Law on Admission to the Bar

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Basic data
Title: Law on Admission to the Bar
Type: Imperial Law
Scope: German Empire
Legal matter: Administration of justice , professional law
Issued on: April 7, 1933
Entry into force on: April 10, 1933 ( RGBl. I 1933, p. 188)
Expiry: September 20, 1945 ( Control Council Act No. 1 Art I. 1. l)
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The law on admission to the bar of April 7, 1933 was intended to withdraw the admission of Jewish lawyers . Many of them, however, fulfilled the requirements of an exception regulation (“ front fighter privilege ”) demanded by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and anchored in the law , so that an unexpectedly large proportion of the anti-Semites could continue to practice their profession until 1938.

The content of the law is closely related to the law on the restoration of the civil service of the same date.

initial situation

The proportion of Jews in the German population in 1930 was around 0.76 percent. In the public sector Jews were underrepresented in the liberalized professions like business people, doctors and lawyers, their share was much larger than in the total population. Of the approximately 19,500 lawyers admitted to the bar, 4,394 were of Jewish descent (around 22%); In 1933 in large cities such as Hamburg around 32% of lawyers, and around 60% in Berlin, had at least one Jewish grandparent. More than a third of them had no ties to a Jewish religious community.

Werner Liebenthal's Prussian notary's office in Martin-Luther-Strasse (Berlin) after the boycott of Jews in 1933

As early as the beginning of March 1933, the SA and Stahlhelm began "spontaneous actions" to occupy local courts, to disrupt Jewish judges and lawyers who were involved in ongoing court proceedings and to force adjournments. The Association of National Socialist German Jurists demanded that “all Jews must completely get out of any form of legal life” and wanted to get rid of competitors who were hated as supporters of the republic, committed democrats, socialists or pacifists. On March 31, Hanns Kerrl, as Reich Commissioner for the Prussian Ministry of Justice , reacted to the “pressure from below” generated by tumultuous attacks and controlled press campaigns by ordering all Jewish public prosecutors and lawyers to submit vacation requests immediately.

The Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933 was also directed against lawyers and judges. As late as March 31, 1933, Franz Schlegelberger only planned to restrict the new admissions of Jewish lawyers. However, since Prussia, Bavaria and Baden were already implementing more comprehensive regulations, an agreement was reached on a uniform procedure across the empire. The law was passed on April 7, 1933 and promulgated on April 10.

Content of the law

“Non-Aryan” lawyers (even if they had only one Jewish grandparent) had their license withdrawn on September 30, 1933. Lawyers who had been admitted since August 1, 1914 or who were protected by the frontline fighter privilege were excluded from this provision . New registrations could also be denied to this group.

People who had “been active in the communist sense” also lost their license; New registrations were excluded.

Immediate consequences

As a result of this law, around 1,084 Jewish lawyers in Prussia , for example, lost their license. In an implementation ordinance of October 1, 1933, the Jewish colleagues who remained in the higher regional court districts there in 2009 were initially assured of “full enjoyment of professional rights”. On the other hand, professional relations with excluded Jewish lawyers were punished by the bar associations as unlawful and their employment was prohibited.

The law also affected “ quarter Jews ” from the professional ban. This definition of “non-Aryan” instead of “Jew” was far more comprehensive than the regulation later adopted under the Nuremberg Laws , in which people with only one Jewish grandparent were treated as equal to “ German blooded ”.

Later episodes

As a result of the Reich Citizenship Act passed at the Nuremberg Party Congress in 1935, all judges and public prosecutors who remained in office after the exemption in the law for the restoration of the professional civil service were retired. Any other professional activity was barred from them by a legal advice law ; Students were not allowed to study with Jewish instructors . The Jewish lawyers, who had often retained their license due to the exemption clauses, were, however, spared from being banned from practicing their profession.

At the beginning of 1938 there were still 1,753 Jews among the 17,360 lawyers admitted in the Reich. With the “Fifth Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Law” of September 27, 1938, however, its approval was revoked on November 30, 1938; transitional and exceptional regulations applied to Austria . 172 of them were admitted as "Jewish consultants " who were only authorized to represent Jews.

The consultants charged fees for the account of a compensation office, which, after deducting remuneration and costs, paid out maintenance subsidies that were revocable at any time to some Jewish lawyers who had left, so that they lost their right to public welfare.

Similar regulations, which amounted to a professional ban, were issued for tax advisors and patent attorneys . Together with the Reich Citizenship Act, this law was repealed by the Allied Control Council Act No. 1 of September 20, 1945.

literature

  • Ingo Müller : Terrible lawyers. The unresolved past of our judiciary. Kindler, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-463-40038-3 .
  • Heiko Morisse: Jewish lawyers in Hamburg. Exclusion and persecution in the Nazi state. Christian, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-7672-1418-0 ( Hamburg contributions to the history of the German Jews , 26).
  • Franz-Josef Schmit: We are displaced, exiles. Portraits of five German-Jewish lawyers from Wittlich . Paulinus, Trier 2015, ISBN 978-3-7902-1903-6 ( writings of the Emil Frank Institute , 17)
  • Bruno Blau: The exceptional right for Jews in European countries. Part 1 Germany . New York 1952. Publishing house of the general weekly newspaper of Jews in Germany, Düsseldorf 1954

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ingo Müller : Terrible lawyers. The unresolved past of our judiciary. Kindler, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-463-40038-3 , p. 67.
  2. ↑ Heiko Morisse: Jewish Lawyers in Hamburg ... , Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-7672-1418-0 , p. 12.
  3. ^ Ingo Müller : Terrible lawyers. The unresolved past of our judiciary. Kindler, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-463-40038-3 , p. 68.
  4. ^ Ingo Müller : Terrible lawyers. The unresolved past of our judiciary. Kindler, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-463-40038-3 , p. 70.
  5. ↑ Uwe Dietrich Adam: Jewish policy in the Third Reich. Unv. Reprint Düsseldorf 2003, ISBN 3-7700-4063-5 , pp. 37-40.
  6. ^ Heiko Morisse: Jewish lawyers in Hamburg. Exclusion and persecution in the Nazi state. Christian, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-7672-1418-0 , p. 18.
  7. ↑ In the name of the German people. Catalog for the exhibition of the Ministry of Justice. Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-8046-8731-8 , p. 77.
  8. ↑ RGBl. 1933 I, 699; to Ingo Müller : Terrible lawyers. The unresolved past of our judiciary. Kindler, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-463-40038-3 , p. 69 / number 2900 would have to be corrected to 2009 according to ISBN 3-8046-8731-8 , p. 77.
  9. ^ Günter Plum: Economy and working life. In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): The Jews in Germany 1933–1945. Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-33324-9 , p. 288.
  10. ↑ Susanne Heim (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection), Volume 2: German Reich 1938 – August 1939 , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , P. 18.
  11. ↑ § 14 of the 5th regulation on the RBüG: RGBl. 1938, part I, 1403.