Fritz Friedmann (lawyer)

Fritz Friedmann (1908)

Karl Edmund Friedrich Friedmann , pseudonym Erich Hohenziel (born October 19, 1852 in Berlin ; † September 1, 1915 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf ) was a German lawyer , writer and publicist . He provided the model for the lawyer Breslauer in the Buddenbrooks of Thomas Mann .

Life

Friedmann was the son of a manor owner . He studied law in Berlin and Heidelberg . In 1880 he was accredited as a lawyer at the Berlin I Regional Court . He soon made a name for himself as a speaker with polished language and a brilliant criminal defense attorney. He was the first German criminal defense attorney to become known nationwide and was involved in numerous sensational trials. One of his best known cases was the Kotze affair , in which he obtained an acquittal for his schoolmate, the master of ceremonies Leberecht von Kotze . Friedmann claimed in his autobiography that during his 15-year career as a lawyer he defended about 22,000 people, about two-thirds of whom were acquitted. However, this information was questioned as it would have meant 4–5 defenses per working day. As a prominent Jew , Friedmann was a target of anti-Semitic propaganda .

Friedmann, however, had two vices - gambling and women. He ran into horrific debts and in 1895 fled to Paris with a lover from his creditors and accusations of perjury and embezzlement . He was expelled from the bar in a court of honor . He was arrested, extradited, and tried in Berlin on June 24, 1896. With a plea on his own behalf, Friedmann managed to convince the court of his innocence.

Hermann Staub commented on Friedmann's escape in the German legal journal :

“Its full effectiveness has confirmed the sad old experience that genius and recklessness so often pair. Friedmann remained true to his peculiarity from beginning to end: he was a meteor in the forensic sky, and meteors suddenly disappear. "

- Hermann Staub : DJZ 1896

Friedmann, who had also made himself unpopular with a revelatory book about Kaiser Wilhelm II , first moved back to Paris, then to New York City in 1898 and to Brussels in 1900 . Here he founded an "International Legal Bureau" and the magazine Der neue Kurs: a weekly for trade, commerce and finance . In 1901 he moved back to Paris with his magazine and married a wealthy American there.

His request to get expelled from the bar was rejected in 1912.

Literary reception

In February 1890, Friedmann defended Emil Biermann, the director of the Lübeck fire insurance company, who was accused of falsifying accounts and fraud, before the Lübeck Regional Court . Biermann, who was sentenced to two years in prison, was married to Alice geb. Haag, a cousin of the then 14-year-old Thomas Mann. The process served as a model for the Hugo Weinschenk episode in the novel Buddenbrooks , in which the man met foreign star lawyer Dr. Breslauer can appear.

Publications

• Fritz Friedmann: On the election site of life. Novel. , Leipzig 1881.
• Fritz Friedmann: Repetition of the German Reich Legislation. (excluding trade, bills of exchange and criminal law, as well as the Reich justice laws). , Berlin 1882.
• Fritz Friedmann: About the jury courts. A parallel to the treatise by Ō. S. "Against the jury courts". Dressel, Berlin 1886.
• Fritz Friedmann: The publicity of the court hearings, their advantages and damages. From Fritz Friedmann. Heine, Berlin 1887.
• Fritz Friedmann: Crime and Illness in the Novel and on the Stage. Published by Karl Wiesenthal, Berlin (1889).
• Fritz Friedmann: The true lessons of the Heinze'schen process for the administration of morals and justice… . H. Lazarus, Berlin 1891.
• Fritz Friedmann (Ed.): Das Reichsgesetz, re. The installment business with a dogmatic-historical introduction and commentary by Fritz Friedmann. Helwing, Hanover 1894.
• Fritz Friedmann: The Reich Usury Law in the version of the usury law amendment of June 19, 1893. Gerstmann, Berlin 1894.
• Georg Davidsohn: Fritz Friedmann on Wilhelm II, the French, 'the little penal code', himself, etc. 3rd edition. M. Günther, Berlin 1896.
• Fritz Friedmann: Authentic revelations of a longtime confidante. Fritzsche, Hamburg 1896.
• Fritz Friedmann: The German Kaiser and the Hofkamarilla. C. Schmidt, Zurich 1896.
• Fritz Friedmann: L'empereur Guillaume II et la révolution par en haut. P. Ollendorff, Paris 1896.
• Fritz Friedmann: Forced leisure. Experiences and thoughts of a prisoner. German original edition. With the portrait of the author and his signature. 2nd edition, Zurich 1897.
• Fritz Friedmann: Legal frills. Allotria and Histörchen. Schmidt, Zurich 1897.
• Fritz Friedmann: What am I allowed to do? The citizen's right u. Protection; A handb. F. Anyone. Meusser Messer & Ko, Berlin 1897.
• Fritz Friedmann: The right to pardon. Old and new, from life and the Reichstag. Bermühler, Berlin 1902.
• Fritz Friedmann: A fallen woman. Artist novel. Verl. Continent, Berlin 1903.
• Fritz Friedmann: Legal action in contrast to legal transaction under common law and the German Civil Code. C. Hinstorff, Rostock 1903.
• Fritz Friedmann: The fight against the defense. E. Study from d. Criminal courtroom. Continent, Berlin 1905.
• Fritz Friedmann: Ilonka. Continent, Berlin 1906.
• Fritz Friedmann: Hau is not a stubborn murderer! 1st edition. A. Pulvermacher & co, Berlin 1907.
• Fritz Friedmann: What I experienced! Vol. 1-2. Pulvermacher, Berlin 1908. (In 1911 a "new revised edition" appeared with the title addition: Memoirs .)
  • Vol. 1: 1852-1895.
  • Vol. 2: 1896-1909.
• Fritz Friedmann: Germany-France and Kaiser Wilhelm II. A study of nations. Alfred Pulvermacher & Co, Berlin 1912.
• Fritz Friedmann: The Art of Defense. Theory and Practice. Pulvermacher, Berlin 1915.
• Fritz Friedmann and Kurt Selten: The Art of Defense and Forensic Speech. A. Pulvermacher & co, Berlin 1927.

literature

• Tobias C. Bringmann: Reichstag and duel. The duel question as an internal political conflict in the German Empire 1871-1918 . Freiburg 1996, ISBN 3-8107-2249-9 .
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography , Vol. 2, Chernivtsi 1926.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ registry office Wilmersdorf, Death No 1188/1915.. State Archives Berlin.
2. ↑ Fritz Freidmann: What I experienced! 1. Volume 1852–1895, Pulvermacher, Berlin 1908, p. 410
3. ↑ Martin Drucker in Juristic Wochenschrift 56 (1927), p. 357, quoted in: Karsten Blöcker: Tatort Königstrasse 5. “The thing with Biermann” - a business crime or Tony Buddenbrook's third marriage. In: Alken Bruns (ed.): The car. Lübeck contributions to culture and society. Hansisches Verlagkontor, Lübeck 2006, p. 25 (note 85).
4. ↑ Tillmann Krach: The lawyer Hermann Staub - a spotlight . In: Thomas Henne, Rainer Schröder, Jan Thiessen (Eds.): Lawyer - Commentator - 'Discoverer'. Festschrift for Hermann Staub for his 150th birthday on March 21, 2006. Berlin 2006, p. 4
5. ↑ Karsten Blöcker: Tatort Königstrasse 5. “The thing with Biermann” - a business crime story or Tony Buddenbrook's third marriage. In: Alken Bruns (ed.): The car. Lübeck contributions to culture and society. Hansisches Verlagkontor, Lübeck 2006, pp. 7-26.