In 1990, during my first year as a professor, I had the privilege and honor of having Wolfgang Wassermann as a student in my comparative legal systems class. Mr. Wassermann was not the average student. At sixty-nine years of age, he brought with him to class a wealth of knowledge and experience.
In October of 1990 one of my friends , Ulrich Sondermann, who was working at the German Consulate in Atlanta, came to Fort Lauderdale to help me. He gave the students a lecture on German unification and the legal problems associated with this process.
Naturally, Wolfgang was very excited to meet Ulrich, and as result of the lecture, which included a discussion of property claims, and compensation paid to Jewish claimants for property confiscated during the National Socialist period, Wolfgang Wassermann wrote the following Memorandum.
Recently, I read over again some of the papers from my first year teaching, and came upon this memorandum. I have decided to put his very interesting story on line. His account provides a unique glipse of the practice of law in Germany in the twilight years of the Weimar Republic as well as the coming of Naziism to Germany and the destruction of the "rechtstaatliche Tradition."
When you ... announced that a young German lawyer would come from Atlanta, I thought you might find the following story of interest because it deals with "law" in Germany.
I would have preferred to write in German, since, even almost sixty years after the events, I may still not know some expressions in English, but you indicated that your knowledge of German was not perfect, so I shall write in English.
The story is that a German Jew could be acquitted in the highest German Court, das Reichsgericht, in Leipzig in 1934. The unfortunate sequel of this acquittal was that my father believed, to the very end, in the "Rechtstaat" and always felt that the Nazi reign would blow over, that German Jews who had lived in Germany for centuries and who had been "Frontsoldaten", who had served their country on the battlefield in World War I would not be affected.
Although, I was only ten to fourteen at the time these events occurred, I remember all the details as if they had occurred last week.
My father was a prominent lawyer in Chemnitz, for forty years Karl-Marx-Stadt. He had two Protestant partners, one who had been in the law firm a few years longer than my father, and my father had hired the other one away from the "Gericht"; I think that he was a Deputy State Attorney (Staatsanwalt).
Between 1930 and 1933, the law office flourished. My father and his partners would work from eight to twelve, take a tram or taxi home, have lunch and a "siesta" and would be back at work at 2:30 or 3 pm. and stay until 9 or 10 pm.. My sister and I would rarely have supper with my father, and my mother always waited up for him with "Aufschnitt" or "belegtem Butterbrot." My father would work also on Saturday mornings, and, in the afternoon, once he became a notary, see below, he would go "Wechsel protestieren." I was, usually, allowed to go along because I liked the rides - we had no car and I enjoyed the taxi rides- and it was on these Saturday afternoon rides that I got most of my "legal" and "financial" education. I knew, at the age of ten or eleven, what a mortgage was, and my father pointed out to me where he had become a mortgagor himself. This impressed me so much that twenty years later it became quite important. On Sunday mornings he also went to the office and had his secretary come in for dictation. He would be home by 12:30 or 1:00; Sunday afternoon was the only time that my father "took off".
This was Germany in the 20's and 30's. When my father took someone to court, there was a "Gerichtstariff" and that determined the legal fee. Very few clients would pay for consultations, and if they did, that was usually done in cash; people rarely made deposits in one's bank account, and the use of checks was quite rare.
When my father (or the other partners) collected a fee, he or [one of] the other partners would put a red sheet of paper in the file, and they would give the cash to the bookkeeper or even keep it; the red sheet would signal the bookkeeper that money had come in, and the next morning he would ask for it or the partner would tell him that he had kept it against his profit share.
Admittedly, such a system would not work any more today, but then there were three partners, who were also personal friends, and dishonesty did not exist on the part of the staff. The files on which a partner had worked were picked up several times a day by an office boy who would staple all papers into the file which would then go to the bookkeeper, (...) who would prepare the daily income report.
In 1931 or 1932, the law firm, which had become so prominent, was singled out for a tax audit and the "Finanzamt" in Chemnitz claimed a deficiency of, I do not remember exactly, [but about] 50,000 or 100,000 RM. It was a heck of a lot of money, and my father suspected an envious competitor who put the "Finanzamt" to work since routine audits, as we have them here, were unknown in the case of law firms.
