Wilhelm Mansfeld (lawyer, 1875)

Wilhelm Mansfeld (born October 16, 1875 in Wolfenbüttel , † December 25, 1955 in Braunschweig ) was a German lawyer, judge and from 1945 to 1948 President of the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court .

Life

Wilhelm Mansfeld came from the old Braunschweig legal family Mansfeld. His father was Wilhelm Mansfeld (1831-1899), who was President of the Higher Regional Court from 1892 to 1898. His brother Richard Mansfeld was Senate President at the Imperial Court in Leipzig.

When his father took office as President of the Braunschweig Regional Court in 1879, the Wolfenbüttel family moved to Braunschweig. Wilhelm Mansfeld then studied in Munich , Kiel and Berlin law . He passed the first state examination with "very good". After the second state examination, he was from 1901 a court assessor in Braunschweig. He then became a government assessor in the ducal state ministry in 1907. In 1909 he became a district judge and in 1913 a district judge . In 1917 he became a public prosecutor and in 1923 a higher regional judge.

After the National Socialist " seizure of power " Mansfeld was defamed as a " half-Jew ". As a former civil servant he remained in office and was judged internally as a “so-called decent Jew”. In 1939, however, he retired one year before reaching retirement age because of the political situation that was unbearable for him. After the liberation of Germany in 1945, he was appointed President of the Higher Regional Court by the Braunschweig State Ministry in cooperation with the Allied Military Government, despite his old age. He had great freedom in rebuilding the Brunswick judiciary; The professional ethics of the judiciary was badly damaged by National Socialism and so filling the judge's posts was particularly difficult.

In the middle of 1948 he went into retirement again. His successor was the future President of the Federal Court of Justice, Bruno Heusinger .

Honors

• 1953: Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

literature

• Dieter Miosge : Wilhelm Mansfeld the Younger (1875–1955). In: Edgar Isermann, Michael Schlüter (ed.): Justice and Lawyers in Braunschweig 1879-2004. Joh. Heinrich Meyer Verlag, Braunschweig 2004, pp. 145 ff., ISBN 3-926701-62-5 .
• Dieter Miosge: The Braunschweig family of lawyers Mansfeld. In: Rudolf Wassermann (Hrsg.): Justice in the course of time: Festschrift des Oberlandesgericht Braunschweig . Joh. Heinr. Meyer Verlag, Braunschweig 1989, ISBN 3-926701-07-2 , pp. 328-348.