Wilhelm Leo

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Wilhelm Leo (born December 13, 1886 in Berlin , † November 11, 1945 in Paris ) was a German lawyer and member of the National Committee Free Germany for the West (CALPO).

Life

The attorney with a doctorate came from the upper-class Jewish family Levin, who had moved from Warsaw to Berlin in the 18th century and adopted the Protestant faith and the name Leo. His father was the lawyer Friedrich Philipp Leo (1834–1888), his grandfather the doctor Julius Leo (1793–1855). Wilhelm Leo studied law in Geneva, among other places, and became an assessor in 1913 . In the 1920s, Wilhelm Leo ran a law firm specializing in international law in Berlin, but moved to Rheinsberg in 1926 , where he ran an individual law firm as a lawyer and notary. He was an excellent pianist and was fluent in French, English and Italian. From his marriage to Frieda, geb. Barents, had three children: Ilse, Edith and the journalist and author Gerhard Leo . The journalist and author Maxim Leo is his great-grandson.

Trial against Goebbels

In November 1927 he and his colleague Erich Frey represented a French general a. D. in a legal dispute against Joseph Goebbels before the Berlin Regional Court. Goebbels had claimed that his clubfoot was due to abuse by French soldiers in Cologne in 1920 under the direction of the general. Leo was able to prove the clubfoot was innate and won the libel suit. Goebbels' attorney (allegedly a Count Helldorf) threatened to retaliate Leo when the verdict was announced.

Persecution, escape and life in France

Shortly after taking power on February 28, 1933, the SA arrested Wilhelm Leo, who was mistreated and taken to the Oranienburg concentration camp . With the help of Ernst Wiechert, his family obtained their temporary release after a few months. After the authorities revoked his license to practice law and blocked his accounts, Wilhelm Leo fled with his ten-year-old son Gerhard via Belgium to Paris in August 1933; his wife and daughters followed in late 1934. There he opened the Franco-German bookstore LIFA (Librairie Franco-Allemande) in his apartment on Rue Meslay. In Paris he joined the SPD , became an honorary legal advisor for the Association of German Writers Abroad and was a member of the committee led by Heinrich Mann to prepare a German popular front. In 1939 he was interned in the Les Milles camp in Aix-en-Provence , but was able to escape and lived underground until September 1944, under the name León Willer in Cazaubon , among others . After returning to Paris he became a member of the National Committee Free Germany for the West (BFDW or CALPO). After the liberation of France he became vice-president of CALPO and chairman of its war crimes commission. Wilhelm Leo died of a heart attack in Paris on November 12, 1945.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Always across, always next to it". In: Der Spiegel 4/1993 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Gerhard Leo appointed knight of the French Legion of Honor. DRAFD . Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  3. ↑ Gottfried Hamacher . With the assistance of André Lohmar: Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement (PDF; 894 kB) Short biographies, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin. Volume 53. ISBN 3-320-02941-X
personal data
SURNAME Leo, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and member of the National Committee Free Germany for the West (CALPO)
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 1945
Place of death Paris