When it came to trial, it was found that my father's older partner, "Rechtsanwalt & Notar", Dr. Gerhard Froehlich, had subscribed to 100,000 RM of "Reichsbahnanleihe" (German Reich Railway Bonds). The government had been so desperate for the money that it offered bond subscribers tax amnesty for five years retroactively. My father had not bought any of these bonds because, during the depression, he had to help his two brothers. He said many years later that he never would have imagined that he might have had a use for the bonds because of their tax amnesty feature. Dr. Froehlich also did not buy them for the tax feature, but rather because they paid an enormously high interest [rate].
My father told the Court that the younger partner, RA Gerhard Thierig, had been an employee, rather than [a] partner, during the audit year, so he got off. My father was thus the only defendant and convicted. The government claimed that some of the red "cash received" sheets had been removed. My father appealed to the Oberlandesgericht in Dresden and lost again. By that time the Nazis had taken over in Germany, but my father appealed to the Reichgericht in Leipzig pleading the case himself, without any other attorney or accountant. He had earned his doctor juris in Leipzig almost thirty years earlier. The conviction was overturned.
I remember vaguely that during the trial and appeals the government had attached some property (we did not own the apartment where we lived) but anyway years later, my father said he could not have emigrated without paying the fine or appealing.
As stated above, my father considered his acquittal as proof that Nazi Germany was still a "Rechtstaat" and decided to stay in Germany although right away on April 1, 1933, the Nazis blocked the entrance to the staircase and to the elevator and nobody was allowed to go to my father's law office during the boycott; afterward people were afraid to come. When they wanted to see his "Aryan" partners, they were told that as long as the "Jew Wassermann" was associated with Dr. Froehlich and RA Thierig, nobody could go to the law office.
Naturally, my father had to separate from his partners right away in April of 1933 and opened a small office of his own. Shortly thereafter, the Nazis took away his "Notariat". I do not know how the system works now. Anyway in Saxony, at least between 1918 and 1933, a lawyer in good standing and who fulfilled certain requirements, could apply to become a notary after practicing law for fifteen years. My father, who had established himself in 1912 could thus apply in 1927, but it was by no means automatic. My father told me repeatedly that he did not get the Notariat right away because even then there was some antisemitism in the Court system which had to issue the notary appointment. (There were no Jewish judges except if they had converted.) My father was very anxious to get it because Dr. Froehlich was a member of the board of many leading corporations in the area such as Wanderer, DKW, Audi, Horch (which then became Auto Union), Schubert and Salzer (textile machinery), Louis Bahner Uberlungwitz (LBO hosiery) some of which still exist in a manner of speaking, and others, such as LBO are now quite big in the FRG. Dr. Froehlich therefore could not "protocolize" the General Meetings of the various firms and, until my father got the Notariat, and thus could not keep the substantial notarial fees "in house."
It may be interesting to note that I have corresponded recently with Dr. Hahn, the head of Volkswagen, who was born in Chemnitz and whose father was an executive with one of the local automobile plants. I believe before his parents died, Dr. Hahn asked them whether they remembered the law office of Dr. Froehlich and my father, and they did.
Anyway, my father trusted the Germans. When my parents finally decided to leave, an uncle obtained "legal" visas for Uruguay for which, of course, a Montevideo lawyer had been paid; they were legal since a deposit of five thousand Pesos had been made in the Central Bank of Uruguay to guarantee our good standing. That was equivalent to $1,800 U.S. at the time.
Then came Kristallnacht. My father and I avoided arrest by sheer luck, but then five days before his scheduled emigration in June 1939, he was arrested, [and] taken to the jail, from which he had secured the release of so many of his clients. What happened there we will never know, but he returned with a completely changed personality. He cried, destroyed all his papers, including those involving whatever property that was left after paying twenty-five percent "Reichsfluchtsteuer" and twenty-five per cent "Judenabgabe" and just would not talk.
After [our] arrival in Uruguay, he was better for a short while, but he could not get over the loss of his profession and the assets which he had acquired with his sixty hour work weeks. Then a deep depression set in and he died after suffering for many years.
Written By : Wolfgang Wassermann, October 24, 1990, Miami, Florida
Edited and Anotatted by: Stephen Ross Levitt, August, 1997.