Walter Rothholz (lawyer)

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Walter Rothholz (born April 20, 1893 in Stettin ; died November 1, 1978 ) was a German-Norwegian lawyer.

Life

Walter Rothholz was a soldier in the First World War. He studied law, received his doctorate and became a judge. He worked as an appraiser for the Foreign Office. After the handover of power to the National Socialists in 1933, he was not simply dismissed as a Jew, but retired, as he was initially protected by the combatant privilege . Rothholz married the Norwegian Else Marie Bølling (1915-1976), they had two children, including the political scientist Walter Rothholz, born in 1943 . They emigrated from Germany, stayed in the USA and France and returned to Norway in 1939 with the aim of emigrating from there to the USA, which was no longer possible after the outbreak of war. In Norway, after the German occupation of Norway in 1940 , Rothholz was initially able to keep a low profile , but was then imprisoned as a Jew in the Berg camp by the German Gestapo in October 1942 . From December 1942 to May 1945 he was an inmate in the Grini Police Detention Center . He was spared the deportations of foreign and Norwegian Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp , as his wife was considered an Aryan .

After the end of the war, Rothholz received Norwegian citizenship and was one of the first authors for the journal Archiv des Völkerrechts, newly founded in occupied Germany . Rothholz had a time (1952) a law practice in Munich . In 1963 he was a witness in the Federal Republic of Germany at the trial against the former Gestapo chief in Norway, Hellmuth Reinhard , who was acquitted for procedural reasons.

Rothholz's name is listed on a memorial plaque for Jewish judges and public prosecutors in Berlin that has been installed in the house of the German Association of Judges in Berlin's Kronenstrasse since 2010 .

Fonts (selection)

  • Judgment of the Regional Court of Oslo January 29, 1948 . Translation Walter Rothholz. Archiv des Völkerrechts, 1 (1), 1948, pp. 120–125
  • Finland's fate under international law since 1917 . Archiv des Völkerrechts, 1 (4), 1949, pp. 450–470
  • The concept of “protection juridique et politique”. A contribution to the refugee question . Archiv des Völkerrechts, 2 (4), 1950, pp. 404–412

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Bjarte Bruland : Holocaust in Norway: registration, deportation, extermination . Translation by Jochen Pöhlandt. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019 ISBN 9783525310779 . There as redwood .
  2. ^ Walter Rothholz, Katharinenstrasse 2, Munich-Unterhaching , at: e-archiv, Liechtenstein
  3. ^ Jewish judges and prosecutors in Berlin , illustration and list of names. See also the photograph at Commons: c: File: Memorial plaque Kronenstrasse 73 (center) Jüdische Richter.jpg
personal data
SURNAME Rothholz, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Norwegian lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH November 1, 1978