Marie Munk

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"Miss. Dr. Marie Munk, the first female judicial investigator in Prussia to be employed in the Ministry of Justice ”(portrait, 1924)
Memorial plaque on Auguste-Viktoria-Straße 64 in Berlin-Schmargendorf

Marie Munk (born July 4, 1885 in Berlin ; † January 17, 1978 in Cambridge / Massachusetts / USA ) was a German- American lawyer . She was one of the first appointed judges in Germany and is considered one of the most important matrimonial and family lawyers of the Weimar period. Because of her Jewish origins, she became a victim of the Nazi regime .

Live and act

Marie Munk came from a family of lawyers. Attending a secondary school for girls was followed by an apprenticeship as a kindergarten teacher at the renowned Pestalozzi-Fröbel-Haus , and initial work experience in Alice Salomon's girls and women groups for social work in Berlin. She prepared for the Abitur and passed the university entrance examination at the Leibniz Gymnasium in Berlin as an external student. From 1907 Marie Munk studied law , philosophy , psychology and logic in Berlin, Freiburg im Breisgau , Bonn and Heidelberg . In 1911 she obtained a doctorate in law in Heidelberg with a dissertation on Section 123 of the German Civil Code .

Since women in the German Empire were denied access to the administration of justice (judges, lawyers, public prosecutors, administrative lawyers), Marie Munk began to work as an assistant in a law firm and for a legal advice center for women. During the First World War she worked for the German Red Cross , for the Berlin Social Welfare Office and for the National Women's Service.

After women were also admitted to the legal state exams in the Weimar Republic , Marie Munk passed them and became a consultant for the Preuss in 1924. Minister of Justice, but dismissed a few months later due to the dire budget situation. In 1924 she was one of the first women in Germany to be admitted to the bar and in 1930 was appointed district judge and district judge in Berlin.

In 1914 Marie Munk was a co-founder of the German Women Lawyers Association (forerunner of today's German Women Lawyers Association ), of which she was 2nd chairwoman from 1919 to 1933. She was also the founder and president of the German Association of Working Women, which existed in Germany from 1931 to 1933 (forerunner of today's Business and Professional Women (BPW) Germany eV ) and a committed member of its international association, the International Federation of Business and Professional Women .

Marie Munk is now considered one of the most important matrimonial and family lawyers of the Weimar period. In addition to her proposals on illegitimate, divorce and marriage law, she worked with Margarete Berent on proposals for the reform of matrimonial property law, which more than thirty years later found expression in the community of gains introduced in Germany and in other legislative amendments.

In 1933 she was dismissed from the judicial service. She visited the USA and worked there in homes for difficult-to-educate girls. In 1936 she left Germany for good and settled in the USA.

From 1936 until she obtained her American citizenship and was admitted to the bar in Massachusetts (1943), she was visiting professor and visiting professor at various American colleges. In 1944 she worked as a marriage counselor in Toledo, Ohio. From 1945 she devoted her legal interests to the German law of reparation, National Socialist injustice and American family and property law. From 1953 she is said to have been an associate professor at Harvard University .

As early as 1945 she is said to have published her autobiography Reminiscences of a Pioneer Woman Judge in Pre-Hitler-Germany . However, she wrote her unfinished autobiographical manuscript in 1961.

Commemoration

  • A plaque commemorates Marie Munk on her home at Auguste-Viktoria-Strasse 64.
  • In August 2020, a memorial stele was inaugurated at the Berlin Regional Court (Tegeler Weg office).

Works (selection)

  • The unlawful threat of § 123 BGB in relation to blackmail and coercion. Dissertation. Bonn 1911.
  • Proposals for the reform of the law of divorce and parental authority together with a draft law. Berlin 1923.
  • Law and prosecution in family law. Berlin 1929.
  • Reminiscences of a Pioneer Woman Judge in Pre-Hitler-Germany: The Rise and Fall of German Feminism ca.1941 / 1942 (unpublished).
  • Memoirs, ca.1961 (unpublished).

literature

Web links

Commons : Marie Munk  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eva Schandevyl: Women in Law and Lawmaking in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Europe . Routledge, 2016, ISBN 978-1-134-77513-2 ( google.com [accessed December 28, 2017]).
  2. ↑ Ulrike Schultz, Gisela Shaw: Gender and Judging . A&C Black, 2014, ISBN 978-1-78225-111-8 ( google.com [accessed December 28, 2017]).
  3. ↑ Memorial stele for Berlin's first female judge , Jüdische Allgemeine, August 10, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Munk, Marie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first female judge in Germany
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 17th January 1978
Place of death Cambridge, Massachusetts