Siegfried Moses (lawyer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Siegfried Moses

Siegfried Moses (born May 3, 1887 in Lautenburg , West Prussia , † January 14, 1974 in Tel Aviv ) was a German-Israeli lawyer and the first state controller of Israel .

Life

Siegfried Moses grew up in an acculturated German-Jewish family with almost no religious education or knowledge . Even as a high school student, he was interested in the Zionist movement and became involved in it as a budding lawyer. As a student he was the editor of the Bund Jüdischer Corporations (BJC) published monthly The Jewish Student , of which he was editor from 1908 to 1911; he had joined the Berlin section of the BJC in the winter semester of 1904/05. He was particularly interested in the economy, which is reflected in the topic of his dissertation on the ineffective entry into a limited liability company (1908). In 1912 Moses opened a law firm in Berlin together with a friend before settling in Marienwerder in 1914. Then the First World War began . As "not fit for the field service" he was appointed head of the War Food Office of the city of Danzig in the course of this in 1916 . The experience gained in this activity would later benefit him in building the state of Israel. In 1919/1920 he was appointed deputy director of the German Association of Cities in Berlin. From 1921 to 1923 he was the executive chairman of the Jüdische Arbeiterhilfe. He campaigned for equal rights for Eastern Jews in the German-Jewish communities.

In 1923, Siegfried Moses temporarily went into business. The leading German Zionist Salman Schocken won him over as director for the department store group Schocken . Moses was responsible for administrative and legal matters on the board. In 1929 he settled down again as an independent lawyer and passed the examination as a "publicly appointed auditor". From 1931 to 1936 he worked in the representative office of the Jewish community in Berlin .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he helped Jewish fellow citizens with the transfer of wealth to Palestine . From 1933 on he was also chairman of the Zionist Association for Germany (ZVfD) and vice- chairman of the Reich Representation of German Jews , which was headed by the Berlin Rabbi Leo Baeck . In 1937, Moses had to flee Germany. He moved to Palestine and from 1939 worked for ten years as a certified auditor and income tax expert in Tel Aviv. In 1941 he wrote (together with Walter Schwarz, who also emigrated from Germany ) the commentary on the Palestinian income tax law passed in 1941.

On July 2, 1943, long before the end of the war, Siegfried Moses coined the term reparation in relation to claims of Jewish citizens against the German state. At that time he published the article The reparation demands of the Jews in the newsletter of Irgun Olej Merkas Europa , Tel Aviv . For the first time, Moses formulated the thesis that a state could commit injustice, which he would then have to make amends to the civilian population. This legal view later became the basis for reparation by the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1947 Siegfried Moses was a member of the Jewish Agency delegation to the United Nations. In 1949 he was appointed the first state controller of Israel (head of the audit office), a kind of ombudsman in the rank of minister; he was re-elected to this position twice before he did not stand for election in 1961. In 1953 he held the top position of the organization of the German-Jewish compatriot of Israel ( Irgun Olej Merkas Europa [under this name 1943 to 2006], founded in 1932 as Hitachduth Olej Germania ) and was a prominent representative of the party supported by it ("Alijah Chadaschah"); In 1957 Moses became president of "Irgun Olej Merkas Europa". 1956 to 1957 he was also president of the “Council of Jews from Germany”, the official association of German-born Israelis. In 1955 he was one of the co-founders of the Leo Baeck Institute , of which he was also director, and was on the advisory board of the United Restitution Organization in Israel.

literature

  • Siegfried Moses: The Jewish Post-War Demands (Tel Aviv 1944). With an introduction by Professor Dr. Paul Kirchhof and a bio-bibliographical annotation by Rachel. Edited by Wolf-Dieter Barz. Source texts for legal history, Volume 6, Lit Verlag Berlin 2001. ISBN 3-8258-5024-2 .
  • Hans Tramer (ed.): In two worlds. Siegfried Moses on his seventy-fifth birthday . Publishing house Bitaon Ltd., Tel Aviv 1962.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg Herlitz: Siegfried Moses' development and position in the KJV. In: Hans Tramer (Ed.): In two worlds. Siegfried Moses on his seventy-fifth birthday. Verlag Bitaon Ltd., Tel Aviv 1962, p. 17 ff.
  2. ↑ Walter Schwarz: A building block for the history of reparation. P. 218 ff.
  3. ↑ The article is printed in: Rolf Vogel (ed.): The German-Israeli Dialog. Documentation of an exciting chapter of German foreign policy , Part 1 Politics, Vol. 1, Munich a. a. 1987, pp. 4-15.
  4. ^ Article "Siegfried Moses" in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, The Gale Group, 2008.
  5. ^ Keyword Siegfried Moses in: Horst Göppinger, jurists of Jewish descent in the "Third Reich". Disenfranchisement and persecution . 2nd, completely revised edition, CH Beck, Munich 1990.
personal data
SURNAME Moses, Siegfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Lautenburg , West Prussia
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1974
Place of death Tel Aviv