Walter Simons
Walter Simons ( * September 24, 1861 in Elberfeld, † July 14, 1937 in Nowawes, near Potsdam ) was a German lawyer and politician.
Life
Walter Simons was a student of Rudolph Sohm lawyers, made of humanism and influenced by Lutheran pietism. After the study of history, philosophy, law and economics in Strasbourg, Leipzig and Bonn, he began his legal career in 1882 as a law clerk and in 1893 the first magistrate in Velbert. After positions at the Reich Justice Office 1905 and the Foreign Office in 1911 Simons was in 1918 head of the Reich Chancellery in October. He was Commissioner-General of the German peace delegation at Versailles and resigned because he opposed the Treaty of Versailles. Then Simon was a senior managing director of the Association of German Industrialists.
From June 25, 1920 until May 4, 1921, Walter Simons non-party foreign ministers of the German Empire in Fehrenbach, who led a coalition government of the center, DDP and DVP. Simon acted as Foreign Minister, the German Empire at the conference at Spa in July 1920 and the London Conference in March 1921. At the same time, he headed the German delegation at both conferences.
Simons was 1922-1929 President of the Supreme Court in Leipzig; appointed by the Social Democratic president, Friedrich Ebert. In this position he took after the death of Ebert of 11 March 1925 to the swearing Hindenburg on May 12, 1925 in accordance with Article 51 of the Weimar Constitution the duties of the President true. In advance of the presidential election in 1925 Simons was several times as a candidate in an interview, but the corresponding considerations of different party constellations were dashed each.
In November 1926 Simon gave a well-received lecture on the " crisis of confidence of the German judiciary ." In it, he turned the allegations of Socialists and Democrats against one-sided right-wing judgments of the Weimar judiciary to easily and spoke of a " crisis of confidence of the judiciary to the German state," triggered by a Democrat preferable personnel policy. He reached the specially founded by Hugo Sinzheimer, Robert Kempner, Fritz Bauer and Ernst Fraenkel Republican Judges Association of Social Democrats could, so Simons, never be a judge because of " internal barriers ", as they are less committed to the right as the class struggle. Justice Minister Gustav Radbruch ( SPD) said to him in the ensuing controversy, more harmful than the social democratic class struggle from below is the class struggle from above, as it is proceeding unconsciously and thus the self-control and self-criticism was withdrawn.
His office at the imperial court he laid in 1929 in protest against his view, unconstitutional interference by the national government in a case pending down. Since 1929, Simon was a professor of international law at Leipzig.
He was a member of the German Evangelical Church Committee and from 1925 to 1935 president of the Evangelical Social Congress.
Simons formed together with Hans von Seeckt and Wilhelm Solf the board of SeSiSo clubs who organized cultural events for the liberal educated middle class in the Hotel Kaiserhof, often together with the German Society in 1914, whose chairman Wilhelm Solf was. So a meeting was also held at the time Hitler came to power, as Harry Graf Kessler Club members gave a lecture at the Hotel Kaiserhof. The former members of the SeSiSo clubs later formed to a large extent the resistance group Solf Circle.
Simons was of the Lutheran denomination and international public on the Stockholm Conference in 1925.
Walter Simons is the father of the jurist Hans Simons, father of Ernst Rudolf Huber and grandfather of the theologian Wolfgang Huber. His grave is located in the Wilmersdorf Waldfriedhof Stahnsdorf.
Awards and honors
Works
- Christianity and Crime, 1925
- Religion and Law ( Lectures held at the University of Uppsala ), Berlin- Tempelhof, 1936
- Church people and the state, to Leipzig jurisprudential studies Vol 100, Leipzig 1937