20th-century German lawyers

Martha_Mosse

Martha Mosse (29 May 1884 in Berlin — 2 September 1977 in Berlin) was a German lawyer who was Prussia's first female teacher at the Berlin Police Headquarters. Because of her Jewish origin, she was given a professional ban during Germany's period under Nazi government and deported in 1943 to the ghetto Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Terezín in the Czech Republic). Mosse survived the Holocaust and was a witness in the Nuremberg trials.She left the "German Center for Youth Welfare" in 1916 and initially attended law lectures in Heidelberg and Berlin as a guest student. However, since she had not taken the Abitur, she was unable to obtain a regular degree. Nevertheless, she was allowed to obtain a doctorate in law in Heidelberg in August 1920 with her dissertation Erziehungsanspruch des Kindes. Subsequently, with special permission, she was able to intern at the Berlin-Schöneberg District Court in the capacity of a legal clerk for six months and was then employed as a legal assistant at the Prussian Ministry of Welfare.She worked for the Berlin Criminal Police and the Traffic Department at police headquarters from August 1948 until her retirement in 1953. After that, she was still involved with the Berlin Women's Association until the 1970s, and was deputy chairwoman for a time. There she devoted herself in particular to the Women's Movement's Committee on Aid to the Aged. Her "Memoirs," appendix: The Jewish Community of Berlin 1934-1943, was published in July 1958.

Margarete_Berent

Margarete Berent (July 9, 1887, in Berlin – June 23, 1965, in New York), also known as Margareth Berent or Grete Berent in the United States, was the first woman lawyer in Prussia. She was the co-founder of the Association of Women Jurists and Association of German Women Academicians. As a Jew, she suffered from persecution during the Nazi Regime and fled via Switzerland, Italy, and Chile to the United States, where she finally arrived in 1940. After studying American law, she opened her second own law firm, now in the US, in 1951.

Max_Naumann

Max Naumann (12 January 1875 – 18 May 1939) was the founder of Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (League of National German Jews), which called for the elimination of Jewish ethnic identity through Jewish assimilation. The league was outlawed by the Nazi government on 18 November 1935.
Naumann was a captain in the Bavarian Army during World War I and a Berlin lawyer.

Elisabeth_Selbert

Elisabeth Selbert (1896–1986) was a German politician and lawyer. She was one of the four women who worked on the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, collectively called the Mütter des Grundgesetzes (English: Mothers of the Basic Law). She had a central role in ensuring that explicit equality between men and women was included as a fundamental right in the Basic Law.

Rudolf_Olden

Rudolf Olden (January 14, 1885 in Stettin – September 18, 1940) was a German lawyer and journalist. In the Weimar period he was a well-known voice in the political debate, a vocal opponent of the Nazis, a fierce advocate of human rights and one of the first to alert the world to the treatment of Jews by the Nazis in 1934. He is the author of Hitler der Eroberer. Entlarvung einer Legende ("Hitler the Conqueror, Debunking of a Myth") which is considered part of the German exile literature. The book was promptly banned by the Nazis. Shortly after its publication by Querido in Amsterdam, Olden's citizenship was revoked and he emigrated, together with his wife, first to the United Kingdom and then, in 1940, to the United States. On September 18 both died in the U-boat attack on the SS City of Benares in the Atlantic.
He was a German Liberal of the best sort, rather more pugnacious than the average British Liberal, because he had more to fight against.

Max_Alsberg

Max Alsberg (16 October 1877 – 11 September 1933) was a famous criminal lawyer of the Weimar Republic.
Alsberg worked primarily as a criminal defense lawyer; he defended Karl Helfferich in 1920 and Carl von Ossietzky in 1931. He also wrote plays (Voruntersuchung in 1927, and Konflikt). His best known contribution to legal science is the handbook Der Beweisantrag im Strafprozess.
Max Alsberg committed suicide by gunshot on 11 September 1933.