The case of Siegfried Landshut, one of the founders of German political science after the war, who had been trying to be re-employed at the University of Hamburg since the late 1940s, was an exception, as in his case the lengthy and once again stressful procedure for re-employment was ultimately successful.
Siegfried Landshut's letter to Heinrich Landahl, the Hamburg school senator, who was also politically responsible for Hamburg University, can be understood as a disguised letter of application. After a brief reference to the personal acquaintance between the letter's author and addressee, Landshut describes his current availability on the job market, the persecution-related reasons for not habilitating in 1933, his basic academic orientation along with the most important works from his oeuvre and names reference persons.
At the time the letter was written, Landshut had just finished his work with the German prisoners of war in Egypt and was about to leave for England, for which he gave a new correspondence address in the letter. The letter therefore dates from a time of professional upheaval and a lack of career prospects.
The core of the letter is his self-image as a scientist. The part referring to a claim for compensation is very short and is not even explicitly mentioned. However, this partial sentence, according to which Landshut's habilitation had been “interrupted by political events in 1933,” was underlined in red by the Hamburg school senator or another person from the Hamburg school administration and thus marked as particularly significant. This statement made it necessary for the administration to act in Landshut's favor.
Staff questionnaires were created for every employee and every civil servant in the public sector upon recruitment. The first part on pages 1-3 contains information on core personal data and was completed and signed by the persons concerned. Siegfried Landshut completed his form on February 21, 1951. At this time, he did not yet have an apartment and the lines for the address details are blank. Only a telephone number was added by hand. The information on his habilitation as “passed examination” was crossed out again by the administration, as the examination was not carried out due to National Socialist persecution. Landshut stated that he had worked as “Head of Section Brit(ish) Foreign Office” from 1940 to 1948. During this time, he was responsible in Egypt for the political education of German prisoners of war in the Afrika Korps and in the Middle East. The further details on page 4 were filled in after his employment by the authorities and extend up to Landshut's retirement on March 31, 1964.
As part of the denazification efforts of the public administration, all current and future members of the civil service had to fill out questionnaires about their membership of NS organizations. This common administrative practice did not stop at Jews persecuted on racial grounds. Siegfried Landshut, for example, had to provide information about his possible former membership of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) and its affiliated organizations as part of his re-employment procedure as a full professor at the University of Hamburg. The questionnaire signed by Landshut bears the same date, February 21, 1951, as his self-disclosure in the personnel form. Siegfried Landshut was unable to name any memberships and was therefore eligible for employment at the University of Hamburg without any restrictions
Those who were persecuted for racial reasons during the National Socialist era and whose professional advancement was hindered as a result were entitled to financial compensation for lost salary payments from employment in the public sector. These were calculated by the responsible personnel and salary departments at the request of the injured party as part of the restitution process. In the case of academics who were still at a career level below a lifetime professorship at the beginning of the persecution, the departments had to assess beforehand whether and what career the person concerned would probably have had without the persecution. Since Siegfried Landshut was a full professor at the University of Hamburg at the time of his application, an ideal-typical career could be assumed for him, which is described on page 1. The periods to be credited and deducted are listed on page 2. The annex to the letter contains the specific numerical calculation of the lost payments.
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Dennis Hormuth, The case of Siegfried Landshut. „Restitution” at the University of Hamburg, in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History. <https://keydocuments.net/article/jgo:article-297> [December 30, 2024].
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License. You may share and adapt the material in any medium or format as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
