Karl Polak

This article deals with the lawyer Karl Polak. For the concentration camp prisoner, see Karl Polak (concentration camp prisoner) .

Karl Polak (born December 12, 1905 in Westerstede , † October 27, 1963 in East Berlin ) was a German lawyer . He taught as a professor at the University of Leipzig , was a member of the State Council of the GDR and co-author of the constitution of the German Democratic Republic of 1948/1949.

Karl Polak, 1960

Life

Karl Polak was born on December 12, 1905 as the second eldest son of Jewish parents in Westerstede. His father, Siegfried Polak, was one of the wealthiest Westersted citizens. Karl attended school in Westerstede with very good grades, and from 1918 the municipal high school in Oldenburg . In 1922 he was confronted with the anti-Semitic outbreaks and terrorism and stated this time as his personal break with bourgeois society.

In 1925 Polak obtained the certificate of maturity. He studied law in Heidelberg , Munich and Frankfurt . He completed his studies with the first state examination in law. He did his doctorate in Freiburg , his doctoral thesis (published November 1933) was on the subject of "Studies on an existential legal theory". He passed the Rigorosum on July 12, 1933. He was awarded his doctorate in November 1933.

As a Jew, he was no longer allowed to complete his legal clerkship and the second state examination under National Socialism .

Immediately after receiving his doctorate, Karl Polak emigrated to the Soviet Union . There he wrote numerous legal theoretical writings in Russian , after the German invasion he went to Tashkent . His Westersteder family had meanwhile emigrated to Uruguay and Argentina . In 1946 Polak moved with his wife and daughter to the Soviet zone of occupation , became a member of the SED and head of the judicial department of the party executive. From 1946 he worked on the draft for a new constitution, which should initially have an all-German character. When the division of Germany became apparent, he played a key role in drafting the GDR constitution as a member of the “ German People's Council ” and the “Constitutional Committee” . In 1949 he became a professor at the University of Leipzig for political science , heads of state and international law . As ghostwriter Walter Ulbricht, Polak exerted considerable influence on the Babelsberg conference of the German Academy for Political Science and Law of 1958, which was important for the dogmatic development of GDR law. In 1960, after the death of the first president of the GDR, Wilhelm Pieck , Polak was one of the 20 members of the GDR's collective leadership body, the State Council . In 1961 he was elected a full member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin .

tomb

In 1963 Polak died in East Berlin. His urn was in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the memorial of the socialists at the Berlin Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried.

In his book “The History of the Westersted Jews” (p. 65) Werner Vahlenkamp evaluates the life, fate and political views of Karl Polak as a documentation of a piece of German history to a very special degree.

Fonts

• Studies on an existential legal theory. Gatzer & Hahn, Schramberg 1933.
• People and Constitution. Congress, Berlin around 1947.
• with Otto Grotewohl : Marxism and political theory. Unity, Berlin 1947.
• Judiciary Renewal: Towards a Democratic Justice. Dietz, Berlin 1948.
• The constitutional problem in the historical development of Germany. Congress, Berlin 1948. 2nd edition 1950.
• The Weimar Constitution. Your achievements and shortcomings. Congress, Berlin 1948. 2nd edition 1950; 3rd edition 1952.
• Speech on the question of Germany, given at the International Conference of Jurists in Defense of Democratic Freedom, Vienna, Jan. 4-7, 1954. Aufbau, Berlin 1954.
• The sovereignty of the German Democratic Republic and the German state question. Urania, Leipzig 1954.
• The democracy of workers and peasants power. Congress, Berlin 1957.
• (with Walter Ulbricht ) Contributions to the theory of the state. Deutscher Zentralverlag, Berlin 1959.
• Arthur Baumgarten. Academy, Berlin 1959.
• On dialectics in political theory. Academy, Berlin 1959. 3rd edition 1963.
• Social law and international law. Academy, Berlin 1962.
• Speeches and essays. State Publishing House of the GDR, Berlin 1968.
• State, democracy, leadership. State Publishing House of the GDR, Berlin 1985.

literature

• Jörn Eckert:  Polak, Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 594 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Eberhard Poppe, Wolfgang Weichelt : Karl Polak's contribution to the development of a Marxist-Leninist political and legal science in the GDR. Academy, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-05-000456-8 .
• Werner Vahlenkamp: The history of the Westersted Jews: rise and destruction of a small minority. Plois, Westerstede 1988, ISBN 3-9801906-4-1 .
• Marcus Howe: Karl Polak. Party lawyer under Ulbricht. Dissertation. FU Berlin 1998. Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-465-03183-0 .
• Nils Reichhelm: The Marxist-Leninist state and legal theory of Karl Polak. Dissertation. University of Kiel 2002. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2003, ISBN 3-631-50274-5 .
• Jan Wielgohs, Peter Erler:  Polak, Karl . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Karl Polak  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Karl Polak in the catalog of the German National Library
• Karl Polak in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rainer Schröder, History of GDR Law: Criminal and Administrative Law , forum historiae iuris 2004 ( Memento of the original from March 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.