Hans Nathan (lawyer)

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Hans Nathan (2nd from left to right) with the Globke trial observer, Crown Attorney Denis Nowell Pritt, on July 11, 1963 in (East) Berlin

Hans Nathan (born December 2, 1900 in Görlitz , † September 12, 1971 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer and legal scholar.

Live and act

Nathan grew up in Görlitz in a Jewish family as the son of the lawyer Albert Nathan and later notary, who was awarded the honorary title of counselor around 1907 . After graduating from high school in Görlitz and six months of military service, Hans Nathan studied law in Berlin, Marburg, Munich and Breslau from 1919 to 1921 . He received his doctorate from the University of Wroclaw with the dissertation The Fraudulent Evidence of a Judgment and completed his legal preparatory service, the legal traineeship , in his hometown and in Wroclaw. After passing the assessor exam , he worked from 1922 to 1924 in his father's law firm in Görlitz am Postplatz . From 1925 to 1933 he worked on an equal footing as an independent lawyer sharing an office with his father in his father's villa, Postplatz 6, and another lawyer with a doctorate who was also a notary. Since 1928 the young lawyer Nathan belonged to the German State Party , of which the later CDU politician Otto Nuschke was a member.

Because of his descent and possible persecution by National Socialism in March 1933 , Nathan emigrated to Prague . There he founded a publishing house, not least to publish publications for Germany. He was co-editor of Die Weltbühne . In the course of 1939 he and his family fled to England via Poland and Sweden . He was interned there for three months in 1940. In Manchester , Nathan worked, among other things, as a bus driver and was employed by the Manchester Transport Authority until 1946. In 1942 he was a founding member of the FDJ in Manchester. He was co-founder of the Free German Cultural Association and a group of the National Committee Free Germany (NKFD), which Gottfried Hamacher counts as part of the Free German movement founded in Great Britain . In Manchester he worked with the British politician of the Labor Party and later member of the House of Commons Frank Julian Allaun (1913-2002), to whom he wrote a letter in 1962 in connection with the death of the border soldier Peter Göring (1940-1962) The GDR wrote propaganda “to maintain peace” and in it primarily called for a “sensible settlement of the West Berlin problem ”.

On September 4, 1946, Nathan returned to Germany and took up residence in what was then the four- sector city ​​of Berlin. On the recommendation of Karl Polak (1905–1963) he turned to the lawyers Ernst Melsheimer and Hilde Benjamin and he became a lecturer in the legislative department of the German Justice Administration in the Soviet occupation zone under Eugen Schiffer (1860–1954), who was also once the DDP had listened to. After the founding of the GDR in 1949, Nathan became head of the “Main Legislation Department” in the Ministry of Justice under Minister Max Fechner (1892–1973) and President of the Judicial Examination Office. In 1952/53 he worked as editor-in-chief of the trade journal Neue Justiz . Since October 1, 1952, he also worked as a full professor for civil, family and civil procedural law. From 1954 to 1962 he was Dean of the Law Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin . In this role, Nathan honored the “regional rabbi of the GDR and Greater Berlin” Martin Riesenburger (1896–1965) with an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Law. In 1963 he became director of the Institute for Inventors and Copyright Law, which he founded as a civil lawyer. Nathan had dealt with patent law since 1951. He retired in 1966. Nathan, who was interested in culture, was particularly committed to the town hall concerts as an emeritus in his home district of Berlin-Pankow . The love of music had its origins in the family home, where he received piano lessons. At private social gatherings, he still played this instrument in old age. In the spring of 1971, he promoted the concert on April 23rd in the Pankower Ratsaal , when an illness was already tying him to bed. Like many scientists and artists, Nathan recently lived in a single-family house in the so-called intelligence settlement in Schönholz , a location in the west of the Berlin district of Niederschönhausen, at Street 201 , where the writer Irmgard Litten was temporarily based and also the historian and writer Heinz Kamnitzer as did the rector of the Humboldt University Walther Neye , afterwards professor for West German and foreign civil law, lived. Before that, after returning from emigration, he lived in an apartment building on Pankower Kavalierstrasse . Nathan cultivated existing family ties to West Berlin , England and the USA , with his "western relatives" being seen as a reason for his removal from the GDR's Ministry of Justice.

