Max Alsberg

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Max Alsberg (portrait drawing by Emil Stumpp , 1931)

Max Alsberg ( October 16, 1877 in Bonn - September 11, 1933 in Samedan ) was a German lawyer and writer . He was one of the most famous defense lawyers of the Weimar Republic .

Life

Until the time of National Socialism

Berlin memorial plaque for Max Alsberg

Alsberg came from a Jewish merchant family. His father was called Lehmann and his mother was Sophie geb. Rose tree. His younger sister was the writer and fashion journalist Ola Alsen . After studying law in Munich , Berlin , Leipzig and Bonn , he passed the first state examination in law in 1899 . In November 1906, after he had meanwhile also passed the major (second) state law examination, he opened a law firm in Berlin . He had also submitted a dissertation. Previously, he had turned down the offer of a chair at the University of Bonn. Alsberg married Ellinor Steinberg in 1912. She was Protestant, he belonged to the Mosaic religion. Five years later he called himself “ dissident ”. According to the historian Martin Schumacher, it is not known whether Alsberg was a Jewish denomination in the early 1930s. Alsberg is considered to be Walter Luetgebrune's mentor before he turned to the anti-Semitic camp during the Weimar Republic.

Alsberg was later also licensed as a notary in Berlin. Alsberg appeared primarily as a criminal defense lawyer. He was a lawyer through and through and soon became one of the "stars". In the post-war period he represented the German ex-emperor , the business tycoon Hugo Stinnes, among many others on charges of shoving. In 1920 he also defended one of the leading right-wing politicians and opponents of the Republic from the DNVP . That was Karl Helfferich , who had worked as finance state secretary in the German Empire , who had covered the finance minister and Matthias Erzberger , who is now often seen as a “pioneer of democracy”, with a character assassination campaign in order to divert attention from his own failure in the politics of the German Empire. Helfferich was then sued by Erzberger for defamation and insult. Although he was only sentenced to a small fine, some of his claims were assumed to be true by the right-wing court. Erzberger resigned from the office of finance minister one day after the verdict.

In 1931 Alsberg defended the publisher of the Weltbühne , Carl von Ossietzky , and the journalist Walter Kreiser on charges of treason, along with lawyers Kurt Rosenfeld , Alfred Apfel and Rudolf Olden, who were more of the left . This was raised after Kreiser had reported in the article Windiges aus der Luftfahrt in 1929 about the secret establishment of an air force, which the Weimar Republic was prohibited by the Versailles Treaty and which the members of the Reichstag were also not aware of. The process ended in defeat. The two journalists were sentenced to prison. Kreiser fled to France, Ossietzky went to prison in 1932.

Alsberg has published numerous publications on questions of criminal law and has also written plays ( preliminary investigation , 1927, filmed in 1931; conflict , premiered on March 9, 1933 in Berlin). His most famous contribution to jurisprudence is the manual The Request for Evidence in Criminal Trials , which will still be published in 2019 . In 1931 Alsberg became an honorary professor at Berlin University. Among other things, he gave lectures on psychology and sociology in prison . In the same year the university awarded him the qualification to be a full professor with the following words: “Alsberg is one of the few criminal law practitioners who would be worthy of a full professorship . He is by far in first place among the scientifically working criminal law practitioners. "

Alsberg's trials regularly received a lot of public attention. Often newspapers printed the question-and-answer game more or less completely during the interrogations, and it was not uncommon for them to reproduce the pleadings in full , although they were always very long. His biographer, Curt Riess , calls a plea of ​​six hours "short by Alsberg's standards". In the Caro-Petschek trial , which he won for his client Nikodem Caro , he pleaded for six days.

