Max Hachenburg

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Max Hachenburg 1918, oil painting by Heinz Schifferdecker

Max Hachenburg (born October 1, 1860 in Mannheim ; died September 23, 1951 in Berkeley ) was a German lawyer and legal journalist. He was considered the leading commercial lawyer of his time and published influential commentaries on the Commercial Code and the GmbH Act . He was also involved in the legal professional associations. From 1933 he was persecuted as a Jew in Germany and emigrated to the USA.

Life

Hachenburg came from a well-respected Jewish merchant family in Mannheim, his father Heinrich Hachenburg was a trading clerk there , his mother Johanna the daughter of the teacher (according to another source: the rabbi) Elias Präger from Altdorf . From 1878 he studied law in Heidelberg , Leipzig and Strasbourg . He passed his doctoral examination in Heidelberg in 1882 and was admitted to the Mannheim bar on September 15, 1885. In 1889 he married his wife Luise (née Simons), the couple had two daughters and a son.

From 1933 onwards, Hachenburg was increasingly exposed to reprisals from the National Socialist state. His honorary titles were withdrawn from him and publication activities were made more difficult. During the November pogroms in 1938 , his apartment and his office were badly devastated. On November 30, 1938, his license to practice as a lawyer was withdrawn. In June 1939, at the age of 78, he fled Nazi persecution, first to Zurich and later to England, where his son had already been able to get to safety. In 1946 he moved to the USA, where he died five years later. His wife had died in 1933, and his two daughters perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp .

Act

Max Hachenburg was not only a successful lawyer in Mannheim, but also one of the most prominent lawyers in the Weimar Republic thanks to his extensive publication activities and his commitment to the German Lawyers 'Association and the German Lawyers ' Conference . On the one hand, his specialization in the just emerging segment of commercial law contributed to this, on the other hand his concise and pointed writing style, whose critical term "lapidary style" was seen by him as quite apt. Just as Hermann Staub introduced the systematic analysis of the individual paragraphs into the commentary system (the “Talmudic method”), Hachenburg justified the critical appreciation of the individual regulations and judgments in the comments .

From 1906, Hachenburg continued the commentary on the GmbH law founded by Hermann Staub , using his estate notes for the second edition. The commentary edited by Hachenburg developed in the following years into one of the most important references in GmbH law and reached five editions by 1927. After the Second World War, the "Hachenburg" was continued by other authors and expanded into a major commentary, which by 1997 had a total of eight editions. Today, the “Grosskommentar zum GmbHG” published by Peter Ulmer , Mathias Habersack and Marc Löbbe expressly ties in with the commentary tradition established by Hachenburg.

Together with Adelbert Düringer , Hachenburg also published a commentary on the commercial code that had just come into force from 1899 , the second edition of which was already in four volumes. The third edition, which appeared from 1930 onwards, could no longer be completed. It was discontinued in 1935 due to National Socialist pressure because the influence of Jewish legal scholars was actively combated. Instead, a HGB commentary edited by the State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice, Franz Schlegelberger , appeared in two volumes in 1939 .

Hachenburg was a regular author of several important legal journals of the Weimar Republic. He wrote a weekly column for the Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung for 21 years. In the Juristische Wochenschrift he justified - against the protest of the Reichsgericht - the hitherto generally unusual critical discussion of judgments.

In his association activities, Hachenburg was a member of the permanent deputation of the German Lawyers 'Association and Vice President of the German Lawyers' Association. He was instrumental busy working to reform the still from the empire originating Corporation Law , which later became the new Corporation Act resulted from the 1937th

From 1920 to 1926, Hachenburg was a member of the provisional Reich Economic Council of the Weimar Republic. He was president of the Jewish Synod of Baden (1898) and of the Jewish Upper Council (1901) for one year. He was also a member of the Mannheim Freemason Lodge " Carl zur Eintracht ".

Honors and bequests

  • Dr. hc of political science ( Heidelberg University , 1930)
  • Honorary member of the German Lawyers' Association (1930)
  • Golden Badge of Honor of the City of Mannheim (1930)
  • Dr. hc from the Mannheim Business School (1932)
  • Honorary Citizen of the City of Mannheim (1949)
  • School naming in Mannheim
  • Street naming in Mannheim

Hachenburg's written estate was handed over to the Mannheim City Archives in 1973 , and his grave is in the Mannheim Jewish Cemetery . At the location of his former office, house B 2,10, a history board of the city of Mannheim has been set up.

Since 1994 the "Max Hachenburg Memorial Lecture" has been held every two years at the law faculty of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , which preserves the memory of the commercial lawyer.

Works (selection)

  • The Commercial Code of May 10, 1897 (excluding maritime law) based on the Civil Code (with Adelbert Düringer ), J. Bensheimer, Mannheim, 1899.
    • 2nd edition: Vol. 1 1908, Vol. 2 1910, Vol. 3 1913, Vol. 4 1917, Vol. 5 1924.
    • 3rd edition: Vol. 1 1930, Vol. 2 / I 1932, Vol. 2 / II 1932, Vol. 3 / I 1934, Vol. 3 / III 1935, Vol. 4 1932, Vol. 5 / I 1932, Vol . 5 / II 1932.
  • Commentary on the law on limited liability companies , founded by Hermann Staub , 2nd edition, Guttentag, Berlin, 1906.
    • 3rd increased edition 1909.
    • 4th edition 1913.
    • 5th edition: Vol. 1 1926, Vol. 2 1927.
  • Memoirs of a lawyer , Neue Brücke publishing house, Düsseldorf 1927.

literature

Web links

Commons : Max Hachenburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alemannia Judaica: Altdorf
  2. ^ NDB: Hachenburg, Max; genealogy
  3. ↑ Mannheim City Archives: Personal data Max Hachenburg ( Memento from April 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Max Hachenburg School: Who Was Max Hachenburg? ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mannheimer-schulen.de
  5. ↑ Lecture on the Open House 2017 (PDF file, accessed on October 17, 2017)
  6. ↑ Mannheim City Archives: inventory information Max Hachenburg ( Memento from April 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ City of Mannheim: History board of Max Hachenburg's office
personal data
SURNAME Hachenburg, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH October 1, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1951
Place of death Berkeley