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Adolf Moritz Steinschneider
Biographical data
Berlin 1894 - 1925
Adolf Moritz Steinschneider was born in Berlin on June 20, 1894, the eldest
son of attorney and jurist Max Steinschneider and his wife Léopoldine,
née Fischlowitz. His grandfather was the well known Judaic scholar
Moritz Steinschneider (1816-1907). His father Max Steinschneider was involved
with the founding of consumer and producer cooperatives, and was one of
the founders of the German League for Human Rights. In 1899 and 1900,
respectively, his brothers Gustav and Karl came into the world.
Max Steinschneide, Léopoldine, née Fischlowitz, Adolf Moritz
After a sheltered childhood in the Döberitz residential area developed
by his father, and his studies at the French Gymnasium in Berlin, Steinschneider
studied law and business administration in Berlin and Munich. Around 1915,
he became acquainted with Adrien Turel.
In 1917, Steinschneider was called up for military service, first stationed
in Krossen. A year later, he was transferred to the press archive of the
Foreign Office in Berlin. In 1918-19, Steinschneider played an active
rôle in the Revolution on the side of the Spartacists. After the
collapse of the Spartacist rebellion in January 1919, he was sentenced
to a term in prison, which he served from June 1919 until March 1920 in
the Plötzensee prison in Berlin.
After release from prison, he underwent training in the Berlin Kammergericht
court and the law firm of Max Tucholski and Felix Wolff, sitting for the
examination for admission to the bar in 1923.
During the early 1920´s, he participated, together with Adrien
Turel and his brother Gustav in the meetings of the Working Group for
Biogenetic Psychology, a circle of young intellectuals and artists centered
on the Berlin psychologist Arthur Schinnagel.
Frankfurt-on-the-Main 1926-1933
In 1926, after a brief stint practicing law in the firm of Dr. Seckel
in Celle, Steinschneider began his own practice in Frankfurt (at Untermain
Quais, 20), where after dealing with several cases involving "squabbles
among various political and financial swindlers, proletarians, divorces,
alimony and artists' fees," he opted to have no more to do "with
litigation."
In 1927, Steinschneider's children Marie-Louise and Stefan were born:
the daughter, Marie Louise on June 7 to Eva Hillman Reichwein, who at
that point was still legally married to the educator Adolf Reichwein);
and the son Stefan, on Sept. 18, to Frieda Kaetzler. Frieda Kaetzler and
Steinschneider were probably married in 1926. The marriage ended in divorce
after the birth of the son, but his relations with Frieda Kaetzler remained
friendly thereafter.
In 1928, Steinschneider's markedly political defense of the murderer
Friedrich Wiechmann aroused wide-ranging notoriety, resulting in social
difficultiesfor his wife and his three children. The course of the spectacular
trial, in which the sexual researcher Magnus Hirschfeld testified, is
documented in the first volume of Schriften zur Psychologie und Sociologie
von Sexualität und Verbrechen. [Studies in the Psychology and Sociology
of Sexuality and Criminal Law] (Stuttgart: 1928.)
From about 1927, until 1930, Adrien Turel lived in Steinschneiders spacious
law office and living quarters at Untermain Quais, 20. Using this address,
and with Steinschneider's support, Turel published in 1928 the pamphlet
Keinen Gott als nur de Menschheit: Enfügung de Diagonalkategorie
des Werdens in das Sein und in die Arbeit [No God, Only Humankind: Inserting
Diagonal Categories into Becoming in Existence and Work (sic).]
Steinschneider's political sympathies lay on the left, although he was
a member of no political party. He appeared frequently in Frankfurt in
the context of political trials as a speaker on behalf of the Communist
Party, but his political home was rather with the Socialist Workers Party
(SAP for its German initials), which upon the merger in 1931 of leftist
opposition groupings became the German Socialist Party (SPD).
Among Steinschneiders friends and acquaintances figured, among others,
Paul Froelich, Joseph ("Jola") Lang, Arthur Rosenberg, Karl
Korsch and Wolfgag Abendroth. Steinschneider appeared also as the attorney
for the Rote Hilfe ("Red Aid"), for the German Peace Association,
and the German League for the Rights of Man. He was also the legal representative
of the Soviet commercial mission in Germany.
In the last years of the Weimar Republic, there were numerous cases in
which Steinschneider represented the whole of the Social Democratic and
Communist left.
In the struggle against the gathering storm of National Socialism and
its growing acceptance in widening bourgeois circles, he became a frequent
target for smears. In his several political trials he faced off against
National Socialist Workers Party members Friedrich Kirebs, Jakob Sprenger
and Roland Freisler.
