Otto Kahn friend

Otto Kahn friend

Sir Otto Kahn-Freund (born November 17, 1900 in Frankfurt am Main , † August 16, 1979 in Oxford ) was a German-British lawyer and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

After Otto Kahn-Freund at the First World War had participated, he studied from 1918 to 1923 in Frankfurt , Heidelberg and Leipzig Law and graduated in 1925 with a doctorate from. His political and professional role model was the social democratic lawyer Hugo Sinzheimer . Kahn-Freund studied at Sinzheimer together with Franz Neumann , Hans Morgenthau , Ernst Fraenkel and Carlo Schmid .

In 1927 he began working as an assessor . In the same year he made a trip to Great Britain and the United States of America . In 1928 he was appointed district judge at the Berlin Labor Court. In the course of his work at the court, he was promoted to the District Court Council .

On March 14, 1933, under his chairmanship, the Berlin Court of Appeal decided a case to the detriment of the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft . In the process it was the cancellation without notice of three technical staff, of which the employer suspected that they are members of the KPD were or had been close to her, so that the suspicion was well-founded, that these employees in the future acts of sabotage in Exercised or tolerated the framework of the radio program .

On March 23, 1933, following this judgment, he was dismissed from the judiciary for “political unreliability” with immediate effect and a short time later with reference to the law to restore the civil service.

After an SA raid raid on his house, he emigrated to the United Kingdom in June 1933 , where he was initially supported by his family. He began there again to study at the University of London , where he completed his Master of Laws in 1935 . In 1936 he began his legal practice with the English Bar Association Middle Temple in London .

Until 1939 he was deputy chairman of the “Consulting Committee for German Questions” in the “International Department of the Labor Party”. At the end of 1939 he took over the leadership of the Gillies Committee together with the sociologist Charlotte Lütkens . In 1940 he was therefore appointed by Richard Crossman to chair the committee of German emigrants to evaluate the German broadcasts of the BBC .

In 1940 he was naturalized as a British .

Together with the trade unionist Walter Auerbach and the two journalists Fritz Eberhard and Hilde Meisel , he formed a discussion group even after the Gillies Committee was dissolved, in which he was actively involved until 1945.

From 1940 to 1941 he worked as chairman of the “Advisory Committee of German Emigrants” to the British authorities for the release of imprisoned German refugees from internment camps .

On October 7, 1940, the station of the European Revolution , which he co-founded, went on air. After his appointment on April 30, 1942, he took part in the German Educational Reconstruction Committee (GER) founded in 1943 .

In 1962 he was one of the founders of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL), the only international organization in the field of legal sociology to date .

From 1964 to 1971 he taught as Professor of Comparative Law at Oxford University and was a Fellow at Brasenose College Oxford. In addition, from 1965 to 1968 he was a member of the “Royal Commandments of Trade Unions and Employers Association”. In the course of his life he received numerous awards and was a member of various legal associations. In 1971 he retired.

For his services in the field of labor law , he was knighted in 1976 as a Knight Bachelor ("Sir"). The University of Cambridge awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1977 . Since 1965 he was a member ( fellow ) of the British Academy .

Fonts

• The social ideal of the Reich Labor Court. Bensheimer, Mannheim, Berlin, Leipzig 1931.
• The law of carriage by inland transport. Stevens, London 1939.
• Contributions to the reorganization of German labor law. Renaissance Publ., Welwyn Garden City 1944.
• The Growth of Internationalism in English Private International Law. 1960
• with Karl Renner : The legal institutions of private law and their social function. Fischer, Stuttgart 1965. Translation by Elisabeth Kahn-Freund.
• Delictual Liability and the Conflict of Laws. 1968.
• with Viktor Weidner : Parallels and contrasts in English and American private law. Hanstein, Bonn 1970.
• General Problems of Private International Law. 1975.
• Work and law . Bund, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main 1979. Translation by Franz Mestitz.
• Labor relations. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1981.

literature

• Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (eds.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945, Volume 1: Politics, Economy, Public Life. Munich 1980.
• Dieter Nelles: Resistance and International Solidarity. The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) in the resistance against National Socialism with special consideration of seafarers. Dissertation. 2000. Klartext, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-956-0 .
• Wedderburn of Charlton: Otto Kahn-Freund, 1900–1979 . In: Proceedings of the British Academy . tape 68 , 1982, pp. 579-584 ( thebritishacademy.ac.uk [PDF]).

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Kahn-Freund in the catalog of the German National Library
• Autobiographical memories of the Weimar Republic (PDF; 2.0 MB)
• The work of the socialist tribunal committee

Individual evidence

1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed June 16, 2020 .