Franz Leifer

Born:	11-14-1883
Faculty:	Law School
Category:	Expelled teacher

Franz LEIFER (born on November 14th, 1883 in Vienna, died on August 5th, 1957 in Vienna) was private lecturer with the title of an associate professor ("Pd., tit. ao. Prof.") for Roman Law at the Law School of the University of Vienna. He was persecuted in times of Nazism for racist reason – besides his National-Socialist political orientation - lost his position and was forced to leave the university in 1940. He returned to the University of Vienna in April 1945. Leifer, the son of a family of civil servants, attended state secondary school in Vienna’s 3rd district until July 1901 and then studied law at the University of Vienna, obtaining his doctorate of jurisprudence on March 6th, 1906. From 1906 until 1907 he worked at the judicial preparatory service, from 1907 until 1910 at the Financial Procurator’s Office of Vienna and from 1910 onwards in the Austrian ministry of finance. In the fall of 1911 he was made judicial prefect for Roman law at the imperial-royal Theresianic Academy, where he worked until November 1914. After he obtained his doctorate he also worked for two semesters under Ludwig Mitteis in Leipzig and received Romance education. From 1914 until 1918 Leifer took part in the First World War and rose up through the ranks to become senior lieutenant of the reserve. In the course of a vacation from the field he habilitated for Roman law at the University of Vienna on August 18th, 1917, with the book "Die Einheit des Gewaltgedankens im roemischen Staatsrecht". After the end of the war he returned to the ministry of finance, but voluntarily went into retirement on January 1st, 1923 – with the title of Hofrat – to completely dedicate himself to his scientific work. Among other things, Leifer studied the "especially complicated – due to the body of source material – problems of the oldest Roman legal history".[1] His works "Studien zum antiken Aemterwesen" (I: "Zur Vorgeschichte des roemischen Fuehreramtes", 1931) and "Altroemische Studien" (I–VI, 1933–1939) were of special importance. Not least because of his research on the Etruscan riddle, which was very important for Roman legal history, the Etruscological Institute in Florence made him a full member in 1934. One year later he received the title of associate professor. After the "Anschluss" Leifer was at first able to continue teaching, since no political charges against him were raised and he brought forth the "small certificate of Aryan descent". Subsequently he applied for funding of a one-year research trip to Italy – for the second volume of his book on the prehistory of the Roman administrative system – at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Association, DFG). This application was denied. After this he applied for an exchange professorship as a member of the Etruscological Institute, which failed because the implementing rules of the practice of the German-Italian cultural treaty had not yet been enacted.^[2] In his justification letter from September 1945 – Leifer was registered as an NSDAP applicant – he made this repeated rejection and the "exasperation about the previous failures" responsible for his membership application for the NSDAP.^[3] This application had, however, already been submitted on June 14^th, 1938. According to a letter from the "Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Vienna", Leifer only applied for the exchange professorship on November 30^th, 1938.^[4] It does not become clear in the files when the first request for study leave was submitted. Presumably his family background among other things was a deciding factor in his apparent – see below – admittance to the NSDAP: All three of his sons – one of whom had committed suicide a few weeks before the "Anschluss" – had been active illegal party members of the NSDAP,^[5] his deceased son had been block warden of the SA^[6] and his daughter Scharfuehrer of the Bund Deutscher Maedel (League of German Girls, BDM).^[7] Although no NSDAP membership application can be found in the files at hand, a copy of his résumé from the Nazi era found in the municipal and provincial archives of Vienna grants a better look at the reasons for his admittance: As a civil servant and intellectual Leifer had been able – by his own account – to protect the political activities of his three sons, and he had also often kept "whole piles of illegal brochures at his apartment". His son’s suicide had supposedly been attributable to the "damnable system regime", since he had "years of effort notwithstanding" not found a job because he had been "politically tainted". Leifer achieved the categorization as an "old party member" and received the membership number 6,120,975.^[8] To briefly return to Leifer’s plans to go abroad: On June 6^th, 1939, the Reich ministry of education (REM) and the DFG approved a six month study trip to Rome and Florence and a grant of 1,500 Reichsmark.^[9] After the war, Leifer said he did not want to return from this trip, but "find a new position as researcher at an Italian or other foreign university". The planned departure in October 1939 failed due to the beginning of the Second World War.