Lorenz Krapp

Lorenz Alexander Krapp (born December 18, 1882 in Bamberg , † May 21, 1947 in Munich ; pseudonym: Arno von Walden ) was a German lawyer , poet and politician .

Life

The son of the art gardener Andreas Krapp and his wife Kunigunda (called Kunny), b. Winkler grew up on the Upper Kaulberg in Bamberg , and attended the New Gymnasium in Bamberg from 1892 until his Abitur in 1901. He then studied in Tübingen in 1901 , then received a scholarship to study law at the Maximilianeum in Munich, where he studied from the summer semester 1902 until the end of the summer semester 1905 law studies and lived at the Maximilianeum as a scholarship holder during this time . On July 28, 1905, he passed the legal state examination in Munich and passed the second state examination in Bayreuth in December 1909 . He received his doctorate from the University of Würzburg and in 1909 he was awarded the title of Dr. jur. et pol.

His giftedness was evident during his school and university years as well as through the elite scholarship at the Maximilianeum in Munich. He spoke English, French, Italian and Spanish, and could also communicate in Russian and Turkish. That was the basis for its later use in the foreign service . During the period of his “inner emigration” between 1933 and 1945, he tried, among other things, to create a Russian grammar.

During the First World War , Krapp joined the 8th Royal Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment on January 5, 1915. From July 8, 1915 to August 8, 1918 he was in the field in the West and in Russia . He was seriously wounded there and was from then until October 20, 1918 in the hospital in Bruges and in Lübeck . On November 28, 1918, he was released from the hospital.

Krapp died in Munich in 1947 at the age of 64. The funeral ceremonies took place on the following Whit Saturday in the presence of, among others, the Bavarian Prime Minister Hans Ehard and the Bavarian Minister of Justice Wilhelm Hoegner in Bamberg. According to his wish, Krapp is said to have been buried first in Bug near Bamberg. Today his grave is in the main cemetery in Bamberg.

Legal career

He began his first professional steps on December 1, 1910 as a public prosecutor in Pirmasens . From March 1, 1911 he was III. Public prosecutor in Kaiserslautern , from June 1, 1918 district judge in Munich and Arnstein and from January 1, 1920 second public prosecutor in Bamberg and Coburg . His professional career then led to the Foreign Service at the German-Italian Arbitration Court in Rome and at the German Consular Higher Court in Cairo . He was seconded to the Foreign Office in Berlin , where he had been the Privy Councilor of Justice and head of the Italian Department of the Reich's Representation at the German-Italian Court of Arbitration since 1923 . From 1924 to 1930 he was in Rome in the latter capacity, as well as being a representative of the Reich Ministry of Finance (Reichsausgleichsamt) in Rome and from 1926 to 1930 substitute judge at the consular superior court in Cairo ( Egypt ). In Rome he worked under Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann and concluded state treaties with Mussolini for the German Empire , which were necessary after the annexation of South Tyrol by the Italians - for example, on the ownership rights of Karneid Castle near Bolzano . From July 1, 1930, he worked as a senior public prosecutor in Bamberg and from May 1, 1931 to July 31, 1933, he was president of the regional court in Bamberg . After the conquest of Bamberg by American soldiers in World War II , Krapp was offered the post of Lord Mayor of Bamberg by the American military government on April 15, 1945 , but he refused. Instead, at his own request, from the beginning of May 1945 he became an advisor to the military government for the reconstruction of the courts of the Bamberg Higher Regional Court . On December 12, 1945, he was appointed President of the Bamberg Higher Regional Court , which had been rebuilt in the meantime (including most of its lower courts) . Shortly before his death, he was appointed President of the Bavarian Constitutional Court , but could no longer accept this call.

Political career

Krapp was a member of the Bavarian People's Party (BVP) from 1918 until its forced dissolution in 1933. Before the end of the Weimar Republic , Krapp was chairman of the "non-partisan Hindenburg Committee of Bamberg and the surrounding area", which was in favor of the election of "Mr. Reich President von Hindenburg" began.

