Adolf-Moritz Steinschneider

http://www.steinschneider.net/english/amsta_ev.htm

Adolf Moritz Steinschneider (1894-1944) Lawyer, political figure, emigrant, victim of Nazi Terror

Until his flight from Germany in February 1933, civil and criminal lawyer Adolf-Moritz Steinschneider was a well known figure in the public life of Frankfurt-on-Main. Regarding his role in the social and political struggles of the Weimar Republic, a letter he wrote on Jan. 2, 1935, from his Swiss exile to his former colleague, Dr. Bloch, provides particularly relevant information. “As a lawyer in Frankfurt-on-Main, I had a criminal practice of a distinctly political nature, and fairly broad in scope. Once Hitler seized power, as a Jew and a leftist, although I was not committed to any political party, I was – as you know –particularly vulnerable to the persecutions of his gangs and snipers, moreso even than many outspoken political figures and controversial public officials. And beyond that, I had had, in the course of numerous trials, violent confrontations with those who are now the dignitaries of the Reich, such as the current Mayor of Frankfurt, Krebs; Sprenger, who was the former State Attorney General of Hesse and is now the Reichs Governor there, the former Judicial Secretary and Reichs Commissioner for Austria, Haidt; former correspondent for the provincial papers in Wiesbaden, now the chief of personnel for the Ministry of Justice Freisler, formerly a lawyer in Kassel, etc., etc.