Persecution and death

As a “Jewish” and prominent lawyer committed to democracy who was persecuted by the anti-Semitic measures of the National Socialists , Alsberg was exposed to stalking by the SA, SS and the police after the Reichstag fire. Alsberg's law firm got into trouble because a non-Jewish partner wanted to part with him. After the unexpectedly undisturbed premiere of his play Conflict on March 9, 1933 in Berlin, Alsberg fled to Baden-Baden around March 20. He had previously been warned of the threat of arrest by an acquaintance from the SA. In Baden-Baden, he stayed in a hotel and waited to see what would happen. The persecution continued. In connection with the anti-Semitic boycott of April 1, 1933 , the office sign on the house wall in Berlin was torn down and stolen. In April 1933, an anonymous group called German Students wrote a denunciating letter to the Prussian Minister of Justice, which included the following sentence, among other things: Should a Jewish offspring, a brother of a department store group, continue reading about “German law” in front of students?

In addition, in May 1933, his name was on a list of "still to be dismissed" lawyers from the Berlin Bar Association , with the information that he had defended Ossietzky in the treason trial. This happened although Alsberg was actually still able to keep his license as a so-called "old attorney" according to the provisions of the law on admission to the bar on April 7, 1933, because he had already been admitted before the First World War . There were also threats of violence against all Jewish lawyers by the SA and NSDAP. Many Jewish lawyers, lawyers, judges and public prosecutors had been driven out of the courts and from their workplaces at the university with clubs and other striking tools by SA thugs , some of whom were recruited from law students .

Alsberg was urged to give up his lectures on criminal law in the summer semester, which he responded to. While Alsberg was still able to keep his admission to the bar with the old attorney clause, although there was no longer any possibility of practicing the profession, he formally lost his notary's office in July 1933.

In mid-April he emigrated to Switzerland. There he received the compulsory questionnaire on his planned, arbitrary dismissal from his professorship at Berlin University. This questionnaire was part of the implementation of the dismissals, for which a separate "law" had been passed, the " Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service ". It was clear to Max Alsberg that his professional career would soon be over and that he would no longer have any income. During these threats, however, Max Alsberg also received encouragement from various sides, because he was also well known abroad. The chairman of the French socialists, Léon Blum , informed him that the Sorbonne University was ready to set up an extraordinary professorship for him. Alsberg also received an offer to join a law firm in London. He rejected these offers of help. Because he felt like a German, could only imagine his life as a German lawyer and suffered tremendously from the persecution in Berlin.

The National Socialists in the university and the Ministry of Culture meanwhile forced his dismissal as a university professor. On September 4, the dismissal was issued in the Ministry of Education, but not yet announced after the intervention of State Secretary Stuckart , because the National Socialists were concerned about the reputation of the country, because Alsberg was a criminal lawyer recognized far beyond the borders of Germany, and his arbitrary dismissal was one would have brought bad press.

In August Alsberg had suffered a mental breakdown as a result of the destruction of his existence. His wife, who had meanwhile also emigrated, took him to a sanatorium in Samedan. Alsberg shot himself there on September 11, 1933 in great desperation. The ministry then destroyed the dismissal certificate that had not yet been sent so that the dismissal remained a secret. Alsberg was buried in Chur on September 14, 1933 .

Dealing with the deceased in the Third Reich

The suicide of this internationally known lawyer seemed to have been uncomfortable for the Third Reich. Because on September 13, 1933, a strange obituary appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung . The author insisted with all determination that - despite reports from the Swiss police about Alsberg's suicide - he had been the victim of a heart attack. The sister of the deceased informed the news agency. In an anti-Semitic tinted appraisal, it was stated that Alsberg had been dismissed as a notary under the Professional Civil Service Act, but was still admitted to the bar. There was no mention of his threatened dismissal from the university. However, his appointment as honorary professor at Berlin University in 1931 was questioned because Alsberg pursued an "artistically intuitive method" and rejected an "exact procedure".

In January 1934, Alsberg's art collection was auctioned off by auctioneer Paul Graupe , who was later persecuted as a "Jew" .

