Max Hellmann

Max Hellmann (born May 27, 1884 in Leipzig ; † October 13, 1939 in Buchenwald concentration camp ) was a German lawyer .

Life

Hellmann was born in Leipzig in 1884 as the son of a Jewish businessman. In 1903 he graduated from the Thomas School in Leipzig . From 1904 to 1908 he studied law at the University of Leipzig . Then he was a trainee lawyer until 1912 and passed the second state examination in law . From 1913 he worked as a lawyer at the Leipzig district and regional court . His law firm, in which he specialized in civil and criminal law, was on Nathalienstraße. Politically, Hellmann had a German national orientation, but did not join any political party. In 1924 he converted to the Evangelical Lutheran faith.

"Max Hellmann" process

In November 1937 the chief public prosecutor at the Leipzig Regional Court charged him with violating the law for the protection of German blood and German honor , the so-called Blood Protection Act , because he employed a non-Jewish woman in his household.

Hellmann defended himself during the trial and requested that the Fuhrer and Chancellor Adolf Hitler be heard at the main hearing. After the application was rejected, he instructed the bailiff to deliver the witness invitation in accordance with § 220  StPO . The President of the Higher Regional Court also rejected this request with reference to Section 49 of the  Code of Criminal Procedure. As a result, Hellmann delivered the cargo immediately. In the invitation, he asked Hitler to find out the room number of the negotiating room from the sergeant responsible, and remarked that his release would only be possible after the sentence was pronounced. Hellmann was provisionally arrested in January 1938 and taken into custody. His sanity was doubted, the medical report spoke of a congenital anomaly on the part of Hellmann. He was sentenced to two months in prison for violating the so-called Blood Protection Act.

At the end of the month he had to appear again, this time by order of the Gestapo , before the chief public prosecutor. In February 1938 an arrest warrant was issued for an offense under Section 2, Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Act against Insidious Attacks on the State and the Party and for the Protection of Party Uniforms , the so-called Heimtegesetzes . His complaint was rejected by the Freiburg Special Court .

The anti-Semitic weekly newspaper Der Stürmer rushed in March 1938 against what it called the “Jewish challenge”. Reich Justice Minister Franz Gürtner presented the case to Hitler in Linz in April 1938 . The note on the file states: “The Führer does not want any special measures”. In September 1938, the special court around the District Court Director Friesicke sentenced him to one year in prison in the Bautzen prison . After serving his sentence, he was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp and died there in 1939 under unexplained circumstances. It was officially said that he had succumbed to pulmonary edema and cardiomyopathy . He was buried in the Jewish cemetery on Berliner Strasse.

Before that, in April 1938, the proceedings against Hellmann, initiated by the attorney general, were dropped before the court of honor of the bar association . The representation requirement was declared in May in accordance with Section 95 RRAO (Reich Lawyers' Act).

literature

• Federal Bar Association (Hrsg.): Lawyer without law. The fate of Jewish lawyers in Germany after 1933 . be.bra Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89809-074-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Book of the Dead - Buchenwald Concentration Camp: Max Hellmann In: totenbuch.buchenwald.de , accessed on August 13, 2019.
2. ↑ Hellmann, Max. In: Gedenkbuch - Victims of the persecution of the Jews under the Nazi tyranny in Germany 1933–1945. Retrieved August 13, 2019 . 
3. ^ ^{A b c} Hubert Lang: "The Führer does not want any special measures". The end of a German lawyer. (PDF; 508 kB) In: Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer (Ed.): RBRAK Mitteilungen, 3/2003, pp. 113–114.