Josef Neuberger

Josef Neuberger (born October 11, 1902 in Antwerp , † January 12, 1977 in Düsseldorf ) was a German lawyer and politician ( SPD ).

Life

Neuberger came from a Jewish family living in Rheinbach near Bonn . He studied law and economics in Cologne , received his doctorate in 1925 with the work The Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Council Republic and finished his studies in 1929 with the first and in 1933 with the second state examination. As a Jew, he was expelled from the bar by the National Socialists after 1933. Neuberger was engaged to the German lawyer Charlotte Juchacz until 1933/34.

During the November pogroms of 1938 , Neuberger was seriously injured by Nazi henchmen, whereupon he emigrated to Palestine via the Netherlands and began studying law there again. His wife Ilse, who ran a small guesthouse in Nahariya , looked after his family . In Palestine he joined the Zionist -Socialist party Poale Zion . After the establishment of the State of Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany , Neuberger returned to Germany in 1950, settled as a lawyer in Düsseldorf in 1952 and worked, among other things, as a defense lawyer at the Düsseldorf District Court and Regional Court .

Neuberger had been a councilor in Düsseldorf since 1956 and moved into the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament in 1959 as a member of the SPD . From December 1966 to September 1972 he was Minister of Justice in the state government led by Heinz Kühn . During his tenure, he reformed the judiciary in the areas of prison , white-collar crime , legal training and environmental protection . At the same time he also held honorary posts in Jewish community life and was a member of the board of directors of the Central Council of Jews in Germany . Neuberger's adult sons returned to Israel.

Neuberger's law firm took part in the defense of those responsible at the pharmaceutical manufacturer Grünenthal in connection with the “ Contergan Trial ” during his tenure as NRW Minister of Justice and chief employer of the public prosecutor's office, and was criticized for it.

After leaving the cabinet, Neuberger worked again as a lawyer.

Honors

• 1968: Large Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1972: Great Cross of Merit with Star and Shoulder Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany
• In 1976 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in economics.
• A street in Düsseldorf-Gerresheim and the building of the prison school in North Rhine-Westphalia in Wuppertal were named after him.
• The former street at the Milchhof next to Bochum's north train station was named after him. The new justice center has been given the address Josef-Neuberger-Straße 1.

Josef Neuberger Medal

Since 1991 the Jewish community in Düsseldorf has been honoring non-Jewish personalities who have rendered service to the Jewish community with a medal in the name of Josef Neuberger . Prize winners have been a. Johannes Rau , Fritz Pleitgen , Roman Herzog , Angela Merkel , Gunter Demnig , Frank Schirrmacher , Hamed Abdel-Samad , Ahmad Mansour , Carina Gödecke , Jochen Lüdicke and Frank Ulrich Montgomery .

See also

Cabinet Kühn I - Cabinet Kühn II

literature

• Bernd Schmalhausen : Josef Neuberger (1902-1977): a life for a human justice , Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002 ISBN 3789080349 .
• Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .
• Klaus Kreppel : Nahariyya and the German immigration to Eretz Israel. The history of its inhabitants from 1935 to 1941. The Open Museum, Tefen 2010, ISBN 978-965-7301-26-5 .

Web links

Commons : Josef Neuberger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Josef Neuberger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Josef Neuberger at the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia
• Street naming in Bochum ( memento from October 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive )