Robert Michaelis (judge)

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Robert Bernd Michaelis (born July 4, 1903 in Charlottenburg ; † May 1, 1973 ) was a German judge .

Live and act

Robert Michaelis studied law in Leipzig and Berlin, 1926 he was in Berlin with a thesis powers in the German copyright and droit moral of French law to Dr. jur. doctorate , in 1925 and 1929 he passed the two state exams. After a short time as a court assessor at the Berlin Regional Court II he was in September 1929 auxiliary judge at the Patent Chamber of the Landgericht Berlin I. After the seizure of power of the Nazis , he was in April 1933 after the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service forced leave and with effect from 20 July 1933 due to retired of his Jewish descent. Since he refused to leave his job, the Gestapo forcefully forced him out of office. In the following years he worked in the company of his wife Luise Marie Ventzke and as a “technical legal clerk” in a light bulb factory. He and his non-Jewish wife decided in 1939 to send their two children Ruth Michaelis (born January 23, 1935, today: Ruth Barnett) and Martin Ludwig Michaelis to England, a possibility that arose with a Kindertransport . While his wife stayed in Germany, Robert Michaelis managed to escape to Shanghai at the end of 1939 . In Shanghai Michaelis learned Chinese and served as Attorney ( International Settlement ) and Conseiller Juridique et Mandataire ad litem (Concession Française) and Chairman of the Association Central European Lawyers in Shanghai .

His return to Germany took him to Lindau in 1947 , where his wife had been obliged to do military service . As deputy chairman of the committee of inquiry into political cleansing, he worked on denazification . From 1949, as a victim of fascism , he got the position of regional court director at the Mainz regional court . In 1949, after 10 years, the whole family saw each other again in Germany, but the children returned to England - in the meantime estranged from their parents.

Robert Michaelis devoted himself to making amends for Jews with strong personal commitment . In 1954 he wrote about the aftermath of National Socialist persecution among the survivors: “Persistent emotional and somatic impairment in almost all those persecuted during the Nazi era, especially those of Jewish descent, leads some people of Jewish descent to a persistent feeling of dissatisfaction, or sometimes even vague uncertainty ... ".

The spirit of half-hearted denazification in the FRG, especially in the judiciary, the lack of professional recognition and, last but not least, the alienation of his children from him and his wife, made him mentally and physically ill. At the age of 54, Robert Michaelis retired as incapacitated, but appointed President of the Senate at the Higher Regional Court of Koblenz . At the same time, he undertook to consider all pending redress proceedings as closed. Less than a year later he applied for admission as a lawyer, which was initially refused by the bar association with reference to his poor state of health, but had to be granted in February 1959. He remained a lawyer until March 1967, working on his book on the Dreyfus Trial.

reception

His daughter Ruth Barnett now lives in London . In 2009 she wrote down her experiences and the story of her family and her father Robert Michaelis from the perspective of her daughter. In addition, she tries to document his life in a project with the Berlin Regional Court . In May 2015, the Berlin Regional Court remembered the life of Robert Michaelis, “the one who was expelled from the judicial office by the Nazis because of his Jewish descent and was later forced to emigrate, with an event entitled“ I got ahead of my murder! ”Together with Ruth Barnett Richter ”.

The life of Robert Michaelis and his family was a template for the character of Richard Kornitzer in 2012 published novel District Court of Ursula Krechel . This was filmed for television in 2017 with Ronald Zehrfeld in the role of Richard Kornitzer.

Fonts

  • Personal rights in German copyright law and droit moral in French law . Goedecke & Gallinek, Berlin 1926 (dissertation)
  • The Dreyfus Trial. A legal study (with special reference to the two retrial proceedings) . Kriminalistik-Verlag, Hamburg 1963 ( digitized version ).
  • Administration of justice and politics in the Dreyfus affair , CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1965 (Reprint of a lecture given to the Juristic Study Society in Karlsruhe on December 10, 1964)

literature

  • Tillmann Krach: A Mainz judge as a fictional character. Who was Richard Kornitzer? In: Journal der Juristische Zeitgeschichte 7, 2013, pp. 76–79.
  • David Kranzler : Japanese, Nazis & Jews:: the Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938-1945 . Preface by Abraham G. Duker. Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publ. House, 1988
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 501

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinz Georg Bamberger : On the history and previous history of the Oberlandesgericht Koblenz , p. 46. In: 50 Jahre Oberlandesgericht and Attorney General Koblenz , Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-63131161-3 .
  2. ↑ Ruth Barnett in conversation. ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Interview with Ruth Barnett on zdf.de , February 1, 2017, accessed on February 3, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zdf.de
  3. ↑ Heinz Eberhard Maul: Japan and the Jews - Study of the Jewish policy of the Japanese Empire during the time of National Socialism 1933–1945 , dissertation University of Bonn, 2000 (pdf). Ursula Krechel describes the situation of Jewish refugees in Shanghai in her book Shanghai fern von wo , Jung und Jung Verlag, Salzburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-90249744-4 .
  4. ↑ Julia Baumann: Memories of an admirable woman. In: Schwäbische Zeitung . January 31, 2017, accessed February 3, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Quoted in: Georg Berkenhoff: Hitler's shadow does not give way. In: The time . February 18, 1954, accessed February 3, 2017 .
  6. ^ Tillmann Krach: A Mainz judge as a fictional character. Who was Richard Kornitzer?  In: Journal der Juristische Zeitgeschichte 7, 2013, pp. 76–79.
  7. ^ Ruth Barnett: Person of No Nationality. A Story of Childhood Loss and Recovery . Paul David, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-95484827-9 ; German: Ruth Barnett: Nationality: stateless - The story of a child transport . Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86331-309-8 .
  8. ^ Website of the Berlin Senate Administration (pdf) ( Memento from February 2, 2017 in the Internet Archive ).
  9. ↑ Ursula Krechel: Regional Court . Jung und Jung, Salzburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-990-27024-0
  10. ↑ Martin Bernd Michaelis: Ursula Krechels "Landgericht": This story is passed on to the children FAZ , December 26, 2012
  11. ^ Regional Court , Director: Matthias Glasner, two-part television film, 2017 ( zdf.de ).
  12. ↑ Thomas Gehringer: Multi-part "Regional Court - History of a Family" tittelbach.tv, accessed on June 28, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Michaelis, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Michaelis, Robert Bernd (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and judge
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg
DATE OF DEATH May 1st 1973