Leopold Weiss

Born:	07-21-1893
Faculty:	Law School
Category:	Deprivation of academic degree

Leopold WEISS (born on July 21^st, 1893 in Vienna), had graduated at the Law School at the University of Vienna on July 9^th, 1917 with the academic degree 'Dr. iur.'. He worked as a jurist and manufacturer in Vienna. In times of Nazism he was persecuted and was able to emigrate to England in 1938, but there he was interned in 1940 as "enemy alien" and deported to Australia on the notorious ship "Dunera" (together with his brother Richard). On May 8^th, 1941 he was deprived of his academic degree 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 unwürdig'). In Australia, Leopold Weiß was again interned in Hay and Tatura and only in 1945 he was able to return to the UK, from where he probably emigrated to the United States in 1947.

He probably died in the late 1940s or early 1950s in the United States. It took 62 years since the deprivation – and a very long time since the end of National-Socialism – until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on April 10^th, 2003 posthumously in a solemn ceremony.

Lit.: POSCH/STADLER 2005; POSCH 2009, 274, 492; Archive of the University of Vienna/Nationale, graduation protocol JUR 1924–1939, Nr. 2035, RA GZ 118/99 ex 1941/42, RA GZ 561/15 ex 1944/45; expatriation list announced in Deutscher Reichsanzeiger Nr. 225 from September 26th, 1941; information from Elisabeth Lebensaft, ÖBL, September 2018; Gedenkbuch für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus an der Hochschule für Welthandel 1938-1945.

Herbert Posch