John HE Fried

John HE Fried (born November 12, 1905 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary as Hans Ernst Fried ; † December 18, 1990 in Manhattan ) was an American political scientist and university professor of Austrian origin.

Live and act

Fried studied law and political science at the University of Vienna , where he passed his final exams in 1929. In addition, he studied one semester at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and two years in Italy. In 1930 he was promoted to Dr. iur. PhD. Fried then completed practical work at various courts and law firms and passed his bar exam in 1934. At the same time he worked as a research assistant for Arthur Lenhoff and carried out research together with him in the field of labor and collective bargaining law. Since 1933 he has served as an associate judge at the Vienna Labor Court. He also worked as a lecturer at various universities in Vienna. After his admission to the bar in 1935 Fried worked as a criminal defense lawyer in Vienna, and in July 1937 he became Paul Abel's partner . After Austria's annexation to the National Socialist German Reich and the associated fears about his Jewish origin, Fried decided to emigrate in mid-1938. He came to the USA via Switzerland and England.

In the United States, Fried became a research assistant at Max Horkheimer's Institute at Columbia University in November 1938 . Fried then also advanced his academic career there and gave a few lectures. In 1942, under the supervision of Lindsay Rogers , he received his Ph.D. in public law with a thesis on German militarism in World War I and the Weimar period. PhD. Hans Speier , whose assistant Fried had become at the beginning of the 1940s , also assisted in the supervision . In his dissertation, Fried took the standpoint of a “functional regionalism”, according to which functional territorial entities could cross national borders. This model was not widely used before the Second World War, but it was more widespread afterwards, as was the case with the ECSC , among others .

In 1943 Fried followed his doctoral supervisor Rogers to the ILO , which had moved from Geneva to Montreal because of the war in Europe. In 1944, Fried became an American citizen in New York and then returned to Canada. His book The Exploitation of Foreign Labor by Germany , which he wrote there, formed a source basis for the Nuremberg trials . Fried took part in these from 1947 as an advisor to the US War Department and later became a special advisor to the US judges. He extensively documented his work and the results of the processes in several reports. From 1950 Fried worked for the United Nations . In addition to this activity, which led him to Nepal as a consultant from 1964 to 1966 and to Somalia from 1966 to 1970, Fried worked as a university professor. First he was Adjunct Professor at City College of the City University of New York , later he became a full professor at Lehman College there . In 1976 he retired. As he got older, Fried became more and more pacifist. He was an opponent of the Vietnam War and later joined the anti-nuclear movement , for which he worked as legal advisor.

On December 18, 1990, Fried died of heart failure in his Manhattan home.

Fonts (selection)

• The guilt of the German army , MacMillan, 1943 (dissertation)
• The Significance of Democracy: Constitutional Developments and Labor Relations in Austria , 1944
• The Exploitation of Foreign Labor by Germany , International Labor Organization, 1945
• Slave Labor and Deportation. Analysis of the Nurnberg War Crimes Trials 1945-1949 , 1950

literature

• Ernst C. Stiefel, Frank Mecklenburg: German lawyers in American exile (1933–1950) . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1991, ISBN 978-3-16-145688-6 , p. 91-93 .

Web links

• John HE Fried Papers, 1911-1990

Individual evidence

1. ^ New York Times, December 22, 1990, p. 33