Paul Ronge
Paul August Wilhelm Ronge (born November 26, 1901 in Königsberg (Prussia) , † November 23, 1965 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer and politician . From 1948 to 1958 he was a member of the city council of Greater Berlin and then of the Berlin House of Representatives , from 1951 as deputy chairman of the FDP parliamentary group. In addition, Ronge made a name for himself as an art collector and as a board member of the German Schiller Foundation, which was newly established in West Germany in 1952 .
Life
Ronge was the son of a senior veterinarian. He grew up in Insterburg , where he attended a humanistic grammar school. After graduating from high school, he studied law and political science as well as economics at the University of Cologne . He completed his training with a doctorate on the subject of “Price Theory and Economic Disruption” as a Dr. rer. pole. from. After completing his legal preparatory service, he came to the Königsberg district court as an assessor.
In 1931 Ronge joined the law firm of the then very prominent Königsberg lawyer David Aschkanasy . In the 1930s, alongside Max Alsberg and Erich Frey, he was one of the best-known defense lawyers in Germany. He was respected after 1945 for the stance demonstrated during the Nazi rule - Ronge was one of only a very few lawyers in East Prussia that never joined the NSDAP and made himself available to those persecuted by the Nazi system, such as Jews and pastors of the Confessing Church , as a legal representative . Shortly before the end of the war, he was sentenced to death in absentia for making comments critical of the regime.
After the end of World War II , Ronge settled in West Berlin as a criminal defense lawyer. In the first few years, in contrast to his earlier work, he defended people who were incriminated by their behavior during the Nazi period. He represented Erich Gritzbach , the former head of the staff office of the Prussian Prime Minister Hermann Göring , in an atonement procedure before the Berlin district court in the 1950s, while immediately after the end of the war he defended Helene Schwärzel , who became known as an informer : Schwärzel had the National Socialist in autumn 1944 Authorities informed about the whereabouts of the former Mayor of Leipzig Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, who was wanted because of his involvement in the attempted coup on July 20, and thus contributed to Goerdeler's execution by the Nazi judiciary, which was later assessed as a judicial murder. Ronge, who had been a close personal friend of Goerdeler, justified his decision to defend Schwärzel - which was sentenced to 15 years and 10 years of loss of honor under the Allied Control Council Act No. 10 for crimes against humanity - with the fact that he " the right wish ” . Ronge also came out publicly by taking a public position against this sanction in the context of the public debate about the abolition or retention of the death penalty , which was conducted in 1948/1949 parallel to the discussions about the Bonn Basic Law .
Paul Ronge died in 1965, just three days before his 64th birthday, of the consequences of a fractured femur . His grave is in the Dahlem forest cemetery (field 007-388 / 389).
Fonts
- Price Theory and Economic Disruption , 1922. (Dissertation)
- Problem § 218 , Rudolstadt 1947.
- Why I defended Helene Schwärzel. In: Nordwestdeutsche Hefte 1 (1946), No. 9, pp. 14-15.
- In the name of justice. Defense attorney's memories , 1963.
literature
- Werner Breunig, Siegfried Heimann , Andreas Herbst : Biographical Handbook of Berlin City Councilors and Members of Parliament 1946–1963 (= series of publications by the Berlin State Archives . Volume 14 ). Landesarchiv Berlin , Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9803303-4-3 , p. 223 (331 pages).
- Who is who? , Vol. 12, 1955, p. 986.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Death penalty yes or no? . In: Der Spiegel 22/1949, May 26, 1949.
- ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 587.
Carl-Hubert Schwennicke (1950–1956) | Paul Ronge (1956–1958) | Hermann Oxfort (1963–1975) | Horst Vetter (1975–1983) | Walter Rasch (1983–1989) | Carola von Braun (1991-1994) | Axel Kammholz (1994–1995) | Günter Rexrodt (2001–2002) | Martin Lindner (2002–2009) | Christoph Meyer (2009–2011) | Sebastian Czaja (since 2016)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ronge, Paul |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ronge, Paul August Wilhelm (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German lawyer and politician (FDP) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 26, 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Koenigsberg , East Prussia |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 23, 1965 |
| Place of death | West Berlin |