Martin Wassermann

Martin Wassermann (born September 6, 1871 in Hamburg , † April 25, 1953 in Buenos Aires ) was a German and Argentine lawyer .

Life

Aquarius was the son of a merchant. He passed his Abitur at the Wilhelm-Gymnasium . In 1892 he passed the first legal examination at the University of Berlin and the second in 1896 at the University of Hamburg . In the meantime (1892) he received his doctorate in Heidelberg . He then became a lawyer in Hamburg with a focus on patent, copyright, trademark and competition law. Wassermann joined the office of his relative Ruben Pels (1859–1934) as a partner . Since 1906 he published the magazine Brandenschutz und Competition (MuW). From 1919 he held lectures on these areas of law at the newly founded Hamburg University. In 1920 he received his habilitation and private lecturer, and in 1922 he was appointed director of the seminar for industrial law. In 1923 the Senate awarded him the title of “Professor” and he was appointed as an associate professor for “Industrial Property”. He was an opinion leader in the field of industrial property protection in the 1920s.

The year 1933 was decisive for Wassermann, as he was of Jewish origin. His teaching assignment was finally withdrawn in August 1933 and he had to give up the editing of his magazine. However, he was able to continue to work as an "old attorney" within the meaning of the Professional Civil Service Act . That was a thorn in the side of the NSDAP : " The Black Corps " asked in December 1935 in the article "Jews as law renewers": "How long should the Jew Wassermann and the Aryan Bussmann continue to control industrial property rights?" So in April 1936 he had to part with his non-Jewish partners Walther Fischer and Kurt Bussmann (1894–1970). He moved one floor up at Bergstrasse 7 and the colleagues continued to work together as well as the circumstances of the time allowed. The larger clients like Esso or Schülke & Mayr (“Sagrotan”) stuck to him and continued to let him advise them out of court. At the end of September 1938 he had to change his first name to "Maim". During the Reichspogromnacht he stayed in London on business. On Bussmann's advice, he did not return to Germany. On November 30, 1938, he was banned from working. In February 1939 he emigrated to Argentina, where he was again active in patent and trademark law. On his 80th birthday in 1952, Wassermann became an honorary member of the German Association for Commercial Legal Protection and Copyright ("Green Association").

literature

• Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer (Ed.): Lawyer without Law - Fates of Jewish Lawyers in Germany after 1933. Berlin 2007, p. 220.
• Markus Heukamp: Lovells . In: Reinhard Pöllath , Ingo Saenger (Hrsg.): 200 years of business lawyers in Germany . Baden-Baden 2009, ISBN 978-3-8329-4446-9 .
• Wassermann, Martin , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 379
• Wassermann, Martin , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , pp. 1210f.