Hugo Carl Georg Bruns

Hugo Carl Georg Bruns (born December 8, 1890 in Kiel , † February 27, 1931 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer.

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Hugo Carl Georg Bruns was a son of the philologist Ivo Bruns and his wife Henny, nee Rühle. He grew up in Kiel, where his father taught, attended school there and enrolled in a history course at Kiel University. After one semester, he switched to law studies, but also dealt with historical and philosophical topics afterwards. He heard from Erich Kaufmann , who left Kiel in 1913. He then continued his studies in Freiburg and Bonn and then went to Königsberg, where he attended Kaufmann's lectures.

Bruns was partially paralyzed due to an illness suffered in his youth and therefore served as a civil servant in East Prussia and Flanders during the First World War . He continued his studies in Königsberg in 1919, where he worked with Kaufmann the following year on the "change of nationality and the option in the Versailles Peace Treaty" for a doctorate. jur. PhD. In March 1920 he married Hedwig Brodrück, with whom he had three daughters.

Bruns had actually wanted to embark on a scientific career. Due to the experiences during the war, however, he decided to do practical civil service. During his studies he had already dealt in particular with aspects of international law. In the following years he devoted himself to the problems of minorities in constitutional and international law. In 1919/1920 he worked as a shop steward and legal advisor to the German People's Council in Poznan and West Prussia. During this time he was occasionally engaged as a liaison between Germans resident in the assigned areas and the departments in Berlin. Contacts that the family had with the ministerial bureaucracy helped him.

From 1923 Bruhn headed the secretariat of the Association of German Minorities in Europe . He also advised the German ethnic groups represented in the association on legal issues. He traveled a lot, familiarizing himself with individual problems. He spent most of his working time at international congresses and meetings dealing with minority politics. Mostly he advised German delegates from abroad. For this reason, he published little scientifically, but instead wrote numerous petitions and filed suits with the International Court of Justice . He wrote memoranda, essays, newspaper articles and draft laws and thus had a decisive influence on the opinion-forming of the Berlin ministries, especially the Foreign Office, in discussions on domestic German minority law between 1924 and 1928.

Bruns made his judgments in a national and party-political way. As an expert in international law, he presented the actual legal political options of the German minorities. His texts, which mostly appeared in the journal Nation und Staat , show a competent author who worked with political judgment. Due to the negative position of the League of Nations against Germany, he expressed himself sharply several times and pointed out that this could provoke harsh reactions and legally and politically untenable claims by the Germans against the countries in which they lived as a minority.

literature

• Heinz Münzmaier: Bruns, Hugo Carl Georg . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , pages 53-55.