Hans Schnitzlein

Hans Richard Josef Schnitzlein (-Rothenberg) (born September 28, 1898 in Mannheim ; † September 29, 1969 in São Paulo ) was a German-Brazilian lawyer. Among other things, he was the initiator of the German-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce.

Life and activity

Schnitzlein was born the son of a doctor. He took the name Schnitzlein in 1919 after it was adopted by a police officer.

Immediately after graduating from high school in 1918, Schnitzlein took part in the First World War with the Bavarian Army . In 1919 he participated as a member of the Freikorps Epp in the smashing of the Munich Soviet Republic . During 1919 he acted as a liaison for the Bamberg government as a liaison to the Thule Society . At the end of 1919 retired as a lieutenant from the army. He then started studying law at Munich University . In 1921 he received his doctorate with a thesis on police law in Würzburg Dr. jur. Schnitzlein passed the great state examination in law in 1924 and was admitted to Munich in 1925.

In 1923 and 1924, Schnitzlein was involved in the Palatinate resistance movement against the French occupation forces in the western Rhine areas of the German Empire and against the separatist efforts of parts of the population in these areas.

In 1924 Schnitzlein joined the office of the Munich attorney Otto Leibrecht on Karlsplatz as a salaried attorney . In 1925 he switched to the service of Munich Reinsurance, for which he was to work until 1938, most recently as head of department and authorized signatory. After the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Schnitzlein found himself in increasing distress due to his "Jewish" descent: he resigned his admission as a lawyer on April 25, 1933 as part of a "waiver". At the end of 1938 he emigrated to Brazil via Switzerland. There he initially worked for a construction company before he was able to work as a legal advisor and attorney, most recently as a partner in a law firm in São Paulo (together with Heinrich Rheinbach ).

After the Second World War, Schnitzlein began to be politically active: at his instigation, the German-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce was founded in August 1948. The first president of this body was the later Brazilian president João Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo , while Schnitzlein became managing director and from 1951 also vice-president. As managing director or executive vice-president, he headed the Chamber of Commerce for more than twenty years. In addition to its economic and political importance, the Chamber of Commerce was also of great political importance from 1948 to 1951, when it was one of the most important political intermediaries between the two countries, as there was no German embassy in Brazil during those years. As a result of the ever-intensifying industrial relations between Brazil and the Federal Republic of Germany, the Chamber of Commerce was renamed the German-Brazilian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (Camera de Industria e Comercio) in the 1960s and its range of activities was expanded accordingly. In addition, after the war, Schnitzlein emerged as the initiator of the Quaker aid for German children organized from Brazil.

In 1960, Schnitzlein was symbolically restored to practice as a lawyer in Munich, who an obituary describes as "a mixture of a daredevil and a poetically inclined aesthetician".

family

Schnitzlein was married to Lotte Nobiling since 1942.

Archival material

An officer personnel file on Schnitzlein from the time of the First World War has been preserved in the Bavarian Main State Archives (OP 28356). There is also a personal file for his stepfather (OP 58642). Furthermore a print memories from the First World War and the post-war years . The personnel file for Schnitzlein as a lawyer is in the Bavarian Ministry of Justice (MJu PA Schn 340).

Fonts

• The police force of Bavaria. Taking into account their relationship with the Entente and the police forces of Italy and France. As of January 1921 , 1921.
• Memories from World War I and the post-war years , see p. l. e. a.

literature

• Hartmut Fröschle: The Germans in Latin America: Fate and Achievement , 1979.
• Reinhard Weber: The fate of the Jewish lawyers in Bavaria after 1933 , Munich 2006, p. 256.
• "Dr. Hans Schnitzlein, a man of action", in: Intercâmbio. Vozes alemans, Vozes brasileiras , 1973, pp. 56f.
• Paperback of Public Life , Vol. 11 (1961), p. 128.
• Who is who? 1967, 1771.
• Quem é quem no Brasil , Vol. 6, 1961, p. 430.