Friedrich Klausing

Friedrich Hermann Klausing (born August 19, 1887 in Mönchengladbach ; † August 6, 1944 in Prague ) was a German lawyer and university professor.

Life

Friedrich Klausing was the son of the senior secondary school director Friedrich Klausing (1857–1908) and Ida (1865–1935), née Trappmann. After finishing his school career he studied the Heads of State and Law , History and Philosophy at the Universities of Marburg , Munich and Berlin . During his studies he became a member of the Association of German Students in Marburg . After the assessor examination , he received his doctorate in 1913 in Marburg with the dissertation on commercial customs in payment transactions with bills of exchange and checks with Ernst Heymann as a Dr. jur. and completed his habilitation in the same year with the work Payment by bill of exchange and check, also in Marburg.

Klausing became a lecturer at the Munich Commercial College in 1914 and took part in the First World War from 1914 to 1918 , most recently as a lieutenant in the reserve and company commander. After the end of the war, he was Professor and Director of the Munich Commercial College in 1920. From 1921 he taught at the University of Frankfurt , moved to the University of Marburg in 1932 and returned to the chair for German legal history, civil and commercial law in Frankfurt in 1933.

Klausing belonged to the German People's Party from 1920 to 1932 and became a member of the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 after the National Socialists came to power . As early as 1930 he had joined the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur . Since 1931 he was a member of the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, and in 1933, when this organization was transferred to the Sturmabteilung (SA). In the SA he achieved at least the rank of Obersturmführer. He was defense policy advisor for the SA in Hesse. As early as the spring of 1933, Klausing participated in the political cleansing of the Frankfurt University and other institutions of “Jews and Leftists”. He fought particularly hard against the Jewish social democrat and labor lawyer Hugo Sinzheimer . For his services to cleaning up the university, Klausing was awarded the office of dean of the law faculty by the rector of the University Ernst Krieck on November 28 , which he held until 1937. As an expert in u. a. Klausing represented the Reich at international conferences in banking and credit law and in 1934, at the conference of the International Academy for Comparative Law, ensured that only non-Jews were allowed to participate on the German side. Klausing is counted by the historian Erich Später among the "combative National Socialists", who offered a guarantee to stand up for the respective goals of National Socialism in their respective posts. They also promoted their own careers.

Klausing also belonged to the Academy for German Law , which was supposed to incorporate the programmatic ideas of the Nazis into a new People's Code. There he headed the GmbH committee. After the beginning of the Second World War , Klausing volunteered for the Wehrmacht as captain of the reserve and took part in the western campaign. After the French campaign in 1940, Klausing was appointed to the chair for civil, economic and labor law at the German Karl Ferdinand University in Prague.

Klausing moved to Prague with his wife. There, after the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , which meant a de facto annexation, the German Charles University, the only remaining university in Prague, was to become a "research and planning center for the Nazi occupation policy in Bohemia and Moravia" become. One of the prerequisites was the “de-Jewification” of the university, in which 10% of the students and 33% of the teaching staff were dismissed. It was a matter of course that the members of the occupying power would be provided with vacant apartments that had previously been inhabited by Czechs. Klausing, the standard of the offered apartments was insufficient. In November 1940 he sent a letter to the Reich Ministry of Science , in which he reflected on a spacious villa belonging to a wealthy “Jewish” family. The Reich Protector Neurath then assigned him the "Villa Waigner" at 55 Bubentscher Strasse. The previous owners, the Jewish banker and entrepreneur Emil Waigner and his wife Marie had been expropriated on August 9, 1940 and thrown from their house. Both were deported to concentration camps and victims of the Holocaust in 1942 . At that time, long after they moved in, Klausing and his wife were not satisfied with the condition of the villa. In August 1942 they were still arguing with the authorities about the allocation of renovation costs. In November 1943 Klausing was appointed rector of the university.