In 1936, Alsberg was vilified many times at a conference of National Socialist legal theorists on the subject of Judaism in jurisprudence under the direction of Carl Schmitt . Professor Karl Klee denied Alsberg his scientific reputation by speaking of the "devastating traces" that "Judaism" had left. The criminal lawyer Karl Siegert spoke at the same conference about "Alsberg's attempts at decomposition" in law. By this he understood, among other things, the attempt to rehabilitate criminals and to shed light on the emergence of criminal tendencies in criminals using psychological and sociological criteria. In particular, he criticized Alsberg's philosophy of defense , the programmatic title of a work by Alsberg. In his ideas of a committed defense that is independent of the authorities, the goal of "fighting the German national community and promoting Judaism" becomes clear.

Afterlife in exile and in the Federal Republic of Germany

On September 16, 1933, an obituary for Max Alsberg appeared in the exile newspaper Das Neue Tage-Buch . This included, among other things:

“The man […] was the best of the German lawyers. [...] A man like Alsberg could have fulfilled one more thing: defending the defendants in the Reichstag fire trial [...]. The National Socialists took his breath away [...]. Its element was the civilized atmosphere of an orderly jurisdiction [...]. He had to feel impotent to death, since the SA uniform became more decisive for the outcome of a trial in Germany than all law and all common sense. "

Like many Jewish lawyers, Max Alsberg was forgotten after the end of National Socialism in Germany. An exception was the biographical entry by Günter Spendel about Alsberg in the Neue Deutsche Biographie from 1953. This also includes the thorough biography of the journalist Curt Riess , published in 1965 , who had known Alsberg personally. It was not until the 1990s that legal historians began to remember the displaced Jewish lawyers and also remembered Max Alsbergs. In 2001 a memorial plaque for Max Alsberg was attached to his former home at Richard-Strauss-Straße 22 in Berlin-Grunewald (see picture).

Since 1997 the Association of German Criminal Defenders e. V. awarded the Max Alsberg Prize named after him in honor of and in memory of Max Alsberg . The prize is undoped and is awarded every two years as part of an Alsberg conference organized by the association . Previous winners include the lawyer Heinrich Hannover (1997), the judge at the Federal Court of Justice a. D. Gerhard Herdegen (1999), the editorial staff of the legal specialist criminal defense lawyer in person Klaus Lüderssen , Reinhold Schlothauer and Hans-Joachim Weider (2001), the journalist and court reporter Sabine Rückert (2007) as well as the lawyer Rainer Hamm and the judge at the Federal Court of Justice a . D. Gerhard Schäfer (2011).

Fonts (selection)

  • Miscarriage of justice and retrial. Dr. P. Langenscheidt, Berlin 1913. ( digitized version ).
  • War criminal law. Moeser, Berlin 1916.
    Later continued under the title of price driving criminal law, 7th edition in 1922.
  • Closing words to: Max Bauer (arrangement), Franz Helbing: Die Tortur. History of criminal torture of all times and peoples. Dr. P. Langenscheidt, Berlin 1926.
  • The Socrates Process in the Light of Modern Jurisprudence and Psychology. (= Writings on the psychology of criminal justice , volume 1.) J. Bensheimer, Mannheim 1926.
  • (together with Otto Ernst Hesse ): preliminary investigation. (Drama) Verlag Bong, Berlin 1930.
    made in 1927, stage version performed in several countries, film version: preliminary investigation .
  • Foreword to: Henri Robert: The great processes of world history. Stilke, Berlin 1928.
  • The application for evidence in criminal proceedings. Heymanns, Berlin 1930. Republished after 1945. Last as:
    Max Alsberg: The application for evidence in criminal proceedings. Continued by Karl-Heinz Nüse, Karl-Heinz Meyer. Edited by Jens Dallmeyer, Georg-Friedrich Güntge, Michael Tsambikakis; 7th edition, Carl Heymanns Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-452-29131-8 .
  • Defense philosophy. J. Bensheimer, Mannheim 1930.
  • with Alfred Apfel : The world stage process: input to d. Mr. Reich President of Alfred Apfel. Input to d. Minister of Justice von Max Alsberg. The German public on the world stage process. The world press on the world stage process. Nendeln: Kraus, 1976. Reprinted by d. Berlin, 1931.
  • The tomb of freedom of the press. In: The day book . 15th year, issue 45 (November 1932), pp. 1746–1752.
  • Conflict. (Play in seven pictures) Bong Verlag, Berlin 1933.
  • Criminal litigation cases. Heymanns, Berlin 1933.