Nathan died in 1971 in Berlin-Pankow after a long and severe suffering . He left behind his wife Marianne, née Staat (* 1900 in Löwenberg / Silesia ), with whom he had been married since 1925, and two daughters: Susanne Thompson and Sabine Nathan (* 1929). The latter received her doctorate in 1962 as Dr. phil. at the Humboldt University of Berlin with a study of the popularity and literary value of the Barsetshire series by the English writer Anthony Trollope (1815–1882), based on the literary and critical standards of the 19th century. From 1971 to 1975 she worked as a university lecturer for English language and literature at the University of Rostock and then her center of life was back in Berlin, where on June 27, 1996 she gave the historian Ute Schneider information about her father's work, especially in the early GDR . Sabine Nathan celebrated her 80th birthday in May 2009.

Awards

  • Patriotic Order of Merit (VVO) in bronze (1959), silver and gold (1971). Nathan received the Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver in 1960 as Dean of the Law Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin.
  • Banner der Arbeit (1965) as professor with chair and director of the Institute for Inventors and Copyright Law of the Law Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin, in particular for his "self-sacrificing work in teaching and education in the field of political and legal research and the Legislation".
  • Medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945 (1958)
  • Honorary citizenship of the city of Görlitz on June 12, 1971 on the occasion of the 900th anniversary of Görlitz

Works (selection)

  • The fraudulent creeping of a judgment
  • Legal force and fraudulent judgment creeping . In: Neue Justiz , born 1953, p. 447
  • The civil procedure law of the German Democratic Republic
  • Inventor and innovator rights of the German Democratic Republic

Literature (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Andreas Herbst :  Nathan, Hans . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  2. ^ Address book for Görlitz and suburbs , Volume 1930/31, Department III, p. 93, column 3, see Postplatz 6; Digitized SLUB Dresden
  3. ↑ Hamacher, Gottfried : Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement , Berlin 2005, p. 151: "Nathan, Hans"; ISBN 978-3-320-02941-8
  4. ↑ Compare also Frank Allaun in the English language Wikipedia
  5. ↑ Neues Deutschland , May 28, 1962, p. 2
  6. ↑ Ute Schneider : The German unified lawyer in the early GDR. Formation of elites in building the GDR justice system . In: Archive for Social History , Vol. 39 (1999), pp. (235-264) 248.
  7. ↑ Neues Deutschland , December 3, 1954, p. 6
  8. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , June 17, 1961, p. 2
  9. ↑ Hans Nathan: Meaningful control of patent use , in: Neue Zeit , March 28, 1951, p. 5
  10. ↑ Neues Deutschland, April 8, 1971, p. 8
  11. ^ Telephone book for the capital of the German Democratic Republic, 1972 edition ; P. 374 column 3
  12. ↑ Telephone book for the capital of the German Democratic Republic, 1972 edition , p. 380, column 3
  13. ^ Official telephone book for Berlin , 1950 edition; III. List of participants Berlin, p. 323 column 5
  14. ^ Wentker, Hermann : Justiz in der SBZ / GDR 1945-1953 , Munich 2001, p. 280; ISBN 978-3-486-56544-7
  15. ↑ Official obituary notice of the Humboldt University in Berlin and obituary notice of the Nathan family in: Tageszeitung Neues Deutschland , September 16, 1971, p. 8
  16. ↑ Dirk Breithaupt:  Nathan, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 745 ( digitized version ).
  17. ↑ Title of the doctoral thesis: The Popularity and literary value of Anthony Trollopes' Barsetshire Series related to the literary and critical standards of the nineteenth century ; DNB 481869867
  18. ^ Entry on Sabine Nathan in the Catalogus Professorum RostochiensiumTemplate: CPR / Maintenance / CPR ID is missing in Wikidata
  19. ↑ According to telephone books, e.g. B. According to editions for 1979, 1989, 1991, Nathan, Sabine Dr. at Rathausstrasse 13 in Berlin-Mitte
  20. ↑ Berliner Zeitung, April 28, 1971, p. 2
  21. ^ Neue Zeit , November 12, 1960, p. 1
  22. ^ Neues Deutschland, December 14, 1965, p. 2
  23. ↑ Neues Deutschland , September 16, 1971, p. 8
  24. ↑ The city council of the city of Görlitz can grant honorary citizenship to persons who have made a special contribution to the development of the city or the well-being of its citizens. Honorary citizenship is the highest honor the city has to bestow. Görlitz honorary citizen
  25. ↑ Law and political science dissertation, Breslau 1922; DNB 570947383
  26. ↑ Author collective under the direction of Hans Nathan, 2 volumes, Berlin 1957 and 1958; DNB 455830711
  27. ↑ Author collective under the direction of Hans Nathan, 2 volumes, Berlin 1968; DNB 456555668

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Nathan, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and legal scholar
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Goerlitz
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1971
Place of death Berlin