Otto Leibrecht

Otto Leibrecht (born February 10, 1895 in Landstuhl , † November 17, 1973 in Munich ) was a German lawyer and political activist .

Life and activity

Leibrecht moved with his family to Ludwigshafen in 1910, where he became a childhood friend of Edgar Jung . From 1914 to 1918 he took part in the First World War as a fighter pilot and was eventually taken prisoner by the French.

After the war, Leibrecht studied law in Heidelberg, Halle and Würzburg. In addition to his studies, Leibrecht was active in the underground movement. T. even terrorist, means against which separatist tendencies fought in his Palatinate homeland. In this context, in December 1923 and January 1924 he played a key role in the preparation of the assassination attempt on Wilhelm Heinz-Orbis, the leader of the Palatinate separatists, at the Hotel Wittelsbacher Hof in Speyer , which was organized and led by his friend Jung . Some sources even suggest that Leibrecht was directly involved in the assassination attempt - as the leader of the security squad.

Around 1922 Leibrecht opened his own law firm on Karlsplatz in Munich , in which Jung joined as a partner in 1924. The firm's clients included u. a. the poet Rudolf Borchardt .

In addition to his work as a lawyer, Leibrecht continued to be closely involved in the activities of his friend Jung. He was involved in the writing of Jung's main political and philosophical work The Rule of the Inferior , for whose first edition (1927) he formulated the chapter on population policy. In the revised second edition (1930) Jung himself took over the formulation of this chapter, but was closely advised by Leibrecht, so that he continued to regard the work, as he notes in the foreword, as a collaborative effort.

Leibrecht excelled in public in 1927 with a journalistic attack on Adolf Hitler in the newspaper Das Third Reich . a. reprinted the Munich Latest News. Hitler himself dealt with Leibrecht's criticism in a public speech.

After Jung's arrest - who at that time played a leading role in the resistance against the Nazi system - and the search of the joint law firm in Munich in June 1934, Leibrecht hid in the mountains for a few days, possibly causing him to be arrested and / or shot during escaped the Röhm crisis . He was then able to work as a lawyer undisturbed until 1944. Politically, he was still close to the resistance and acted as a liaison for resistance groups in Switzerland. After the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , Leibrecht's office was searched again. In December 1944 Leibrecht fled to Switzerland , where he was in contact with the later Bavarian head of government, Wilhelm Hoegner . Allegedly he was involved in Hoegner's “Zurich Document” on the state reorganization of Bavaria after the war.

In 1945 Leibrecht returned to Munich, where he worked as a lawyer again and lived politically inconspicuous until his death.

Archival tradition

A military personnel file on Leibrecht has been preserved in the War Archives Department in the Bavarian Main State Archives (OP 26397).

Fonts

• The reasons for divorce from lege ferenda , sl 1922. (Dissertation)
• "National Socialist Mistakes", in: The Third Reich of May 1927.
• From the mind of the people. Attempt to create a metaphysics of love for the fatherland , Nuremberg 1927.

literature

• Bärbel Dusik ( arr .): Hitler. Speeches, writings, orders. February 1925 to January 1933 , Vol. III / 1, Munich 1992, p. 302 u. 307;
• Rainer Orth : The official seat of the opposition. Politics and state restructuring plans in the office of the Deputy Chancellor in the years 1933–1934 , Vienna: Böhlau, 2016, pp. 654f., ISBN 978-3-412-50555-4 .
• "Otto Leibrecht died", in: Voice of the Palatinate , No. 5/6, 1973, p. 20.