Adolf Arndt

Karl Otto Adolf Arndt ( born March 12, 1904 in Königsberg, East Prussia, † 13 February 1974 in Kassel ) was a German lawyer, politician (SPD ) and architecture critic.

Life and career

Adolf Arndt was the son of a law professor ( State Law and Mining Law ) G. Adolf Arndt ( 1849-1926 ) and Louise Arndt born Zabeler born in Königsberg. As a child he moved with his parents to Berlin, where he graduated at the Kaiserin-Augusta High School in 1922. He then studied in Marburg and Berlin law, economics and philosophy. After his second state examination in law and a doctorate in Marburg in 1927, he was first in Berlin lawyer at the famous defense lawyer Max Alsberg and as rapporteur in 1929 in the trial of George Grosz for blasphemy. Since 1932 he worked as a judge at the Moabit Criminal Court and resigned the office in 1933 because he "did not join them " ( Nazis ) wanted. In the law firm of Fritz Schoenbeck in Berlin, he represented again as a lawyer in addition to business enterprises also politically persecuted as Wilhelm Leuschner and Theodor Leipart. He was classified as a " half-Jew " and in 1943 was obliged to do forced labor in the organization Todt. In summer 1944, he was imprisoned, but managed to go incognito in early 1945 to his family in Silesia. From there he escaped in February 1945 together with his family to Westphalia.

In August 1945, Arndt was admitted as an attorney and notary in Marburg and moved in November in the Hessian Ministry of Justice. He was Ministerial Counsellor and Chief Prosecutor, later headed the Criminal Division. 1946 Arndt joined the SPD in. The mid-1950s he moved to Bonn, where he was admitted as an attorney at the District Court. The estate of Adolf Arndt located in the Archives of Social Democracy of the Friedrich -Ebert -Stiftung.

Arndt was the brother of Helmut Arndt. He was married to Ruth Arndt born Helbing ( 1901-1989 ). His son Claus Arndt was from 1968 to 1972 and from 1974 to 1976 also a member of parliament.

Party

Arndt was in the 1950s at the Federal Executive of the SPD and designed the Godesberg program. He sat through a clearer commitment to the Basic Law, as the program committee had originally planned under Willi Eichler.

Member of Parliament

1948/49, he was a member of the Economic Council of the bizone, as Chairman of the Legal Committee and the Committee on Civil Service Law and the Special Committee for securities settlement and the Special Committee " DM opening balance sheet ". From 1949 to 1969 he was a member of parliament. He represented the electoral district Hersfeld in Parliament. 1949-1961 he worked as a legal adviser and secretary of the SPD Parliamentary Group. He was also from 1949 to 1957 Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Legal and Constitutional Law and 1951/52, Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Inquiry Committee on the review of grievances in the Federal Administration ( Platov Committee). 1953 to 1961 he was chairman of the working group Law of the SPD.

He famously Arndt's speech at the limitation of debate in 1965, when he drops a very personal confession and confesses a moral complicity in the crimes of the Nazi terror regime.

Arndt was considered a jurist of the SPD Parliamentary Group, who often represented the Group and the party before the Federal Constitutional Court. For example, in the proceedings relating to the planned Konrad Adenauer " federal television" or the party financing.

Offices

Of 11 March 1963 to 31 March 1964 he was Senator for Science and the Arts in Berlin. From 1964 to 1969 Arndt served as chairman of the Deutscher Werkbund.

Honors

The North Rhine-Westphalian government gave Arndt for his services in 1969 the title of honorary professor. He also received in 1964 the honorary membership of the Academy of Arts, 1965, the Critics' Prize of the Association of German Architects BDA and the 1973 Hans- dahs Plaque of the German Bar Association.

Publications

Literature on Adolf Arndt

• Horst Ehmke, Carlo Schmid, Hans Scharoun (ed.): Studies in honor of Adolf Arndt on his 65th birthday. Frankfurt am Main in 1969.
• Claus Arndt (ed.): Adolf Arndt 's 90th birthday - Documentation of the Academy Festival at the Catholic Academy Hamburg. Catholic Academy Hamburg and Friedrich -Ebert -Stiftung, 1995, ISBN 3-86077-367-4
• Dieter Gosewinkel: Adolf Arndt - The re-establishment of the rule of law in the spirit of social democracy ( 1945-1961). Bonn 1991.
• Horst Ehmke: The power of the law. Yearbook of Public Law. Volume 50 pp. 159 ff