Max Plaut (lawyer, 1901)

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Max Plaut (born October 17, 1901 in Sohrau ; died March 8, 1974 in Hamburg ) was a German lawyer, economist and Jewish association official.

Life

Plaut had to interrupt his school career after the First World War because his parents left their home in 1919 in the course of the uprisings in Upper Silesia and moved to Hamburg. Plaut was in a volunteer corps under Manfred von Killinger participant in the battles for Sankt Annaberg . He then finished his school career in Marburg with the Abitur at the Philippinum grammar school . From 1922 he lived with his parents in Hamburg, where his father Raphael Plaut ran the German-Israelite orphanage. After training as a banker at the bank Warburg He graduated in law and economics at the universities of Hamburg , Rostock (February 1927-August 1928), Freiburg and Paris and graduated with doctorates to Dr. rer. pole. and Dr. jur. Until 1930 he was employed by the Warburg bank. Plaut was a member of the DDP .

Plaut led the German-Jewish youth at the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith . From 1930 he was an elected member of the Representative College of the Hamburg Jewish Community , where he was a full-time secretary from the beginning of January 1933. After the National Socialists came to power , Plaut was arrested and abused several times, also because of his membership in the B'nai B'rith lodge and in the course of the November pogroms . At the beginning of December 1938, Plaut was appointed head of the Jewish Religious Association, the forced successor of the Hamburg Jewish Community, by the Jewish officer Claus Göttsche from the Hamburg State Police Headquarters .

“On the basis of § 1 of the ordinance for the protection of the people and the state of February 28, 1933, you are hereby entrusted with managing the business of the Jewish Religious Association under your own responsibility for the near future. Conflicting provisions of the statutes are temporarily suspended. You are responsible for the Secret State Police, State Police Headquarters Hamburg, for proper management. You have to give a plan here about the rules of procedure and the distribution of business you have planned. In addition, you are hereby appointed to the board of all Jewish organizations for the near future. This order is valid until revoked. You have to raise contributions for the financial needs of the association. In order to finance regular emigration, you are authorized to demand a special tax from emigrating Jews. An invoice is to be submitted here for the amounts collected. "

- Letter from the Jewish officer Claus Göttsche of the Hamburg State Police Headquarters to Max Plaut, Syndic of the Jewish Religious Association Hamburg, dated December 2, 1938

After the formation of the Reich Association of Jews in Germany in July 1939, he became head of its district office in Northwest Germany in personal union; his deputy was last Leo Lippmann . In this function he was also responsible for the interests of the Jews in Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony . With the help of the Warburg bank, Plaut supported Jews in their departure, at the request of the Reichsvereinigung, had to regulate the property affairs of the Szczecin Jews deported to the Generalgouvernement (GG) and was able to prevent the deportation of the East Frisian Jews to the Generalgouvernement.

Plaut was initially able to prevent his participation in the creation of transport lists for the deportation of Hamburg's Jews, later Plaut and his staff were forced to do so by the Hamburg Gestapo's Jewish Department. By bribing Gestapo officials from the Jewish Department, he was able to ensure that older Jewish prisoners from the Fuhlsbüttel police prison were initially able to move to a Jewish retirement home and were only later deported .

After the end of the unification of the Reich, after several months of internment, Plaut as a "long-time Zionist ", his mother and other people with special permits in exchange for Germans abroad were able to travel from Vienna by train via Turkey to Palestine in July 1944 . The last 30 employees of Plaut's office were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on June 23, 1943, along with over 70 other people , among them were Fanny David and Käthe Starke-Goldschmidt .

After the end of the war he married Ruth Jacobson in 1946 and moved to Bremen in 1950 , where he took over the deputy chairmanship of the local Jewish community . A report by Plaut about the persecution of the Jews under National Socialism was used in the Eichmann trial . From 1959 to 1965 he was a member of the German UNESCO Commission . From 1965 he lived in Hamburg again and from 1971 was president of the Lessing Academy in Wolfenbüttel . He was committed to Christian-Jewish understanding (see Churches and Judaism after 1945 ).

literature

  • Beate Meyer: Plaut, Max. In: Institute for the history of the German Jews (ed.): The Jewish Hamburg: a historical reference work. Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0004-0 (with folding map of Jewish sites in Hamburg ), pp. 206–207.
  • Beate Meyer, Institute for the History of German Jews : The Persecution and Murder of Hamburg Jews 1933–1945. History, testimony, memory. Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0137-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chronika, magazine of the former Marburg high school students, No. 13, April 1933
  2. ↑ Registration book of the University of Rostock: WS 1923 - WS 1928 Cf. entry no. 217 in the field "Visited universities"
  3. ^ Enrollment of Max Plaut in the Rostock matriculation portal
  4. ↑ a b c d Beate Meyer: Plaut, Max . In: Institute for the History of the German Jews (Ed.): The Jewish Hamburg: a historical reference work , Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, pp. 206-207.
  5. ^ A b Götz Aly , Federal Archives, Institute for Contemporary History : The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 , Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939. Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , P. 537
  6. ↑ Quoted in: Götz Aly, Federal Archives, Institute for Contemporary History: The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945. Volume 2: German Reich 1938 - August 1939. Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-58523-0 , p. 537
  7. ↑ Beate Meyer, Institute for the History of German Jews : The persecution and murder of Hamburg's Jews 1933–1945: History, Testimony, Remembrance , Göttingen 2006, p. 43.
  8. ↑ a b Beate Meyer, Institute for the History of German Jews : The persecution and murder of Hamburg's Jews 1933–1945: History, witness, remembrance , Göttingen 2006, p. 52.
  9. ^ Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke: Hamburgische Biographie . Lexicon of persons , Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, p. 239.
personal data
SURNAME Plaut, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, economist and association official
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Sohrau
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1974
Place of death Hamburg