Victor Loewenwarter

Victor Loewenwarter (born on May 4, 1887 in Cologne ; died on February 8, 1973 in Chile ) was a German lawyer , author of legal textbooks and one of the most famous lecturers of the Weimar period .

origin

Loewenwarter was born in 1887 into a middle-class Jewish family, who were fully rooted in social life. His great uncle David Loewenwarter, a spirits manufacturer, was one of the initiators of the Cologne Cathedral Lottery . His father Dagobert had fought on the German side in the Franco-German War and was very loyal to the emperor. His mother Mathilde was born Bernays and a distant relative of Jacob and Michael Bernays .

life and work

From 1897 Loewenwarter attended the humanistic Royal Catholic High School at Aposteln . In 1900 he celebrated his bar mitzvah , which was not unusual despite the fundamentally Catholic orientation of his grammar school. He was considered an excellent student and graduated from high school in 1906. He then began studying law at the University of Bonn . There he passed his first state examination in law in 1910, despite financial difficulties after the death of his father in 1908. He then devoted himself to his doctorate, which was supervised by Ernst Zitelmann . Thematically, she dealt with civil residence in a comparison of English and German law. Loewenwarter obtained the difficult access to original English literature caused by the tensions before the First World War by pretending to be French. He had learned the language perfectly from his French-speaking mother. After completing the doctorate as Dr. iur. Loewenwarter started his legal clerkship. There he was initially employed at the Kerpen District Court , later at the District Court , Regional Court and Higher Regional Court of Cologne . In November 1913 he passed his assessor examination and became a lawyer in 1914, and in 1920 he was admitted to the Cologne Higher Regional Court.

Loewenwarter married Martha Sophie Oppenheimer in March 1914. Their daughter Inge was born on January 14, 1915; Martha died three days later as a result of childbirth. Her death plunged him into a deep depression. So the draft order came at just the right time to give structure to his life again, although he was actually rather negative towards the emperor and he had previously described himself as a pacifist. After a period as a reservist, he was finally transferred to the front in 1917. He was first used as an anti-aircraft gunner on the Eastern Front, after the separate peace of Brest-Litowsk he came near Reims and fought on the Aisne .

After returning from the war, Loewenwarter was initially no longer able to work in his chosen profession as a lawyer, as nobody could or would afford a lawyer in the interwar period. In order to counteract the problems he had experienced in law training and to build a new existence for himself, Loewenwarter decided to become a repetitor and to impart the necessary knowledge to the students in a practical way. At the beginning of 1919 he married the nurse Margarete Steinwasser and their son Geerd was born on March 16, 1920. He enjoyed great popularity as a tutor. His practical approach, which was in contrast to the classic university lecture, was very popular with the students. They also consistently praised his educational and legal skills. Those taught by Loewenwarter include Hermann and Elsbeth von Ameln , Alexander Carlebach, Kurt Dörffer, Erich Loeb, Alphons Silbermann and Fritz Ullmann.

The increasing anti-democratic and anti-Semitic mood was also noticeable in Loewenwarter's revision course. Although he was allowed to continue teaching because of the frontline fighter privilege even after the law to restore the civil service was passed, the students soon stayed away. He then tried again as a lawyer, but at the time clients avoided Jewish lawyers. The cooperation with his colleague Fritz Falk and the admission to the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court did not produce the desired success. The re-admission to the Cologne Higher Regional Court was refused with reference to the law on admission to the bar ; a request to Reich President Paul von Hindenburg , referring to the deployment at the front, was succinctly rejected by the then Ministerial Director Roland Freisler . Son Geerd also found himself exposed to increasing hostility at school. So the family decided to emigrate.

On August 14, 1933, the Loewenwarter family received an entry permit to Chile. After the house and household had been sold far below their value, they emigrated at the end of 1933 and arrived in Santiago de Chile on January 12, 1934 . However, Loewenwarter was not admitted to the bar because the methodology he used was not recognized during the admission test. Loewenwarter was able to support his family through poorly paid lectures at the universities of Santiago de Chile , Valparaíso and Concepción . However, more than 650 pesos per month (the equivalent of around 50 Reichsmarks) were rarely available. Even the reluctantly accepted baptism of the family to the Catholic faith on October 7, 1935 did little to improve the situation. Legal treatises in Spanish improved the household budget somewhat. In 1939, the apprenticeship contracts with the German citizen Loewenwarter were not extended because of the Second World War. From then on he had to stay afloat as an assistant at the Library of Congress. His wife died on February 21, 1962. Loewenwarter himself died bitter and almost destitute on February 8, 1973.

Fonts (selection)

Loewenwarter's writings, regardless of anti-Semitic abuse, are consistently praised by reviewers and readers as inductive, practical, understandable, yet scientifically thorough. His constant reference to current case law was particularly emphasized.

• Tried and tested rules for preparing the BGB trainee law exam . Bonn 1920.
• Guide through the BGB . Sack, Berlin 1923 (experienced several editions, after his emigration up to the 18th edition, 1954, continued by his former student Heinrich Bohnenberg ).
• Teaching commentary on the Civil Code: The Law of Obligations, Special Part . Heymann, Berlin 1928.
• Teaching commentary on the Civil Code: The Law of Obligations, General Part . 2nd Edition. Sack, Berlin 1928.
• Teaching commentary on the Civil Code: Family Law . Heymann, Berlin 1929.
• Teaching commentary on the Civil Code: General Part . 3. Edition. Heymann, Berlin 1931.
• Exams with solutions to the trainee exam . Berlin 1931.
• Teaching commentary on the Civil Code: Property Law . 2nd Edition. Heymann, Berlin 1932.
• The BGB in the case law of the present . 2nd Edition. Heymann, Berlin 1934.
• Tried and tested exam rules for the BGB traineeship exam with special consideration of the competition . 2nd Edition. Berlin 1934.
• Derecho Civil Alemán, con las características de Derecho Mercantil, en comparación con las legislaciones extranjeras, especialmente from la legislación chilena . University Press, Santiago de Chile 1936 (Spanish, in three volumes).
• Consultorio jurídico a través de la jurisprudencia moderna de la corte suprema y de los Tribunals Superiores subre cuestiones de Derecho Civil y Comparado . Santiago de Chile 1937 (Spanish).
• Cuestionario Jurídico a base de "sesente casos" auténtico judiciales para el estudio de las tendencias modernas de la ciencia del Derecho Penal . Santiago de Chile 1939 (Spanish).
• Instituciones jurídicas chilenas . Santiago de Chile 1939.
• Código penal . Santiago de Chile 1955 (Spanish).

literature

• Otto Gendtner, Hans Hengsbach and Sibille Westerkamp: ... no longer admitted - the fate of the Cologne lawyer Victor Loewenwarter . Emons-Verlag, Cologne 1995, ISBN 978-3-924491-57-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Victor Loewenwarter in the catalog of the German National Library