Privy Councilor Dr. After the war, Krapp was one of the protagonists who tried unsuccessfully to restore the “ Bavarian People's Party ” (BVP). He then sat for the CSU as a member and chairman of the state constitutional assembly (Bavarian constitution), is named alongside Alois Hundhammer as the actual author of the preamble to the Bavarian constitution and was a co-founder of the CSU in Bamberg.

Literary career

Under the pseudonym "Arno von Walden" he published prose from the age of 19 (including "Kreuzblüten" (1901), "Christ" (1903) and "Sacrificial Fire" (1904)) and stories (including "Kreuz oder Halbmond") (1906)) and essays. He wrote recessions in very different genres from Richard Wagner's opera Parzival to the works of Karl May . As a young man he belonged to the Catholic "Gralbund" founded by Richard Kralik , and he published works and recessions in the monthly Catholic literary magazine "Der Graal". He became an associate editor and editor.

In 1911 he wrote the federal song and the “Concordentreue” of the Concordia Cyclists and Motorists Association. Even in the satirical weekly magazine “ Simplicissimus ” from 1915 (at the time of the First World War) published in Munich, which is more against conservatism, there is a reprint of Krapp's poem “In Flanders”.

Supporters of Karl May

Krapp was acquainted with Karl May, 40 years his senior, and his second wife Klara . Allegedly May was Lorenz Krapp's sponsor. On December 9, 1908 and from April 4 to 5 April 1909 Krapp was verifiably a guest in the ' Villa Shatterhand ' of the Mays in Radebeul . A photo shows madder in May's hunting skirt. Klara May writes in a letter:

"About Dr. We were also very happy for Krapp. This dear, dear noble person. I pray for God's richest blessings on him. He's sure to become a great man. I want him to be spared the grueling fight that unfortunately depends on such people. "

The acquaintance with Klara May continued after Karl May's death in March 1912. Krapp is also said to have been an “employee of the Karl May publishing house ”. He was briefly discussed as the editor of Karl May's works. In 1906, the Augsburger Postzeitung published von Krapp's " apologetic essay series" with the title "The Problem Karl May". In 1909 Krapp dedicated the poem “Am Grabe Winnetou” to Karl May , and in 1933 he wrote the essay “The moral ideal of Karl May”. In the “Nostalgia Yearbook” “Karl May Yearbook 1934” you can find the previously unpublished following articles by Lorenz Krapp: “To Karl May. On Pentecost morning 1909” and “The call to the wide. On the historical position of Karl May's life's work ”.

Anti-National Socialist and Christian sentiments

When Privy Councilor Krapp was to be transferred to another office and to another location after taking power in 1933 as a staunch opponent of National Socialism , he felt compelled to resign from the judiciary for "health reasons". He was "forced to retire":

"In the spring of 1933 he was retired from the justice building, where he isolated himself as a resentful observer and an implacable but impotent opponent of the Nazi regime in 'inner emigration'."

He belonged to the Bayern Wacht and the secret Bamberger Wölfel-Kreis (or the secret Robinsohn-Strassmann group , whose members saw themselves as “moral opposing forces to the NS regime and advocated a 'decent German state' after the end of NS -Regimes. ”) Like Krapp, Ernst Strassmann , who was active in Berlin, and Johann Wilhelm Wölfel from Bamberg, who was sentenced to death by the Nazi jurisdiction for allegedly degrading military strength, were also lawyers. Krapp belonged to the Catholic, Christian, strongly value-conservative movement. He was neither a supporter of the Nazi regime nor a follower - yes, he was a staunch opponent - but on the other hand should not be classified as an active resistance fighter. Although he was a staunch opponent of National Socialism, he was critical of the denazification process . An anti-communist attitude was typical of the post-war period in western Germany:

“The militant anti-communism of the post-war years and the Cold War had a strong influence on this way of dealing with the Nazi judiciary. […] From the beginning, in the struggle against communism, which was perceived as an imminent threat, leniency in dealing with the past was demanded. In many cases also by those who had stood in opposition to National Socialism themselves. Privy Councilor Dr, who was commissioned by the Americans to rebuild the judiciary in the Bamberg OLG district - and thus also in the heavily destroyed Würzburg - In 1945, Krapp criticized the denazification process and the American personnel policy with the words: 'should they' - meaning the many members of the judiciary with Nazi party membership whose dismissal was at stake - 'should all of them with their children and grandchildren starve to death or become Bolsheviks? "

