Language:
English
Year of publication:
2013
Titel der Quelle:
Leo Baeck Institute Year Book
Angaben zur Quelle:
58 (2013) 35-52
Keywords:
Haas, Rudolf
;
Centralverein Deutscher Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens
;
Jews History 1800-2000
;
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
;
Jews Legal status, laws, etc.
;
Jews
Abstract:
In 1926 a Jewish industrialist from Magdeburg, Rudolf Haas, was arrested falsely, accused of murder. An investigating magistrate detained Haas for weeks, despite overwhelming evidence that implicated another man, a non-Jew. The case had a clear antisemitic overtone: the investigators and the judge rejected the testimony of a respectable Jew, while trusting that of a non-Jewish ex-felon. The Haas case became, in a sense, a German Dreyfus case, and at the same time was a demonstration of the deficiency of the Weimar justice system. Characteristically, the Centralverein withdrew from the defense of Rudolf Haas, because it traditionally trusted in the essential fairness of the justice system. Haas was saved from imprisonment due to the efforts of his brother-in-law, Paul Crohn, and of several Social-Democrats who resorted to a more aggressive strategy: they made a political sensation of the case, publicized allegations of antisemitic and anti-Republican prejudices on the part of the Magdeburg authorities in the press, and engineered the intervention of Prussian state officials in the case, thus bypassing juridical channels and procedures. The Haas case and the successful struggle for his liberation led to a deep disappointment in the Weimar legal system on the part of the Centralverein, and caused it to revise its conception of Jewish self-defense.
DOI:
10.1093/leobaeck/ybt014
URL:
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