Otto Magnus

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Otto Magnus (born November 23, 1836 in Braunschweig ; † February 29, 1920 in Braunschweig) was a Jewish lawyer who advocated the admission of Jews to the notary's office during his professional career.

Life

Otto (Salman) Magnus was born on November 23, 1836 as the eldest son of the doctor Dr. Julius (Jakob) Magnus (1804–82) and his wife Minna Samson (1809–83) were born in Braunschweig. The family had been one of the city's respected and wealthy families for generations. After graduating from high school, he stayed at the Collegium Carolinum for a year in order to deal more intensively with the natural sciences, but then decided to study law in Heidelberg, Berlin and Göttingen (1855–58), did his doctorate and in 1862 settled as a lawyer in Braunschweig . In 1868 he was admitted to the court in Wolfenbüttel and made a rapid career up to the honorary title of counselor. In 1867 he married Sophie Isler (1840–1920) from Hamburg; Both had two children, the pharmacologist Rudolf Magnus (1873–1927) and the painter Helene Magnus (1880–1971), who was married to the Art Nouveau artist Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874–1925).

job

When Magnus wanted to become a notary, his Judaism stood in his way. Because in the Duchy of Braunschweig the notary's office with its secure income was deliberately withheld from Jewish lawyers. The reasons were traditional: firstly, “a Christian cannot be expected [...] that a Jew will take an oath from him”, secondly, he cannot be available to his clients at any time because of the different holidays. The situation worsened in 1885. When the Prussian Prince Albrecht was appointed regent in Braunschweig, he declared that as long as he was alive he would not appoint a Jew as a notary.

Otto Magnus' personal file in the Wolfenbüttel State Archives documents the attorney's struggle for decades for the notary's office, which should not have been withheld from him at the latest in the course of the Reich constitution of 1871 and which was already given to Jews in other countries of the Reich (in 1840 Gabriel Riesser was named first Jew sworn in as a notary in Germany). Magnus corresponded with many notaries and collected material and data about their activities: taking an oath was not one of them. Likewise, the pretext of deviating public holidays was unnecessary, because with the liberalization of German Jews, the working days and times continued to adjust. In 1887 Magnus turned to his highest authority, the Reich Justice Office in Berlin, but the office refused to interfere in state affairs. The petition to the emperor himself, which Victor Heymann , Magnus' colleague and also a Jew, initiated at the same time, was also rejected. It was not until a new regent in 1908 that Heymann was the first Jew to be assigned the notary's office. Otto Magnus did not achieve this goal; he had retired at the age of 70.

The Reich constitution of 1919 (Weimar Constitution) put an end to professional discrimination against Jews.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bein, Reinhard .: They lived in Braunschweig: biographical notes on the Jews buried in Braunschweig (1797 to 1983) . Döring-Dr, Braunschweig 2009, ISBN 978-3-925268-30-4 .
  2. ↑ Ebeling, Hans-Heinrich .: The Jews in Braunschweig: Legal, Social and Economic History from the Beginnings of the Jewish Community to Emancipation (1282-1848) . Orphanage, Braunschweig 1987, ISBN 978-3-87884-034-3 .
  3. ↑ Personnel file Dr. Otto Magnus in the Wolfenbüttel State Archives, Lower Saxony State Archives.
  4. ↑ Herrmann, Martina G.,: Sophie Isler becomes engaged: from the life of the Jewish-German minority in the 19th century . Cologne, ISBN 978-3-412-50157-0 .
personal data
SURNAME Magnus, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH February 29, 1920
Place of death Braunschweig