in Opole . At the end of his apprenticeship, he traveled to England , Russia and America . As a one-year volunteer , he served in an artillery - Regiment of the Prussian army .

Poses

In 1906 Hoffmann was accepted into the General State Administration of the Kingdom of Prussia , initially as a legal advisor in the school department of the government in Poznan . In the same year he married Erna Sanio in Poznan . He had the difficult (and dangerous) job of ending the recent Polish school strike. When he succeeded, he was transferred to the presidential department. There he had to especially look after the small towns; the "fluctuating Polish policy of the Prussian government" made life difficult for the underpaid officials. As a Councilor he took over in 1910, the municipal department in the government in Bydgoszcz . There it was about expropriations for the expansion of the Bydgoszcz Canal .

With the outbreak of World War I , Hoffmann became a captain in the artillery. He fought in the Battle of Verdun , was transferred to the Eastern Front in 1916 and took part in the reconquest of Chernivtsi .

Hoffmann was recalled to his post by the district president; at the same time he was acting district administrator of the Wirsitz district and deputy chairman of the Berlin meat office. Travel to the three duty stations became impossible towards the end of the war when the railroad trains were shot at by Poles and travel came to a standstill. The city of Bromberg , which is 75% inhabited by Germans, was the focus of the conflict . When it ended after lengthy negotiations with the reduced Posen-West Prussia border and the German authorities were withdrawn, Hoffmann wanted to devote himself entirely to the State Meat Office. Friedrich v. Bülow , transition commissioner for the new border region Posen-West Prussia, appointed Hoffmann in 1919 as deputy regional president in the administrative district of Schneidemühl with the rank of senior government councilor .

Koenigsberg

The Königsberg post-war rector Adalbert Bezzenberger had campaigned for the government of the Free State of Prussia to promote the Albertus University of Königsberg , which had been neglected for decades . The Minister of Education, Carl Heinrich Becker, sent his federal brother Hoffmann to Königsberg on October 1, 1922. As the first full-time curator he was not subordinate to the President of the Province of East Prussia . With great success he pursued what his predecessor had considered necessary: the structural expansion of the university and the appointment of excellent teachers.

It was not least thanks to Hoffmann that the celebration of Immanuel Kant's 200th birthday in 1924 turned into a “tremendous demonstration of German intellectual life”. He supported Otto Paetsch , who won the German Book Trade Association for a large book donation. He initiated the extremely successful "Eastern Semester" ; Between 1925 and 1930 the number of students in Königsberg doubled from 2000 to 4113. Hoffmann's particular merit was the expansion of academic connections to the eastern neighboring states of East Prussia , which he operated primarily with Josef Nadler and Hans Rothfels .

The following university buildings in Königsberg are thanks to Hoffmann's initiative:

Expansion of the zoological and geological institute
New construction of the medical polyclinic
Extension of the university with the new auditorium
Conversion of the old courthouse into a seminar building
Rebuilding the anatomy
Conversion and extension of the Palaestra Albertina
Reconstruction of the old anatomy for forensic medicine and racial biology
Extension of the women's clinic
New buildings at university outposts: Fräuleinhof experimental farm, veterinary institute, Rossitten institute for pest research, Lawsken plant cultivation institute

The new buildings of the large university clinics (surgery, internal medicine, gynecology) on Horn-Claas-Straße had to take a back seat to military interests. The Albertus University thanked Hoffmann with the Honorary Doctorate to Dr. phil. hc The Second World War took two sons from him and his wife. Shortly after Hoffmann's 70th birthday, the battle for Königsberg began .

Goettingen

Grave in Göttingen (2013)

In the post-war period after the Second World War in Germany , Hoffmann set up a registration office for displaced Königsberg university teachers, first in Flensburg , then in Göttingen . For them he was something like an employment agency and a notary . Many of them found accommodation at the universities in Kiel, Freiburg, Göttingen and Münster. The Allies valued the expert opinion of the man of integrity in the arbitration chamber proceedings . The literary scholar Hans Ernst Schneider was able to register with the Lübeck registration office under the false name "Hans Schwerte" in 1945 with the help of a certificate from him.

Hoffmann was responsible for the re-establishment of the Society of Friends of Kant (the "bean speakers") in Göttingen and was one of the founders of the Göttingen working group , which he chaired until his death. He founded the yearbook of the Albertus University in Königsberg i. Pr. , Whose first volume appeared in 1951. Shortly after his 76th birthday, Hoffmann died with his sister in Lugano. He is buried in the city cemetery (Göttingen) .

Honors

Dr. phil. hc from the Albertus University of Königsberg

Honorary Senator of the Gdansk University of Technology

Honorary citizen of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Honorary member of the Society of Friends of Kant

Web links

Christian Tilitzki on the 50th anniversary of Hoffmann's death (Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung, March 17, 2001)

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c East German biography
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f The life of Friedrich Hoffmann . Circular letter from Albertus University, Christmas 1951, pp. 2–6
↑ Christian Tilitzki: Like a sunken Vineta. The Königsberg University in the collapse of the empire . Ostpreußenblatt, volume 39, October 2 and 16, 1999.
↑ Ludwig Jäger : Schneider, Hans Ernst. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , pp. 296-298 ( digitized version ).

personal data
SURNAME	Hoffmann, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German judge and administrative lawyer; last curator of the Albertus University
DATE OF BIRTH	January 19, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH	Goldberg i. Silesia
DATE OF DEATH	March 7, 1951
Place of death	Lugano

[OB-1] East German biography

[RB-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f The life of Friedrich Hoffmann . Circular letter from Albertus University, Christmas 1951, pp. 2–6

[3] Christian Tilitzki: Like a sunken Vineta. The Königsberg University in the collapse of the empire . Ostpreußenblatt, volume 39, October 2 and 16, 1999.

[4] Ludwig Jäger : Schneider, Hans Ernst. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , pp. 296-298 ( digitized version ).