Fritz Valentin

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Fritz Valentin (born August 6, 1897 in Hamburg ; † January 2, 1984 Wedel ) was a German judge . By refusing to prosecute homosexuals , he wrote legal history in 1951 with the so-called three-mark judgment .

Live and act

1897 to 1918

Fritz Valentin was born in Hamburg at the end of the 19th century. His father Albert was a secular living Jew. Valentine's mother, Emma, ​​came from a Jewish- Catholic family. She was Protestant . Valentin had three siblings; Eva, Curt and Albert. Like them, he was baptized .

Fritz Valentin's father worked as a doctor in the Hamburg district of St. Georg . Valentin attended the Johanneum's school for scholars .

At the beginning of the First World War , at the age of 16, he volunteered for military service. Valentin fought on the western front for four years . First as a soldier without command and control , later as an officer.

1918 to 1933

After the end of the war, Valentin enrolled at the Hamburg University, which was newly founded in 1919 . At first he studied archeology and ancient Indo-European languages , but later turned to law. In 1922 he passed the first and in 1924 the second state examination in law.

Valentin became a public prosecutor, in 1927 a criminal judge at the district court and in 1933 an examining magistrate at the regional court for criminal matters and disciplinary matters of non-judicial officials.

In 1923 he married.

1933 to 1946

The front-line soldiers privilege allowed him after the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 initially continue to act as judges. However, he lost his function as a disciplinary judge.

After Valentin defended himself in writing against the defamation of the Jews by the National Socialists in Germany, he was given leave of absence and finally forced into retirement. He stuck to the fight against anti-Semitism with the written word.

In 1939 Valentin emigrated to England with his wife Cili (Cäcilie) and their children Ursula, Renate and Eva. The attempt to go into exile in the United States had previously failed . In Croydon the family lived in financially modest circumstances.

In April 1945 Valentin got a job in a special unit made up of German lawyers. Their task was to familiarize English officers with the German legal system.

In 1946 Valentin returned to Hamburg from exile. In the Hanseatic city he resumed his work as a judge and exercised this until 1964.

From 1946

Three marks judgment

The 1951 “three-mark judgment” of Valentins caused a stir . As a judge, he had to make a final decision in the second instance on the sentence for two men who had been sentenced to eight months in prison for homosexual activity under Section 175 of the Criminal Code . Valentin reduced the sentence to the minimum sentence of one day in prison or three German marks . The reasoning for the verdict was that although both men had to be punished according to the law, the injustice of their deeds was to be assessed as minor. The verdict was a scolding against the law. Valentin argued that the law imposed restrictions on the defendants that men who were sexually otherwise inclined would not be placed. The required suppression of the sex drive is a great hardship. Valentin concluded with a plea for an extensive revision of the law. Sexual acts between men should normally not be criminalized. 18 years later, in 1969, the law was changed; almost as Valentin suggested in his judgment in the early 1950s.

Evangelical Academy Hamburg

From 1950 Valentin participated in the work of the Evangelical Academy Hamburg . He gave lectures and led events on legal topics. "He played his part in the Hamburg academy gaining a reputation as a 'left academy'."

literature

  • Ursula Büttner : Fritz Valentin. Jewish persecuted, judge and Christian. A biography (= contributions to the history of Hamburg. Vol. 66). Wallstein, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 3-8353-1988-4 .
  • To Dr. Fritz Valentin as a judge and 'churchman' . In: Uwe Gleßmer / Emmerich Jäger: On the history of the origin of the community in Klein Borstel and the Maria Magdalenen church as a building and work of art by the architects Hopp and Jäger with the painter Hermann Junker . Books on Demand , Norderstedt 2016, ISBN 978-3-739244167 , pp. 132-136.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Valentin , accessed on August 22, 2018.
  2. ↑ Fritz Valentin: Persecution and Exile as Formative Experience , p. 14 , accessed on August 22, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Valentin, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German judge
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH 2nd January 1984
Place of death Hamburg