Frankfurt Bar Association

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Frankfurt Bar Association is one of 28 bar associations in Germany. It is based in Frankfurt am Main . She is responsible for the lawyers in the higher regional court district of Frankfurt in the regional court districts of Darmstadt , Frankfurt , Gießen , Hanau , Limburg and Wiesbaden . In addition to it, there is also the Kassel Bar Association in Hesse .

Arbitration Board

It has an arbitration board. Since June 1, 2001, certain minor civil law disputes can only be brought before the local court if the plaintiff can prove that he has previously tried to reach an amicable agreement with the defendant in a so-called "arbitration procedure" on the subject of the dispute.

history

Beginnings

Already before the bar associations were established, there had been associations of lawyers. In Frankfurt am Main, for example, there was a collegium graduatorum from 1603, which was replaced by a college of lawyers in 1841. In 1868 an "honorary council" was created as a disciplinary authority and officially confirmed. In the Grand Duchy of Hesse , an association of court lawyers was formed in 1821, which in 1857 became the "Association of Public Lawyers". In 1879, as part of the Reich Justice Acts, bar associations were created at every higher regional court throughout the Reich. For the Higher Regional Court of Darmstadt , this was the Bar Association Darmstadt , for the Higher Regional Court of Kassel , the Bar Association Kassel and the OLG Frankfurt Bar Association Frankfurt. While the Darmstadt Chamber was responsible for the Grand Duchy of Hesse, the two chambers in Frankfurt and Kassel were responsible for the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau .

The Frankfurt Bar Association consisted of 9 members, from 1933 there were 15. These represented a rapidly increasing number of lawyers in the chamber district: in 1885 there were 139, in 1902 already 236 and in 1924 558 lawyers belonged to the chamber. On November 28, 1925 it was decided that a "Journal of the Bar Association in the Higher Regional Court District Frankfurt am Main" should be published.

In 1930 there were 521 lawyers. The lawyers' income situation varied widely. Therefore, in 1929 the chamber contribution, which was previously a uniform 120 marks, was graded according to income.

time of the nationalsocialism

With the seizure of power by the National Socialists, the chamber was brought into line and robbed of their self-government. First, the Jewish members of the Frankfurt Chamber were forced to resign. The anti-Semitism of the new rulers left particularly deep marks in the legal profession, as the proportion of Jews in this profession was high. In 1913, 133 (or 61%) of the 218 lawyers in Frankfurt were Jews, in 1933 there were 278 of 607 (i.e. 45%). Anyone who did not "voluntarily" withdraw as a Jew would lose their legal license. Due to the law on admission to the bar in 1933, a total of 108 lawyers were removed from the list of lawyers. In a second step, the other elected members of the chamber had to give up their offices, and the leader principle was introduced. For this purpose, a “Commissioner for the Board of Directors of the Bar Association” was appointed. Through the Reichs-Rechtsanwaltsordnung (RAO) passed on December 13, 1935 (RGBl. I, 1470), the Reichs-Rechtsanwaltskammer (RRAK) became the only legally competent representation of all lawyers admitted to the courts of the German Reich in the sense of centralization and conformity. The local bar associations lost their independence. The task of the President of the Frankfurt Chamber now consisted only of advising the RRAK.

After 1945

After the end of the war there was virtually no legal profession in the newly formed state of Hesse. There was even a lack of politically unaffected lawyers to fill the positions of judges and public prosecutors. On June 6, 1946, the State of Hesse issued an ordinance on the obligation to register and serve as a judge, according to which they had to register and be obliged to serve as judges or public prosecutors. All lawyers lost their license and had to apply for a new license from the military authorities. Only in the course of the next few years were the first lawyers able to resume their work on a larger scale.

In November 1945, with the approval of the military government, a "Chamber Board" of the non-existent Bar Association was formed to support the re-admission. The newly established Ministry of Justice also made use of their expertise.

With the ordinance of the Greater Hesse State Ministry of May 23, 1946, the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main was re-established, which now became responsible for the entire area of ​​the new federal state of Hesse , including the former district of Darmstadt (excluding Rheinhessen ). As a consequence, only one bar association would have had to be set up instead of the previous three. Section 46 of the Lawyers' Act of October 18, 1948 regulated the formation of one chamber each in Kassel and Frankfurt.

The constituent meeting of the Frankfurt Bar Association took place on December 18, 1948. They elected a board of directors that consisted of 22 people. Shortly afterwards, however, he was faced with a difficult situation: On November 19, 1948, military governor Lucius D. Clay banned professional associations with compulsory membership. The regulations of the lawyers' regulations had become obsolete. With a circular of January 12, 1949, the state government declared the relevant regulations to be ineffective. In agreement with the Minister of Justice, an "Association of Frankfurt Bar Association" was founded on February 12, which simply took over the elected board and continued the operation of the chamber. At the end of June 1949, the military government declared that the ban should not apply to bar associations. With the decree of the Ministry of Justice of July 5, the chamber was therefore restored retrospectively.

On January 1, 1949, the chamber had 767 members, in 1959 there were 1423, and in 2004 the chamber had 14,000 lawyers.

Personalities

Web links

literature

  • Johann Günther Knopp: A contribution to the history of the Frankfurt Bar Association; in: 125 years: Frankfurt am Main Bar Association, pp. 15–49.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hessian Arbitration Act (HSchlG)
  2. ↑ Slight deviation of the numbers: 275 from 607; 105 RA by law on April 30, 1933 and 16 RA retired “for other reasons”. In: Federal Minister of Justice (Ed.): In the name of the German people. (Catalog for the exhibition of the BM der Justiz) Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-8046-8731-8 , p. 77.
  3. ↑ GVBl. 1948, p. 126 ff.