Reginald Parker (früher: Bettauer)

Born:	08-23-1904
Faculty:	Law School
Category:	Deprivation of academic degree

Reginald PARKER (nee Reginald Parker BETTAUER) (born on August 23^rd, 1904 in Phoenicia, Ulster County, New York, USA), was the son of the Austrian author and newspaper-editor Hugo Bettauer (1872-1925), who was murdered in Vienna in 1925 (antisemitic motive).
Reginald Bettauer had graduated at the Law School at the University of Vienna on July 1^st, 1927 with the academic law degree 'Dr. iur.'. Later on he changed his name from Reginald Parker BETTAUER to Reginald PARKER in 1933.
On June 13^th, 1935, he opened a law firm in Vienna's 1st district, Annagasse 3a. He married the trainee lawyer Dr. Hedwig Parker (born Kobler, 1907-1997) and on January 30^th, 1937 her daughter Evelyn Parker was born in Vienna. After the "Anschluss", in times of National-Socialism he was persecuted for racist reason – he was canceled form the list of Austrian lawyers and was no more allowed to practice - but was able to flee from Vienna in 1938 and emigrated on April 15^th, 1938 to the USA together with his wife and his one year old daughter Evelyn. All three were forcibly expatriated from the German Reich, announced in the German Reichsanzeiger No. 241 of October 14^th, 1942, lost their citizenship and became stateless. Reginald Parker was deprived of his academic degree on September 11^th, 1943 with the racist argument, that he as a Jew was not considered dignified an academic degree of a German university ('eines akademischen Grades einer deutschen Hochschule unwuerdig'). It took 6 years since the deprivation until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on May 7^th, 1949. Reginald Parker operated the re-awarding of his doctoral degree from November 1948 and in early 1949 he asked a Viennese lawyer to do so at the University of Vienna and to re-issue a corresponding doctoral diploma. Within six months he succeeded and the doctoral degree was re-awarded to him again on May 7^th, 1949, respectively the withdrawal was declared "void from the start" ("von Anfang an nichtig"), an a new diploma was sent to him – but with the remark of the deprivation in 1942 and the regranting in 1949. In the USA Reginald PARKER lectured at the Department of Law at Willamette University in Salem/Oregon and was a lawyer at the Supreme Court and at the court of Illinois, Massachusetts and in the District of Columbia. He was the author of "Das oeffentliche Recht der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika" and "Das Privatrecht der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika" (Vienna, 1960). In 1951 he applied for a Fulbright-Grant for Vienna, which was rejected from Prof. Alfred Verdross-Droßberg, professor of international law at Vienna University and head of the commission for regranting of dispossessed academic degrees (he had votedpro regranting of his academic degree two years earlier in 1949). When Reginald Parker again asked for a copy of his doctoral degree a few years later, it was issued in July 1957, this time without affixing the revocation and re-endorsement note, since the legal opinion was now unanimously divided that retroactive re-awarding " the continuity of the holding of the doctoral degree was not interrupted ". This time Prof. Verdross, now in the function of a senator of the Faculty of Law, agreed to the solemn form of the large diploma printed on handmade paper with the big seal of the university. Reginald Parker died in November 1967 in the USA.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna, graduation register ("Promotionsprotokoll") IUR 1924-1939, Nr 642, Rectorate GZ 151 ex 1942/43, GZ 561 ex 1944/45, GZ 515 ex 1948/49; POSCH 2009, 455; KÖNIG 2009, 175; SAUER/REITER-ZATLOUKAL 2010, 11, 18, 263; information from Christine Karner, Vienna 2009; www.geni.com.

Herbert Posch