“Luckily I was warned just in time by officials of the judicial police, members of the SPD (Socialist Party of Germany) and was able, with absolutely no means, without a passport, and what’s more without any assistance, to flee Germany.” Reconstructing the legal cases mentioned in this letter constitutes an essential starting point for research on the life and accomplishments of this politically-engaged jurist; the task is to add this long unwritten chapter in the history of Hessian justice during the waning days of the Weimar Republic, in which Steinschneider’s opponents were high-level National Socialists such as Jakob Springer, Roland Freisler or Friedrich Krebs. It is, at the same time, important to clarify, casting the light of a new day on the events and political struggles which took place in Frankfurt-on-Main during the years leading up to the year  1933. For Steinschneider’s life in exile, from 1933 until his murder in 1944, his papers, rescued by his daughter Marie-Louise Steinschneider and scarcely opened before now, are available to re-searchers. The interpretation and evaluation of these extraordinary, dense writings, rich with associations, allow for the discovery of Steinschneider through his letters, his notes, sketches and essays, make him of the most significant chroniclers of exile. Born in Berlin in 1894, eldest son of a liberal Jewish family (his grandfather was the famous Judaic scholar Moritz Steinschner), Steinschneider had his first active contacts with politics at the end of the First World War. His participation in the Spartacist uprising in Berlin earned him ten months in jail. During that and succeeding periods, his legal work always had a political background. In the domain of private life, beginning in the 1920’s, when traditional  family struc-tures were widely questioned, he began intensive research into new lifestyles. His spacious offices located on the Untermainkai in Frankfurt became a community where socialist friends, such as his friend Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Frölich and Josef Lang (known as “Jola”) stayed. On the agenda of this field of social research are the quest for non-dogmatic socialism, sub-jects such as sexual liberation, relations between the sexes, or  the critiques from both the left and from the right of totalitarian movements.  Outsiders, among whom is the historian of psychology Alfred Turel, played a rôle in this milieu as important as that of the social theoretician Karl Korsch or the young communist Wolfgang Abendroth.  During these years, Steinschneider was associated with the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für biogenetische Psychologie (“Working Group for Biogenetic Pscychology”), a circle centered around Arthur Schinnagel, a Berlin psyciatrist. With respect to Steinschneider the lawyer, we can here draw a relatively concise portrait, because there exists documentation   from the period, for at least one great legal case. Stein-schneider conducted the trial defense against the spectacular prosecution of Friedrich Wiechmann of Frankfurt, who had murdered his family. In the Frankfurt city archives, numerous supplementary documents regarding this case are to be found. After Steinschneider’s escape from persecution to Switzerland on 28th February 1933, his of-fices and his apartment in Frankfurt were ravaged by SA Storm Troopers. In June, 1935, his right to political asylum in Switzerland was revoked because of his political activity. Thereafter he would live in France. His financial circumstances never ceased to be extremely precarious for Steinschneider, given that he could not practice his profession as a jurist either in Switzerland or in France, and his efforts to establish himself as a businessman or manual worker all failed. Despite his permanent penury, Steinschneider undertook a new beginning in thought and writing: he composed numerous essays and sketches on the subject sketches on the subject of the political situation, on anti-Semitism, on the totalitarian aspects of fascism and socialism, on the psychology and sociology of the sexes. In addition, he wrote a whole series of literary texts. Until his murder, Steinschneider labored on his magnum opus, Menschheit und Polarität: einer sozial-anthropologish rundierten Reflexion sur Genesus und Überwindung des faschistischen, totalitären Gewaltmenschen. [%E2%80%9CHumanism and Polarity: a Socio-anthropological Reflextion on Genesis and the Abolition of Fascist and Totalitarian Agents of Violence.”] “Democratic, socialist Marxist, pacifist ideologies” –as he states iin the central thesis opening the work—“have proven themselves too weak to defy the latter” [i.e., fascist ideas.]” And in a letter to his brother Gustave, 4th December, 1937, he provides, within the framework of the criticism launched against Marxism, the lefinition of a central aspect of his study, saying, “that the state did not represent merely—as Engeles believed—a simple rela-tionship between two classes, one [of the two] dominant, the other dominated, but rather it consists as well of a variable relationship [which is to say, a variable relationship] between the sexes and probably between the generations as well.” Steinschneider’s experiences and his reflections, may easily be seen today e.g., in the context of scientific gender studies. According to Steinschneider, the results of his study should serving the following purpose: “to inspire and construct (encourage and opposed) after the war, a social order that gives its due to war fatigue, the aspiration for peace, the need for justice, faith and leisure, felt by the nations and the masses, a social order that restores their will to live and elevates their joie de vivre.” In addition to these key elements of Steinschneider’s intellectual portrait, his correspondence, unique for its genre, are the second, central and historical significant part of his literary legacy. The first mention must be given to his letters to his brother Gustav, who had emigrated in 1933, letters which Adolf-Moritz Steinschnider had conceived of as a chronicle of his exile and a journal of ideas. The next highest place must be given the letters written for his children Marie-Louise and Stefan, very affectional letters, and on an equal aesthetic plane. (His son Stefan [and his mother Friederike Kätzler ] had left Germany for Switzerland in 1933, but it was not until April, 1938 that Steinschneider’s companion Eva Reichwein decided to emigrate from Frankfurt to Paris with their daughter Marie-Louise. “My life…has always been for me an experiential research laboratory, especially for studying the most important contradictions.”   Although Steinschneider, in a letter to his brother, portrays with this image his observations, his thought process, and strategy for survival, it would not be misguided to suggest that fidelity is the essential motif of the letters, for one one must let life be extinguished, or the chain of life be severed, even when everything appears to be in vain and hopeless.  And now the image of earlier dream voyages emerges-- “as the shuttle travels back and forth aross the web, pulling the thread over, under and through”— Gradually, in his autobiographical texts,  Steinschneider paints  “this tiny image of my life” in the Night of “great” world events. From the research laboratory,   others continue to receive news, observations, encouragement, consolation, humor, ideas, memories and dreams, whether he is in one of the many hiding places in hotel rooms, in the streets of Paris, or an internment camp. The vast correspondence carried on with political figures, historians and writers mirrors  the role played by Steinschneider in preparation for and the discussions carried on during the emi-gration to Zurich and then to Paris. In 1937, Steinschneider – with the writer Anselm Rust – founded the Assistance Fund for German Refugee Scientists and Persons of Letters, an organiza-tion on which hardly any research has been done. For purposes of investigating this subject andmany others, Steinschneider’s writings whose scientific value is important not only for his biographie, but in other contexts related to research  The declaration of war against Germany in September 1939 for Steinschneider, as for most  foreign citizens in France, meant internment in concentration and labor camps. After the fall of France, thanks to the invasion of German troops, Steinschneider managed in June 1940 to flee by tortuous routes to the Midi in the South of France. Under the Vichy Regime, he had still been obliged to engage in forced labor, before he was furloughed in the summer of 1942 for health reasons, and he could again live with his companion and daughter in the small town of Bellac near Limoges. After two relatively peaceful years, Steinschneider, attempting to hide from the SS troups who were approaching, was captured and murdered near Bellac on the 11th June 1944. Bibliography 1. Textes de A. M. Steinschneider Bruno Fürst, Magnus Hirschfeld, Walther Riese and Adolf Moritz Steinschneider: Der Fall Wiechmann. Zur Psychologie und Soziologie des Familienmordes. (Stuttgart: Püttmann) 1928. (Schriften zur Psychologie und Soziologie von Sexualität und Verbrechen hg. von Hertha u. Walther Riese Bd. I) Eine statistische Arbeit Steinschneiders mit dem Titel Strukturelle Veränderungen in der jüdischen Bevölkerung Deutschlands seit April 1933 erschien 1937 anonym in der vom Jüdischen Weltkongress publiziertend Broschüre: Der wirtschaftliche Vernichtungskampf gegen die Juden im Dritten Reich. Dargestellt von der ökonomischen Abteilung des Jüdischen Weltkongresses. Paris - Genéve - New York 1937 2. Littérature secondaire Bislang sind noch keine einschlägigen wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten zu Steinschneider zu ver-zeichnen. 1988 hat zuerst Dr. Eckart Grünewald auf den Nachlass Steinschneiders hingewiesen: Eckart Grünewald: Auswertung eines einzigartigen Briefnachlasses - Adolf Moritz Steinschneider. In: Exil. Forschung, Erkenntnisse, Ergebnisse. VIII. Jg. (1988), Heft 2 Steinschneiders Kooperation mit der Roten Hilfe behandelt das biographische Sammelwerk: Erika u. Josef Schwarz, Heinz-Jürgen Schneider: Die Rechtsanwälte der Roten Hilfe: Deutschlands politische Strafverteidiger in der Weimarer Republik. (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein) 2002. Bekannt wurden uns bislang zwei Memoirenwerke, in denen Steinschneider Erwähnung findet: Wolfgang Abendroth: Ein Leben in der Arbeiterbewegung. Gespräche, aufgezeichnet und herausgegeben von B. Dietrich und J. Perls. Frankfurt a. M. (Suhrkamp) 1976 (zu Steinschneider S. 92 u. 101) Adrien Turel: Bilanz eines erfolglosen Lebens. Autobiographie. Zürich-Hamburg (Edition Nautilus) 1989. (zu Steinschneider S. 56ff, 217ff u. 245ff) Die Erfahrungen von Steinschneiders Vater Max Steinschneider mit dem Antisemiten und Mentor Hitlers Dietrich Eckart behandelt der Bericht: Friedrich Paul Heller: Judenfeinde im Suff. In: Blick nach rechts, 15. Juli 1999 Der Hessische Rundfunk sendete im Jahre 2000 ein von Ute Steinbicker und Hans Schmitt ver-fasstes Radiofeature über A.M. Steinschneider. [Translated from the German by David M. Fishlow, Washington DC, USA, a distant relative of Steinschneider’s mother Léo-poldine, née Fischlowitz.]