Klausing was married to Marie-Sibylle (* 1889), née Lehmann. The couple had three sons Benno (* 1915), who had been missing on the Eastern Front since early 1942, Friedrich Karl (* 1920) and Otto (* 1926) and their daughter Mathilde (* 1919). His son Friedrich Karl Klausing took part as an officer in the Wehrmacht and adjutant to Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944 . After the failed assassination attempt, he surrendered to the Gestapo on the morning of July 21, 1944 . Charges were brought against him before the People's Court . When Klausing became aware of his son's presumed involvement in a Gestapo questioning on July 26, he announced on the same day in a letter to State Minister Karl Hermann Frank that he would resign as rector of the university until his son's innocence was proven. Frank accepted his resignation. On August 5, the personal details of the conspirators were published in the Prague daily press. In a meeting with Frank, which was immediately agreed, Klausing received from Frank the approval of his plan to report to the armed forces or the Waffen SS in atonement for his son's act . At the same time, the supreme SA leader of the Sudetengau , Franz May , called on Klausing to commit suicide in order to “clarify his relationship with the SA”. This was sent to Klausing on August 5th at 4:00 pm. As a result, Klausing shot himself in his Prague villa on the night of August 5th to 6th, 1944. In the farewell letter that Klausing left behind, there was nothing to indicate an understanding of his son's deed. Rather, he wrote ... "if you'd found a bullet - die as a man". Among other things, he wrote to his son Otto that he hoped he could die for his fatherland. Klausing closed his farewell letter, which was to be handed to the Minister of State Frank, with praise for Germany, the soldiers, the SA and Adolf Hitler . His son Friedrich Karl Klausing was hanged on August 8, 1944 after a trial before the People's Court in Plötzensee prison. After the widow moved out, the house was taken over a short time later by the then SS-Untersturmführer Hanns Martin Schleyer and his family.

literature

• Johannes Bähr, Ralf Banken (ed.): Economic control through law under National Socialism: Studies on the development of economic law in the intervention state of the "Third Reich". Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-465-03447-3 . (= Studies on European Legal History, 199; The Europe of Dictatorship, 9)
• Bernhard Diestelkamp : Three law professors in turbulent times: Heinrich Mitteis (1889–1952), Franz Beyerle (1885–1977), Friedrich Klausing (1887–1944). Academy of Sciences and Literature, Steiner, Mainz / Stuttgart 2000.
• Bernhard Diestelkamp: Friedrich Klausing (1887–1944). In: Bernhard Diestelkamp, ​​Michael Stolleis (eds.): Lawyers at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Baden-Baden 1989, pp. 171-186.
• Michael Grüttner : Biographical lexicon on National Socialist science policy. Heidelberg 2004, p. 90.
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Erich later: “Villa Waigner”: Hanns Martin Schleyer and the German elite of extermination in Prague 1939–1945. KVV concrete, 2009, ISBN 978-3-93078657-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich Klausing in the catalog of the German National Library
• Klausing, Friedrich Hermann. Hessian biography. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Louis Lange (Ed.): Kyffhäuser Association of German Student Associations. Address book 1931. Berlin 1931, p. 111.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Klausing, Friedrich Hermann. Hessian biography. (As of February 28, 2013). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Johannes Bähr, Ralf Banken (ed.): Economic control through law under National Socialism: Studies on the development of economic law in the intervention state of the “Third Reich”. Frankfurt am Main 2006, p. 471.
4. ^ Hans Lemberg (Ed.): Universities in National Competition. On the history of the Prague universities in the 19th and 20th centuries (= publications of the Collegium Carolinum , Volume 86). Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56392-0 , p. 188.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Bernd Rüthers: Traitor, chance hero or conscience of the nation? Facets of the resistance in Germany. Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3161497513 , p. 40f.
6. ^ Erich later: "Villa Waigner": Hanns Martin Schleyer and the German extermination elite in Prague 1939–1945. KVV concrete, 2009, ISBN 978-3-93078657-2 . P. 52.
7. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 313.
8. ^ Erich later: "Villa Waigner": Hanns Martin Schleyer and the German extermination elite in Prague 1939–1945. KVV concrete, 2009, ISBN 978-3-93078657-2 . P. 50ff.
9. ^ Erich later: "Villa Waigner": Hanns Martin Schleyer and the German extermination elite in Prague 1939–1945. KVV concrete, 2009, ISBN 978-3-93078657-2 , p. 58ff.
10. ^ Erich later: "Villa Waigner": Hanns Martin Schleyer and the German extermination elite in Prague 1939–1945. KVV concrete, 2009, ISBN 978-3-93078657-2 . P. 53ff.
11. ↑ Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center
12. ^ Erich later: "Villa Waigner": Hanns Martin Schleyer and the German extermination elite in Prague 1939–1945. KVV concrete, 2009, ISBN 978-3-93078657-2 , p. 58ff.
13. ↑ Bernd Rüthers: Traitor, chance hero or conscience of the nation? Facets of the resistance in Germany. Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3161497513 , p. 47.