Wilhelm Kiesselbach (lawyer)

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Wilhelm Arnold Kiesselbach (born September 13, 1867 in Bremen , † December 26, 1960 in Hamburg ) was a German lawyer, judge and judicial politician.

Life

Wilhelm Kiesselbach came from the Bremen patriciate. His maternal grandfather was the Hanseatic Reich Minister of Trade and Bremen Mayor Arnold Duckwitz . His father Theodor Kiesselbach was appointed as a judge at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in 1879 . He grew up in Bremen. He passed his matriculation examination at the Johanneum in Hamburg. He also studied law and attended the universities of Bonn, Leipzig and Berlin. He also trained himself in English and American law through corresponding stays abroad.

From 1895 Kiesselbach was established as a lawyer in Hamburg and was also involved in voluntary professional associations and legal training. His planned election as Senator of the Hanseatic City failed due to the political upheavals of the November Revolution in 1918. In 1921 he was offered the Hamburg embassy to the German Reich in Berlin. He declined this offer.

Wilhelm Kiesselbach (1922)

In 1922, as Reich Commissioner, he became one of two arbitrators of the German American Mixed Claims Commission in Washington, DC , which had been formed on the basis of the Berlin Treaty of 1921 for the purpose of determining the reparations claims of the United States in connection with the First World War and theirs in October 1922 Took up activity. The United States appointed Edwin B. Parker, a licensed attorney in Houston and New York, as a commissioner on the panel. The former US Secretary of State and judge at the US Supreme Court William R. Day acted as umpire between the two . It is largely thanks to Kiesselbach's participation that the German assets blocked as pledge in the USA to secure these claims for compensation were already released in 1928 at a rate of 80 percent, because the activities of the commission made it clear that the initially assumed need for security by far would be undercut. He held this important office until 1932.

In 1929 he was also appointed President of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court. Kiesselbach, who had made no secret of his attitude towards the National Socialists, was removed from the office of president in the course of the “ Gleichschaltung” from 1933. During his tenure from 1928 to 1933, Eleonore (Lola) du Bois-Reymond was his private secretary. After the end of the war he was entrusted by the British military government on May 29, 1945 with the task of rebuilding the judiciary in Hamburg. The presidential position at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court was connected with this until September 30, 1946. On October 1, 1946, Kiesselbach took over as President of Justice, the management of the newly created Central Justice Office for the British Zone and thus the mediator role between the British military government and the German judiciary in the entire British zone. The position corresponded to the competencies of a Minister of Justice. He held this position until his resignation on March 31, 1950.

A bust of Kiesselbach in the courthouse of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court on Sievekingplatz reminds of him today.

Honors

Fonts

  • Problems and decisions of the German-American Damage Commission. Bensheimer, Mannheim et al. 1927.

literature

  • Festschrift for Wilhelm Kiesselbach on his 80th birthday. Published by his staff at the Central Justice Department for the British Zone. Law and Law Publishing House, Hamburg 1947.
  • H. Jannssen: Wilhelm Kiesselbach. In: NJW 1961, 1008.
  • Wilhelm Lührs :  Wilhelm Kiesselbach. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 599 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Michael Wala: Weimar and America. Ambassador Friedrich von Prittwitz and Gaffron and German-American relations from 1927 to 1933. Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07865-7 , p. 26 ff. ( Transatlantic historical studies 12).

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Kiesselbach, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kießelbach
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, judge and judicial politician
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1960
Place of death Hamburg