| Born: | 06-14-1878 |
| Faculty: | Law School |
| Category: | Deprivation of academic degree |
Robert ALTBACH, born on June 14, 1878 in Lundenburg, Moravia/Austro-Hungarian Empire (Břeclav/Czech Republic) as the son of Adolf Altbach (1850-1897) and Franziska Altbach, née Rebenwurzel (1854-?), had studied law at the University of Vienna and graduated at the School of Law on March 12th, 1902 and obtained the degree of "Dr. iur.".
He then worked as a financial clerk, first in Olomouc, Moravia, and later in Vienna. After his marriage to Melanie Kapp in Vienna-Mariahilf in 1908, he lived and worked as a lawyer in Mährisch-Ostrau, Mähren [Moravska Ostrava/Czech Republic] where his son Stefan was born in May 1909 and where he was entered in the list of lawyers on October 12th, 1917.
Around the end of the monarchy, in the fall of 1918, he became involved, among other things, in the Zionist District Committee for Moravia and Silesia for "the recognition of Jews as a nationality, the creation of a national home in Palestine and representation of the Jewish community in the peace negotiations." He continued to live as a lawyer in Moravska Ostrava after the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918.
In times of Nazism he was deported from there to Nisko, Poland, on October 17th, 1939.
On February 23rd, 1943, the Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia deprived him of his citizenship, on March 4th, 1943, his entire property was declared forfeited in favor of the German Reich, and on March 9th, 1943, the Reich Ministry of Education in Berlin demanded that the University of Vienna also deprive him of his doctoral 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"), which was determined by the University of Vienna on August 5th, 1943.
However, he had already perished a few days earlier on August 1st, 1943 in Nisko/Poland in the course of the Shoah.
12 years after the revocation, and long after the end of National Socialism, his doctoral degree was posthumously restored on May 15th, 1955, or the revocation was declared "null and void from the beginning".
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/graduation register ("Promotionsprotokoll") IUR 1897–1903 No. 914, rectorate GZ 151 ex 1942/43, GZ 561 ex 1944/45 No 15; Austrian state Archives OeStA/FHKA/SuS/Pers/GBBl 065 Altbach, OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/VVSt/VA 60286, OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/FLD/4219; Deutscher Reichsanzeiger, No 52, March 4th, 1943; POSCH/STADLER 2005; POSCH 2009, 386; www.heritage.at, www.ancestry.de; arolsenarchives.org; www.yadvashem.org.
Herbert Posch