literature

  • Alfred Apfel : Alsberg. In: The world stage. 1931, (Vol. 2), p. 758.
  • Reinhard Hillebrand: Max Alsberg (1877–1933). Chronicle of a lawyer’s life. wvb Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-96138-030-5 .
  • Alexander Ignor : Max. Alsberg (1877–1933). “By far in the first place among scientifically working criminal law practitioners” - Max Alsberg. In: Stefan Grundmann (ed.) U. a .: Festschrift 200 Years of the Law Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin. Past, present and future. de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-89949-630-7 , preview .
  • Gerhard Jungfer : Max Alsberg (1877-1933). Defense as an Ethical Mission. In: Kritische Justiz (Ed.): Controversial jurists. Baden-Baden 1988, p. 141 ff .; online at: Alsberg.de.
  • Tilmann Krach: Max Alsberg (1877-1933). The defender's criticism as a creative principle in establishing the truth. In: Helmut Heinrichs et al. (Ed.): German lawyers of Jewish origin. Munich 1993.
  • Ismar Lachmann: The greats of the Berlin law firm. About Max Alsberg and other famous Berlin lawyers in reprint of Kriminalmagazin 29.1931 in Forum Anwaltsgeschichte.
  • Simone Ladwig-Winters: lawyer without rights. The fate of Jewish lawyers in Berlin after 1933. Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89-809075-2 .
  • Anna-Maria Countess von Lösch: The naked ghost. The law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval in 1933. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-16-147245-4 .
  • Georg Prick: Max Alsberg (1877-1933) - and no end. The life and work of an extremely successful exceptional lawyer . In: Anwaltsblatt , Vol. 66 (2016), pp. 878-883.
  • Reich manual of German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. First volume (A – K), Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, pp. 18/19.
New edition as a microfiche edition: De Gruyter Saur, 1995, ISBN 3-598-30664-4 / ISBN 978-3-598-30664-8 .
  • Curt Riess : The man in the black robe. The life of defense attorney Max Alsberg. Hamburg 1965. Review by Peter Grubbe on December 17, 1965 in Die Zeit : Smart, but dubious. ( Online ). Reviewer Peter Grubbe's real name was Claus Peter Volkmann and was a National Socialist who changed his identity after the war because he was afraid of being prosecuted for his alleged crimes in the persecution of Jews in occupied Poland. He had then pursued a career as a left-liberal journalist under his pseudonym without denazification. This reviewer accused the (Jewish) author Riess of having completely failed as a biographer. One of the main reasons is that he did not portray the "shady" character of Alsberg.
  • Kurt Schilde : Victims of the Nazi terror in Berlin in 1933. Biographical sketches. In Christoph Kopke; Werner Treß (Hrsg.): The day of Potsdam. March 21, 1933 and the establishment of the National Socialist dictatorship. De Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-030585-2 , pp. 203-205. Published by the Moses Mendelssohn Center in cooperation with the Center for Jewish Studies (= European-Jewish Studies. Articles, Volume 8). Online on the author's homepage.
  • Martin Schumacher : From Max Alsberg to Ludwig Töpfer. Books and libraries of Jewish lawyers after 1933 - losses, finds and inheritance from "Reich property". Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch 2012, ISBN 978-3-87707-844-0 .
  • Günter Spendel :  Alsberg, Max. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 205 ( digitized version ).
  • Jürgen Taschke (Ed.): Max Alsberg. Nomos-Verlag , series of publications by Deutsche Strafverteidiger e. V. Vol. 40, Baden-Baden 2013, ISBN 978-3-8487-0769-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Martin Schumacher: From Max Alsberg to Ludwig Töpfer. Books and libraries of Jewish lawyers after 1933 - losses, finds and an inheritance from “Reich property”. Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch 2012, ISBN 978-3-87707-844-0 , p. 92 ff.
  2. ↑ Legal Tribune Online: Lawyers in the Twilight , Figure 7.
