Valentin Heins (lawyer)

Valentin Heins (born March 7, 1894 in Hamburg ; † May 3, 1971 in Munich ) was a German lawyer .

Heins studied law in Munich and passed the legal state exams there. In 1923 he settled in Munich as a lawyer.

Heins was a co-founder in 1947 and co-editor of the Neue Juristische Wochenschrift until his death . In addition, he was a member of the Bar Senate of the Federal Court of Justice and Vice President of the Munich Bar Association .

Valentin Heins and Thomas Mann

Heins became known primarily through his representation of Thomas Mann because of the confiscation of the Mann family's property during the Nazi era . Thomas Mann mandated the Munich lawyer in April 1933 with the aim of obtaining the release of the property confiscated after his emigration , in particular the manuscripts of Buddenbrooks , Zauberberg and other works. Despite considerable efforts and several trips to Berlin , Heins remained unsuccessful in this matter - probably through no fault of his own. The attorney's passport was also temporarily confiscated to make it impossible for him to meet with Mann. On February 28, 1938 the assets of the married couple Thomas and Katia Mann were finally confiscated due to the law on the confiscation of property that is hostile to the people and the state ; however, Heins may have managed to get hold of the manuscripts .

The relationship between Heins and his client deteriorated noticeably. Heins had some of the expenses he had incurred, to the displeasure of Mann, from his publisher, taking into account Mann's compensation claims. Heins did not comply with Thomas Mann's request to hand over the manuscripts to his emissary, the journalist Rolf Nürnberg , who had traveled to Germany in the spring of 1938 with a Czechoslovak diplomatic passport. He refused to hand over the documents because, as he later explained, he had withheld the possession of these documents from the Gestapo despite repeated requests: "This storage was very dangerous for me." He had previously heard that the Gestapo had the courier baggage of foreign diplomats don't pay attention and leave. Therefore he had to deny possession of the documents to Nuremberg. The Mann family resented his behavior, although Heins had hardly any other way of protecting the manuscripts from access by the rulers at the time than strictly denying their possession. The manuscripts that Heins had hidden in a wall recess are in the war lost, and probably in a fire in the office were destroyed by Heins. In the end, Heins was accused by the Mann family of only attracting high fees, but of not having made a difference in the matter, allegations that Mann finally dealt with the Munich Bar Association.

Heins himself accused the poet of human failure in his attitude towards him.

literature

• Hansgeorg Blechschmid: Thomas Mann and the law . peniope, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-936609-08-X , ( Thomas Mann series 3), content .
• Hansgeorg Blechschmid: The writer and his lawyer. Thomas Mann and Valentin Heins . In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 58, 2005, ISSN  0341-1915 , p. 536 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biographical data of Valentin Heins in: Diaries 1935 - 1936 , by Thomas Mann, Fischer, 1978, page 422
2. ^ Biographical data from Valentin Heins in: Neue juristische Wochenschrift , Volume 1, Biederstein Verlag, 1947, page 40 ; New legal weekly 1964, 489 and 1971, 913
3. ↑ ^{a b} Thomas Mann - Lost Manuscript . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1962 ( online ).
4. ↑ Thomas Mann: Diaries 1937–1939 . Ed .: Peter de Mendelssohn. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-16063-4 , pp. 678 - footnote nos. 5-9. March 1938 .