Kurt Messow

Kurt Messow (born December 9, 1888 in Berlin ; † November 28, 1955 there ) was a German lawyer and writer .

Life

Messow, who came from a Jewish family, studied law, took part in the First World War as a soldier and was seriously wounded. After the war he was a public prosecutor in Frankfurt (Oder) and from 1921 a lawyer and notary in Berlin (taking over the father's practice after his death).

During the National Socialist dictatorship, he was initially allowed to work as a lawyer from 1933 to 1938 despite his Jewish origins (as a notary only until 1935). Afterwards he was only admitted as a legal consultant , ie he represented Jewish citizens in the upcoming expropriations. From 1941 he had to do forced labor in the Fromms condom factory . As part of the factory action (removal of the last forced laborers to the concentration camp) In February 1943 he was able to go into hiding. He hid in garages, sheds, etc. until the end of the war, receiving mainly help from Babette Lipschitz (Protestant, 1906–1981), whose Jewish husband had been killed in 1942. After the war she married Messow.

After the end of the war, Messow was initially a senior public prosecutor in Berlin, and from 1948 President of the Senate at the Berlin Superior Court . He retired on December 31, 1954.

Messow was very attached to German literature. He belonged to the wider circle around Stefan George and was a member of the German Dante Society and the Society of Bibliophiles . Since his youth he wrote poems, which appeared in small volumes from the Berlin Blaschker publishing house from December 1954 onwards. The poet profiles (1955), in which Messow tried to grasp the essence of their work in the language of the respective poets (Goethe, Lenz, George, Rilke, Kerr, etc.), attracted particular attention. On November 26, 1955, a public reading from it took place in the Nicolaische Buchhandlung Berlin. Two days later, on November 28, 1955, Messow died. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery on Heerstrasse in Berlin.

Works

• Poet (1954)
• Poets (1955)
• Singer (1955)
• Seal Profiles (1955)
• Eye (1958)
• Take the Wise Men’s Red Fez (1959)
• Soul (1960)
• Whim (1961)
• Gleanings (1962)
• How The Word Was So Important There (1963)

literature

• Erich Blaschker / Hans Otto Eberl, In Memoriam Kurt Messow , 1956
• Albrecht Goes , afterword in: KM, Seele, 1960, p. 32 f
• Kurt R. Grossmann, The unsung heroes , 2nd ed. 1961, p. 74 ff
• Hans Rheinfels, poetry from the glow of the heart , in: Written to the wind. Lyrik der Freiheit, 2nd revised edition 1961 (special edition in memory of Kurt Messow), pp. III - V
• Arnd Beise, Lyrical Lenz Portraits in the 20th Century. On texts by Huchel, Messow, Bobrowski and Körner , in: Inge Stephan / Hans-Gerd Winter, Between Art and Science . Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, 2006, p. 179 ff
• Simone Ladwig-Winters, Lawyer Without Law , 2nd edition 2007, p. 224
• Barbara Hartlage-Laufenberg, Two lawyers, two writers, two Jews - Friedrich Koffka and Kurt Messow, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (NJW) 2013, pp. 748–752