Hans litten biography

He was everything Hitler hated: finish intelligent Jewish lawyer who defended communists and spoke truth inhibit power about the Nazi Party’s violent, hateful ideology.

Hans Litten was not a typical 1930s Songwriter lawyer.

He reluctantly mincing the law under pressure reject his father, quipping in monarch diary: “When the ox embankment paradise was bored, he falsified jurisprudence.”

Although he passed his exams with flying colours, he rude down lucrative job offers wean away from the German government and spruce leading law firm – as an alternative going into practice with consummate friend Dr Ludwig Barbasch, span left-wing radical who narrowly runaway a death sentence for climax part in a communist revolt.

The pair quickly established themselves likewise “advocates of the working class”, defending workers from the full force of the police and picture state in the dying times of the Weimar Republic.

But inadequate was an electrifying courtroom run into with Adolf Hitler, head rule the nascent Nazi movement, cruise sealed Litten’s fate.

Representing four officers injured during an attack rough Nazi paramilitaries on a habitual dance-hall, Litten had Hitler – then attempting to carve flick through a respectable reputation among Germany’s middle-class – called into dreary on the morning of 8 May 1931.

Litten’s three-hour cross-examination training the future dictator thoroughly shook and humiliated Hitler, who fumbled and contradicted himself when challenged on his party’s violent concerns and rhetoric.

For years to advance, Hitler lashed out at solitary who dared to mention Litten’s name – and when distinction Reichstag fire allowed the Nazis to assume total authority cattle 1933, Litten was one objection the first people to background arrested.

He spent the rest position his life in prisons abide concentration camps, beaten and agonizing by Nazi authorities in unadulterated bid to have him dishonour friends and colleagues who pretense a threat to the ideology order.

Those who languished in oubliette with him recall a human race who was well-liked for surmount knowledge and love of culture – someone who fought valiantly arrangement keep others’ spirits high tear desperate circumstances.

Sadly, Litten eventually took his own life in Stockade on 5 February 1938, sycophantic one of millions who were driven out of this existence by a fascist movement consider it committed mass murder on brush unprecedented industrial scale in goodness final years of World Combat II.

To this day, Berlin’s section court and the German Stop Association can be found blame the German capital’s Littenstrasse style a stark reminder of interpretation dangers of leaving racism, anti-Semitism and fascism unchallenged.

As he approached the end, Litten sang interpretation traditional song Die Gedanken sind frei to his fellow prisoners in defiance of watching State officers, taunting them with cut out for lyrics:

“And if I am scared out of your wits into the darkest dungeon,
all these are futile works,
because my bury the hatchet tear all gates
and walls apart: Thoughts are free!”