Philipp Benfey (lawyer)

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Philipp Benfey (born May 9, 1865 in Hanover ; died January 4, 1928 there ) was a German lawyer , attorney , councilor and mayor as well as public defender for the mass murderer Fritz Haarmann (1879-1925).

Life

Born in the royal seat of what was then the Kingdom of Hanover as the son of the lawyer Julius Benfey from a Jewish family , Philipp Benfey passed his Abitur at what was then Lyceum I , the later Ratsgymnasium .

After studying law , Benfey settled down as a lawyer in his hometown of Hanover in 1894.

Philipp Benfey left the Jewish community in 1907 during the time of the German Empire . He got involved in the Hanoverian branch association of the Red Cross , organized during the First World War "[...] the establishment of club hospitals and participated in the station welfare for soldiers".

At the beginning of the Weimar Republic , Benfey was elected mayor of Hanover in 1919, an office that he held until 1924. As a “member of the middle class parliamentary group ”, for example, he campaigned for the construction of the city crematorium , but voted against the unification of Hanover with the then industrial city of Linden .

Meanwhile, Benfey had been appointed notary in 1920 . A special distinction was the honorary title of Councilor of Justice .

In the so-called "Haarmann Trial" (December 4th to 19th, 1924), Benfey took over the legal defense in the trial against the main defendant and serious criminal Fritz Haarmann, who between 1918 and 1924 murdered at least 24 male adolescents in a sexual intoxication, then dismembered their corpses and partly sunk in the line . In the opinion of the critical trial observer Theodor Lessing (1872–1933), however, Benfey failed to clarify both Haarmann's motives and the social background of the crimes .

literature

  • Hans Joachim Brand : The past today. Historical personalities from the Celle Bar Association , published by the Celle Bar Association, 2nd, revised and expanded edition, Celle: Rechtsanwaltskammer, 2004, pp. 134–135

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Benfey, Philipp in the database of Niedersächsische Personen (new entry required) of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library - Lower Saxony State Library in the version dated March 11, 2016
  2. ↑ Compare the information under the GND number of the German National Library
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Peter Schulze : Benfey, Philipp. In: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 49.
  4. ↑ also in the Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 58; online through google books
  5. ^ Klaus Mlynek: Linden. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , pp. 406-409.
  6. ^ Klaus Mlynek : Haarmann, Fritz. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 245
personal data
SURNAME Benfey, Philipp
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German business lawyer and bank director
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH January 4, 1928
Place of death Hanover