Ignaz Emil von (Emilio de) Hofmannsthal

Born:	12-30-1884
Faculty:	Law School
Category:

Ignaz Emil von (Emilio de) HOFMANNSTHAL (born on December 30th, 1884 in Vienna, died on November 12th, 1971 in Vienna), had graduated at the Law School at the University of Vienna on May 8th, 1907 with the academic degree 'Dr. iur.'. In times of Nazism he was deprived of his academic degree on May 8th, 1941 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'). It took 8 years since the deprivation until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on June 29th, 1949. The "regranting" of acadamic degree in 1949 In June 1949, Ignaz Emil Edler von Hofmannsthal requested a copy of his doctorate, acquired on May 7, 1907 at the faculty for law in Vienna. In 1938 he was able to flee from the National Socialists and emigrated via Great Britain and Argentina – where he worked at the Instituto Argentino de Derecho Internacional and taught at the University of Buenos Aires – to the United States, where he taught as a lawyer, jurist and legal scholar under the name Emilio de Hofmannsthal. He also worked together with conservative and legitimistic Austrian emigrants in the USA and unsuccessfully applied for a position as head of the Legal Division of the US occupation authorities in Vienna. As an answer to his request he was informed that no copy of his diploma could be made, since it had been revoked in the academic year 1939/40 according to the graduation protocols. A decree by the university was needed. On that same day he requested in writing from the rectorate of the University of Vienna that such a decree be passed and pointed out that he had always called himself a doctor of the University of Vienna and would continue to do so, since he did not recognize the revocation: "A decree revoking my doctoral degree has no meaning for me; it simply does not exist, because:
1.) it is a Nazi decree, deserving no attention either abroad or in freed Austria;
2.) it represents the confiscation of a right, this confiscation having no effect abroad. I have lived abroad since 11.03.1938. The seat of the right is located where the bearer is, not where the conferring authority is located. I never legally lost this university’s doctorate, therefore it cannot be re‐conferred. I am neither able to apply for such a re‐conferral, nor can the rectorate execute it. Otherwise I would receive the doctorate doubly. By my account, the decree from July 1945 is therefore not applicable in my case. I cannot assess how the distinguished rectorate could overcome a potential obstacle to handing out a copy of my doctoral degree, since I do not see such an obstacle to exist. I uphold my request for such a duplicate, for which I already have paid the fee of 44 S plus 8 S stamp." This letter from June 14, 1949, with Emilio de Hofmannsthal’s signature, according to the receipt stamp, already arrived the next day at the rectorate, meaning that it was probably posted in Vienna (the stationery used includes both his New York and Vienna addresses). The day after, however, a note is added to the file claiming: “Mr. Emilio v. Hofmannsthal appears and asks for the re‐conferral of his doctorate of law, revoked for political reasons on May 8, 1941”. This directly contradicts Hofmannsthal’s letter from the day before, in which he in principle calls the revocation unlawful and disputes its existence and therefore refuses an application for re‐conferral as legally impossible. Possibly the note was added to internally solve the dilemma that no re‐conferral could take place without an application, but that the internationally well‐known lawyer Hofmannsthal should be enabled to reacquire his doctorate. If one follows the further – short – process it also supports the impression that this note was more an auxiliary construct by the university than an actual representation of the facts. On June 17, 1949, the rector, Prof. Dr. Johann Sölch, asked the lawyer and full professor for criminalistics, Prof. Dr. Roland Grassberger – who had drawn up most of the evaluations of re‐conferrals – to “write an evaluation of the application at hand”, and sent him the revocation file and Hofmannsthal’s letter. Such an evaluation can, however, not be found in the files and presumably never was drawn up. Instead, the Dean of the faculty for law and political science suggested to the rector on June 23, 1949: Considering the character of the applicant, I ask that the senate vote in circular resolution to re‐confer him with the doctorate. Thus, the doctoral degree should be issued immediately without informing the aforementioned. In the senate’s tenth session on June 29, 1949, it voted unanimously to re‐confer Hofmannsthal his doctorate according to the applicable decree and it was “decided to send the aforementioned his formerly withdrawn original diploma, without adding to it any note concerning this matter”. The new – old – doctoral degree was sent to him after a marginal note was written by hand on August 17, 1949. There is no reaction by Hofmannsthal in the files. Today, he is more attentively received and observed at other universities. Since 1996, for example, the Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has had an Emilio de Hofmannsthal Professor of International Law.

Lit.: POSCH 2006, POSCH/STADLER 2006.

Herbert Posch