For Krapp - in addition to a presumed leniency in dealing with the past for anti-communist reasons - purely pragmatic reasons were decisive for his attitude: how should he fulfill the task of rebuilding a functioning justice system in his area of ​​responsibility when the members of the judiciary were based on their previous NSDAP -Association have now been dismissed? And there were few trained lawyers who - like him - successfully distanced themselves from the Nazi regime and survived it. So after 1945 former "PGs" (party member: member of the NSDAP ) were able to work in the judiciary again in his area of ​​responsibility.

At the General Assembly of Catholics in Germany in Nuremberg on 26. – 30. August 1931 Krapp spoke to thousands of listeners on the topic: Church and German Volkstum .

literature

• "200 Years of Appeal Court / Higher Regional Court Bamberg - Festschrift", President of the Upper Regional Court Bamberg a. D., Prof. Dr. Reinhard Böttcher, ed. V. Michael Meisenberg, Munich 2009, Verlag CHBeck oHG
• “From the swastika to the stars and stripes. A Bamberg Report ", Rudolf Albart, Otto-Verlag Bamberg, undated
• BMJ, Federal Ministry of Justice, Alfred Hartenbach, "In the name of the German people"
• Franz Cornaro: "In memory of Lorenz Krapp". In: "Mitteilungen der Karl-May-Gesellschaft" No. 14/1972 , p. 13. ( Online )
• Lothar Schmid: "90 years of publishing work for Karl May". In “The Cut Diamond” - special volumes on the collected works / special volume on the collected works. Karl-May-Verlag, Bamberg-Radebeul 2003. ISBN 978-3-7802-0160-7 (on page 23 you can see a photo of Lorenz Krapp in Karl May's hunting skirt).

Web links

• http://karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Lorenz_Krapp

Individual evidence

1. ^ "A lecture between the fronts, Karl May in the Augsburg Schießgrabensaal 8 Dec. 1909", Ulrich Schmid, in "Yearbook of the Karl May Society 1990", Karl May Society e. V., Hamburg, 1990, p. 71.
2. ^ Special edition of the Karl May Society, issues 98-105; Karl May Society, 1972, p. 93.
3. ↑ Photo in: The cut diamond, The collected works of Karl May. Edited by Lothar and Bernhard Schmid. In honor of Dr. Eucharist Albrecht Schmid. Karl-May-Verlag, Bamberg 2003, p. 23.
4. ↑ "My dear wife, godfather ..." - The Mays' correspondence with Babette Hohl-Kopp, ibid.
5. ↑ Karl Mays "In the realm of the silver lion"; Dieter Sudhoff , Hartmut Vollmer; Publishing house Igel; Paderborn 1993.
6. ↑ Printed in "Karl May und Augsburg" - special issue of the Karl May Society, No. 82/1989.
7. ↑ Karl May Yearbook 1918, p. 81.
8. ↑ Eds. Wolfgang Hermesmeier and Stefan Schmatz, Karl-May-Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7802-1934-3 .
9. ^ Letter from the State Ministry of Justice of July 18, 1933, in: Archives of the OLG Bamberg, Lorenz Krapp personal file. Source: http://www.bayern.landtag.de/opfer_doku/web_gedenk_v2 (there see: register of persons)
10. ↑ BMJ, Federal Ministry of Justice, Alfred Hartenbach, "In the name of the German people", page 4: Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 1, 2009 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. (Website no longer available in the meantime) 
11. ↑ "From the swastika to the stars and stripes. A Bamberg Report ”, Rudolf Albart, Otto-Verlag Bamberg, undated, p. 165
12. ↑ Working papers of the Willy-Aron-Gesellschaft Bamberg e. V., edition 10/2008, p. 16.
13. ↑ BMJ, Federal Ministry of Justice, Alfred Hartenbach, "In the name of the German people", ibid.