Hans Deutsch (Lawyer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans Deutsch (born April 17, 1906 in Vienna , Austria ; † May 13, 2002 in Lausanne , Switzerland ) was an Austrian lawyer who came from a Jewish family. When the Germans occupied Austria in 1938, the Jews were immediately persecuted, including the Germans. Hans managed to get into exile while his parents were murdered in Auschwitz. After the end of National Socialism, Deutsch was a well-known lawyer in redress cases in Germany and Austria. He was also a successful publisher.

Life

In 1938, Deutsch managed to flee abroad and ended up in Palestine , where he worked as a lawyer. He did not return to Vienna until 15 years later. In Austria and Germany, as a successful lawyer for reparations , he represented the interests of mostly Jewish victims of the Nazi dictatorship and, among other things, demanded the return of stolen art objects. In his most famous case, he had received large compensation for the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family. He ran the Hans-Deutsch-Verlag , a renowned literary publisher. According to Spiegel , he was "the most committed and successful champion of hope, entitlement and demands on the front line of compensation for victims of National Socialist persecution" .

Hans Deutsch collected art in the post-war period. In 1964 he and his son Joram founded the “Fondation Deutsch” art foundation and built a private museum “Musée Fondation Deutsch” at his residence in Belmont-sur-Lausanne . It is now closed again.

The German affair

In 1964 he was arrested for allegedly falsified evidence about the Hungarian Hatvany collection (Budapest) and his house in Lausanne was searched by German officials. The pictures were not, as Deutsch wanted to prove, robbed by the SS , but by the Soviet troops. Opponents were the former SS-Untersturmführer and later President of the Federal Criminal Police Office (1965–1971) Paul Dickopf , Ernst Féaux de la Croix from the Federal Ministry of Finance (before 1945 Reich Ministry of Justice) and the Federal Minister of Finance Rolf Dahlgrün , formerly NSDAP. The witnesses against German came from Nazi and SS circles who would have benefited from existing Hungarian booty. After 18 months of pre-trial detention and 9 years of legal battle, the proceedings ended with an acquittal for German. This was restricted in the second instance and he received no compensation because he himself contributed to the detention through his behavior. In addition, it had been established in the court hearings that the statements made by the Hatvany heirs, which Deutsch had presented to the court, that the collection of paintings had been stolen by the Germans, were false. The Hatvanys' witnesses appointed for this purpose had sworn perjuries.

After that, Deutsch was a broken man and fought over his rehabilitation until the end of his life. In 1995, some pictures from the Hatvany Collection were exhibited in the Looted Art Exhibition in the Moscow Pushkin Museum. In 2003 El Greco's "Mount Sinai" reappeared in New York. This picture has demonstrably never been in Russia and was sold with false expertise at Sotheby’s in Greece. Thus, this picture had been stolen by German and not by Soviet troops. It triggered a renewed discussion about whether Deutsch had been deliberately denounced by former SS members and their heirs, who are in possession of the stolen pictures. Hans Deutsch's son, Joram Deutsch, filed a lawsuit against the German state in the USA. In 2005 the case became the subject of a documentary.

literature

  • Kurt Emmenegger: Der Fall Deutsch: Facts about a judicial scandal, 1789 Editions, New Haven (Connecticut); Zurich 1970
  • Anja Heuss : Scattered to West and East - The Three Stories of the Hatvany Collection . In the journal Osteuropa 1–2 / 2006 with the title Art in Conflict - Consequences of War and Fields of Cooperation in Europe . Pp. 85-110.
  • Jürgen Lillteicher , Robbery, Law and Restitution. The Restitution of Jewish Property in the Early Federal Republic . Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0134-4 , here section: Fraud and Corruption in Refunds - The Hatvany Case . Pp. 453-460.
  • Burkhart List: The German Affair. Brown networks behind the biggest looted art scandal . Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-360-01337-8

documentary

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Mauz: I think I wasn't very petty , Der Spiegel , October 30, 1972
  2. ↑ DER SPIEGEL 15/1966: "AFFAIR GERMAN - Bigger Fish - REPUTATION"
  3. ↑ Gunnar Schnabel, Monika Tatzkow : Nazi Looted Art. Manual. Art restitution worldwide , Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-00-019368-2 , p. 408 f.
personal data
SURNAME German, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 2002
Place of death Lausanne , Switzerland