Switzerland and France 1933-1944
A few days after the Reichstag fire of Feb. 27, 1933, Steinschnier fled-having
been warned by some police officers-"head over heels" to Switzerland.
His office and living quarters at Untermain Quais were sealed by SA Troops.
Swiss immigration authorities tolerated emigrants living in Zürich
under the asylum laws, but denied them nevertheless the right to work
and to engage in political activity. Eva Reichwein and Friederike Kaetzler
followed Steinschneider with both children to Switzerland. Eva Reichwein
soon returned, in the summer of 1934, to familiar ground with her daughter
Marie-Louise, going back to Frankfurt. Brothers Karl and Gustav emigrated
to Palestine.
First attempts at publishing activity
Steinschneider obtained some financial assistance from, among others,
Serge Turel, the brother of his friend Adrien Turel. He distanced himself
from Turel because of the latter's ambiguous attitude toward National
Socialism. Steinschnieder took an interest in political organizing and
discussions, maintaining contact with, among others, the physician and
anarchist Fritz Brupbacher and the publisher Emil Oprecht.
February 1935, intestinal surgery.
In March, 1935, Steinschneider sent his stage play New Dreamplay to Friedrich
Wolf (New York), as well as to the producers Lindtberg (Zürich and
Tel Aviv) and Burjan (Prague). He considered emigrating to Palestine.
In June, 1935, the Swiss immigation authorities used a trip of Steinschneider's
to Paris as an occasion for withdrawing the prominent exile's residence
permit.
Steinschneider, once again in Paris without any income, was dependent
on the financial assistance of his brothers Karl and Gustav, living in
Palestine. His efforts as a legal consultant, as a factory worker or as
a salesmen to make a living, were either fruitless or had only brief success.
Steinschneider wrote numerous pieces on politics and social criticism.
His extensive letters to his brother Gustav in Palestine were seen in
the Chronik des Exils und Ideentagebuch [Chronicle of Exile and Journal
of Ideas]. In 1937, together with the writer Anselm Ruest and the lawyer
Afred Apfel, he founded the Entr'aide des savants et gens de lettres allemand
réfugiés [Society for the Support of German Refugee Scholars,
Artists and Writers.] He took part in the cultural and political life
of the German emigré community in Paris. Debate with Georg Berhard.
- Co-author of the pamphlet, published in early 1937 by the World Jewish
Congress, Die wirtschafliche Vernichtunsgkampf gegen die Juden im Dritten
Reich ["The Economic Extermination Campaign against the Jews in the
Third Reich"]. In April, 1933 Steinschneider pens the article Strukturelle
Veränderungen in der jüdischen Bevölkerung Deutschlands
["Structural Changes in the Jewish Community of Germany"].
Because of the ever-growing threat of the Jewish policy of Germany, Eva
Reichwein and her daughter Marie-Louise join Steinschneider in Paris.
The family´s economic conditions gradually become tolerable as Eva
Reichwein's manual skills enable her to find work.
After the British and French declarations of war on Germany on September
3, 1939, Steinschneider, as a German citizen, is interned in various camps,
among them Villberbon near Blois (in the Loire), later at Montmorillon.
Eva and Marie-Louis must leave Paris, and set out on the search for Steinschneider
(after a stay in Angers), finally in Blois.
After the invastion of France by German troops in June, 1941, the family
fled by separate routes to the southern part of the country. Eva and Marie-Louise
finally arrived in Bellac, near Limoges; Steinschneider was interned by
the Vichy Government in various camps, among them Mauriac, and was forced
to render labor service at hard labor. Becoming gravely ill, he was first
hospitalized in Clermont-Ferrand, then in a camp for those incapable of
labor, and in the Summer of 1942, he was released in Bellac.
There followed two hopeful years of exile under modest living conditions
in Bellac. In 1942, Adolf and Eva were married. Devoting his time to work
on his book Menschheit und Polarität ["Humanity and Polarity"],
Steinschneider awaited the end of the war and a return to his home, where
he would be able to join in the rebuilding of a democratic Germany.
On June 10, 1944, the "Das Reich" battalion of the SS perpetrated
the massacre at Oradour-on-Glane. The following day, June 11, 1944, the
SS troops targeted the small town of Bellac, 40 kilometers away. In his
attempt to get away from Bellac, Steinschneider was overtaken by SS troops
and together with his friend Hans Lauterbach was dragged out and murdered.
The exact locations of his death and his burial remain unknown to this
day.
[Translated from the German by David M. Fishlow, Washington
DC, USA, a distant relative of Steinschneider's mother Léopoldine,
née Fischlowitz.]
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