Isaac Wolffson

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Isaac Wolffson.

Isaac Wolffson (born January 19, 1817 in Hamburg ; died October 12, 1895 there ) was a German politician and lawyer .

Wolffson was the son of the teacher and merchant Meyer Wolffson, who belonged to the reform-oriented temple association . He first attended the Israelitische Freischule and later switched to the learned school of the Johanneum , where he passed the Abitur. After studying law in Heidelberg , Berlin and Göttingen , he returned to his home town of Hamburg in 1838. After his promotion to Doctor of Law in 1839, he applied for admission to the bar, which was denied him because he as a Jew could not acquire citizenship. However, this was a prerequisite for admission to the legal profession and other state-related professions. Since the professional representation before the commercial court was free of admission, he shifted himself mainly to this area of ​​law and had briefs in other legal matters signed by an approved Christian colleague. In 1845 Wolffson took part in the founding of the Society for Social and Political Interests of the Jews , of which he was soon one of the leading figures. Although he was not allowed to practice law, he took part in the first German Lawyers' Conference in Hamburg in 1846 and was a member of the conference committee as secretary. When the Association of Hamburg Lawyers was founded in the same year as a result of the Lawyers' Conference, he was one of the founding members.

At the beginning of 1848 Wolffson had already taken over the editing of the politically liberal Neue Hamburger Blätter . During the March Revolution in 1848 , Wolffson was elected to the Hamburg Constituent Assembly , a kind of pre-parliament that was dissolved again in 1850. A constitutional amendment in 1849 meant that Hamburg's Jewish citizens were largely given equal status. Wolffson was admitted to the bar and practiced with great success. In addition, he began to become increasingly involved in the self-government of the Jewish community and was a member of its board from 1853 to 1868.

From 1859 to 1889 Wolffson was a member of the Hamburg Parliament , where he joined the right-wing faction . From 1861 to 1863 he was president of the citizenship and thus the first Jew in Germany to hold such a position. From 1871 to 1881 Wolffson was a member of the German Reichstag for the National Liberal Party . In 1875/76 he was a member of the commission for the drafting of the Reich Justice Laws and from 1890 on the commission for the second reading of the civil code . In 1879 he was elected the first president of the Hanseatic Bar Association for Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen. In his honor, a bust of Wolffson was placed in the second honorary niche in the vestibule of the Higher Regional Court building on October 12, 1928 - opposite the bust of Ernst Friedrich Sieveking .

family

Cushion stone Isaac Wolffson family grave Ohlsdorf

Isaac Wolffson was married. His wife worked as a volunteer inspector in a Charlotte Paulsen custody facility . The couple had three daughters and one son. His wife and children Martha and Helene died at a young age. The daughter Agnes Wolffson accompanied her father on his travels to Berlin and after his death donated the inherited fortune for charitable purposes. His son, the lawyer Albert Wolffson (1847–1913) was a member of the Hamburg parliament for thirty years and one of the leading politicians there.

Isaac Wolffson was buried in the area of ​​the Wolffson family grave in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, grid square S 11 (near chapel 1).

literature

Web links

Commons : Isaac Wolffson  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Renate Hauschild-Thiessen: Wolffson, Agnes . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 1 . Christians, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7672-1364-8 , pp. 351-352 .
  2. ↑ Celebrity Graves
personal data
SURNAME Wolffson, Isaac
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and politician (NLP), MdHB, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1895
Place of death Hamburg