Ludwig Kaiser (lawyer)

Ludwig Kaiser (born March 23, 1889 in Wiesbaden , † September 28, 1978 in Kassel ) was a German lawyer , pianist and member of the resistance against National Socialism .

Life

Ludwig Kaiser, the younger brother of Hermann Kaiser , studied in Halle and Marburg / Lahn law , even political economy ; He received his musical training at the Wiesbaden Conservatory and the Kassel Conservatory . Although he pursued a legal career full-time, he was also an esteemed pianist for most of his life. He gave his first concert at the age of 10 and later appeared in solo concerts across Europe and accompanied well-known vocal interpreters, among others. az B. the bassist of the Berlin State Opera and the New York Metropolitan Opera Carl BraunOn tour in 1921, Fritz Windgassen in 1922 , then Emmy Leisner and Elisabeth Schumann in 1924 and Leo Slezak in 1927 .

Because of his legal training, Kaiser took part in the First World War as a judge-martial . He enjoyed the trust of the soldiers, which led to his being elected to the Soldiers' Council during the November 1918 Revolution .

After the end of the war, Kaiser completed his legal clerkship and then entered the civil service , in which he rose to the position of deputy head of the Kassel tax office . He openly rejected National Socialism at an early stage - Kaiser was one of the signatories of an appeal against the NSDAP in 1932 - and was involved in a dispute with Roland Freisler , who at the time was a member of the State Parliament of Hesse-Nassau as a member of the National Socialist Republic and who was a lawyer before the court of National Socialists who had committed criminal offenses defended. His attitude led to the fact that Kaiser resigned from the civil service after the seizure of power and had to take up a position at an electricity company until he was dismissed there for political reasons in 1937.

At the beginning of the Second World War , Kaiser was drafted into the Wehrmacht as an army judge and assigned to the reserve of the Army Legal Department at the Army High Command as a senior war judge . Here he joined the circles of military resistance against the Nazi regime, to which his brother Hermann belonged.

In organizing the resistance and preparing for the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 , Kaiser worked closely with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler ; He also acted as a link to Major General Ludwig von Nida , the former chief of staff of the important military district IX in Kassel, in order to be able to direct the development there.

After the failure of the assassination attempt, Kaiser and his brothers Hermann and Heinrich were arrested on July 21 in the house of his sisters in Wilhelmshöhe and initially taken to the Wehlheiden prison with their eldest brother because there were no arrest warrants for Ludwig and Heinrich. Soon afterwards Ludwig Kaiser was transferred to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin for interrogation by the Gestapo before he was transferred to Lehrter Strasse ; this prison was overcrowded and the conditions were terrible and unsanitary. Since there was not enough incriminating evidence against him, he was not brought before the People's Court , but remained in Gestapo custody, where he was tortured first by a constantly burning lamp and then by dark custody. As a result, his eyes were badly affected. Later, shortly before Christmas 1944, he was transferred to the Küstrin fortress , where he fared considerably better; On Sundays, the prisoners were even allowed to visit the church, with Kaiser playing the organ, as his fellow prisoner Johann Dietrich von Hassell reports. When the Red Army approached at the beginning of 1945, he was transferred to southern Germany, where he was liberated by the US Army on April 19, 1945 in the Tübingen Eye Clinic .

After the war ended, Kaiser worked as a lawyer in Kassel. He dealt in particular with representing the claims of victims of the Nazi dictatorship and members of the resistance or their surviving dependents for compensation and pensions vis-à-vis the Federal Republic of Germany . In an elaborate process he achieved, among other things, that - contrary to the prevailing opinion in court and public opinion - the authority responsible for reparation claims recognized the Red Orchestra as a resistance organization and thus had to grant the widow of John Graudenz a pension.

Until the 1950s Kaiser still performed as a pianist; but as a late consequence of the Gestapo imprisonment , his eyesight deteriorated so much that he gave up playing the piano. In 1965 he became almost completely blind. Eye surgery could only restore ten percent of eyesight; he also suffered several strokes . Although he was recently paralyzed on one side, he continued his practice as a lawyer until a final stroke led to his death.

literature

• Jörg Kammler: I'm tired of the butchery and run over--: Kassel soldiers between refusal and resistance, 1939-1945 . Hesse-Verlag, 1985, ISBN 3-924259-02-X .
• Gerhard Ringshausen: Resistance and Christian Faith in the Face of National Socialism . Lit, Münster 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-8306-5 .
• Journal of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies. Volume 101-102. Kassel, 1996.
• Peter Jehle (Ed.): Werner Krauss - Briefe 1922 to 1976 . Publishing house Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 2002, ISBN 3-465-03182-2 .
• Renate Knigge-Tesche, Axel Ulrich: Persecution and Resistance in Hesse 1933-1945 . Eichborn, Frankfurt a. M. 1996, ISBN 3-8218-1735-6 .
• Irene Hübner: Our resistance: German women and men report on their fight against the Nazis . Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1982, ISBN 3-87682-748-5 .