  3. ↑ z. B. Among other things, the booklet accompanying the exhibition of the same name by the House of History Baden-Württemberg in Münsingen (publisher): Matthias Erzberger, a pioneer of German democracy. Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-933726-38-4 .
  4. ↑ Reinhard Weber (ed.), Max Hirschberg: Jude und Demokratie. Memories of a Munich lawyer 1883–1939. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-486-56367-X , p. 192.
  5. ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar, 1918-1933. The history of the first German democracy. Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-43884-9 , p. 117 f.
  6. ^ Document of the Law Faculty of March 13, 1931 cited in Anna-Maria Gräfin von Lösch: Der nackte Geist. The law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval in 1933. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-16-147245-4 , p. 81.
  7. ^ Werner Sarstedt: Max Alsberg, a German criminal defense attorney. (P. 23) Lecture to the 1st German Defense Lawyers Conference on October 13, 1977 in Bonn, accessed on December 2, 2019.
  8. ↑ Horst Göppinger : Jurists of Jewish descent in the “Third Reich”. Disenfranchisement and persecution. 2nd edition, Verlag C. H. Beck , Munich 1990, ISBN 3-406-33902-6 . P. 230.
  9. ↑ Anna-Maria Countess von Lösch: The naked spirit. The law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval in 1933. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-16-147245-4 , p. 210.
  10. ↑ Curt Riess : The man in the black robe. The life of defense attorney Max Alsberg. Hamburg 1965. pp. 325-332.
  11. ↑ Anna-Maria Countess von Lösch: The naked spirit. The law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval in 1933. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-16-147245-4 , p. 211.
  12. ↑ Anna-Maria Countess von Lösch: The naked spirit. The law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval in 1933. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-16-147245-4 . P. 211 f.
  13. ↑ Max Alsberg †. Obituary in the Frankfurter Zeitung of September 13, 1933 in the press kit of the 20th century, personal archive of the digitized archives of HWWA and IfW ( JPG ), accessed November 29, 2014.
  14. ^ Art possession Prof. Max Alsberg, Berlin: Paintings and applied arts from a well-known private collection in southern Germany; various private collections in Berlin; Auction 29./30. Jan. 1934. Berlin: Paul Graupe, Berlin W 9, Bellevuestrasse 3, 1934. Graupe was allowed to keep his business from 1933 to 1937 with a special permit from Goebbels, as he procured coveted foreign currency for the Reich with his auctions, which met with international interest. A short time later he had to emigrate himself and got to New York via Paris. His gallery was "Aryanized" by Hans W. Lange. See Tilmann Krach: Max Alsberg (1877–1933). The defender's criticism as a creative principle in establishing the truth. In: Helmut Heinrichs u. a. (Ed.): German lawyers of Jewish origin. Munich 1993, p. 663.
  15. ↑ Anna-Maria Countess von Lösch: The naked spirit. The law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval in 1933. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-16-147245-4 . P. 315.
  16. ^ Tilmann Krach: Max Alsberg (1877-1933). The defender's criticism as a creative principle in establishing the truth. In: Helmut Heinrichs u. a. (Ed.): German lawyers of Jewish origin. Munich 1993, p. 663.
  17. ^ Leopold Schwarzschild (ed.): The New Day Book. Paris 1933, No. 12, September 16, 1933, p. 288.
  18. ↑ See the literature section .
  19. ↑ See the literature section .
  20. ↑ The Alsberg Prize. On: Deutsche-Strafverteidiger.de. Website of the Association of German Criminal Defense Lawyers V. Accessed February 4, 2015.
  21. ^ Gerhard Jungfer : Max Alsberg: Conflict - Bremen, 3 March 1933 - a documentation. In: Festschrift for Franz-Josef Brieske. (Private print), 1986; online at: Alsberg.de.
personal data
SURNAME Alsberg, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German defense lawyer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn
DATE OF DEATH September 11, 1933
Place of death Samedan