^[10] The approval of this trip can presumably not be traced back to his membership in the NSDAP – as Leifer did not tire of remarking after the war. He stayed in Vienna for the time being and together with the private lecturer Slavomir Condonari took over the lectures of Stephan Brassloff, who had been fired for "racial" reasons.^[11] On April 17^th, 1939, Leifer asked to be made extracurricular professor for the subject of Roman and ancient legal history.^[12] The NSD-Dozentenbund (National Socialist University Teachers’ League) had no objections.^[13] The Dean of the judicial faculty also endorsed Leifer’s application, but remarked in the course of the proceedings that Leifer had been "thought to be a Mischling ["part-Jew", author’s note] in his early years at the faculty", but had been able to produce the certificate of Aryan descent and was a party applicant. Politically he had "never stood out".^[14] On November 3^rd Leifer was made extracurricular professor by the Reich ministry of education.^[15] On December 7^th, 1939, he accepted the certificate of appointment at the rectorate.^[16] At this occasion, however, Leifer had to point out that he "entertained doubts" that his grandmother might "after all have been of Jewish descent".^[17] Such doubts only had surfaced – according to Leifer’s account after the war – because his sister, who worked as a school principal, was prompted by the municipality to prove her grandmother’s descent after a denunciation (someone had found the grandmother’s name, "Doktor", in their documents and had reported this.^[18] In the end it turned out that the "Jewish" parents of the grandmother in question had been baptized four years before her birth, making Leifer a "Mischling II. Grades" ("quarter-Jew"). Leifer declared obeisantly that he would "accept all consequences" and would resign from the party together with his sons.^[19] This did in fact happen and by his own account Leifer withdrew his "membership application", was summoned to the Gau Court in September 1940 and there "once again" signed "the withdrawal".^[20] According to the NS registration files he had resigned from the party on August 27^th, 1940.^[21] The summons to the Gau Court as well as his declaration in 1939 that he would resign from the party together with his sons point toward the fact that he indeed had been a member of the NSDAP. He also asked to resign from his position as extracurricular professor. Shortly afterwards he stopped teaching because he joined the Wehrmacht on January 12^th, 1940 – after "volunteering for the Polish campaign".^[22] His request to keep the title of associate professor – with the appropriate supplement – was, however, granted by the REM by decree from January 11^th, 1940.^[23] This was not least due to the fact that "no political concerns were present" and his conduct had been "correct in every way" according to the head of the Dozentenbund (University Teachers’ League), Arthur Marchet.^[24] On September 9^th, 1941, the curator of the scientific universities in Vienna informed Leifer of the revocation of his title of extracurricular professor and the withdrawal of his teaching appointment.^[25] Leifer fought at the French front – among others also at the battle in the Vosges Mountains – and "returned home severely ill" in July 1940, after which he was promoted to captain of the reserve. From then on he worked as head of the interpreting department in the military district command XVII in Vienna.^[26] According to Leifer’s reports after the war, the Gestapo started a "witch hunt" against him in 1941 while he still served in the Wehrmacht. Apparently they wanted to see him discharged as a "Mischling I. Grades" ("half-Jew"). After he proved this accusation wrong – showing that he was a "Mischling II. Grades" – he was allowed to remain in the service, although the Gestapo had once more demanded his dismissal because of his "juedische Versippung" ("Jewish taint") in a letter from September 10^th, 1941. One of Leifer’s sisters had namely emigrated to England with her Jewish husband, and Leifer claimed to have helped them flee. In the aforementioned letter from the Gestapo it was also alleged that his son Herbert knew of the "descent error" and committed suicide because of it.^[27] There is no way of verifying this due to the loss of the applicable documents. Apart from the help for his Jewish brother-in-law Leifer also mentioned other achievements in the course of the de-Nazification: He claimed to have "helped every member of the army who came into my field as interpreter as best I could" during his service in the Wehrmacht. His "care had saved countless lives"; he had "freed hundreds of Austrian soldiers from the clutches of the Gestapo".^[28] Although there is indeed a letter from a petty officer from November 1943 in Leifer’s NS registration files, in which he writes that it is only because of Leifer he was "even alive", no further details of how and when this happened are given.^[29] When Leifer reached the age of 60, he was "honorably" discharged and worked as legal counsel and tax advisor for the Julius Meinl AG until the end of the war.^[30] In June 1945 Leifer requested a reinstatement of his position as associate or extracurricular professor. Dean Ferdinand Degenfeld-Schonburg assumed that Leifer’s "party applicant status" would "probably not stand in the way".^[31] Indeed, Leifer was able to lecture again in that summer semester and held a three-hour lecture on Roman law at the University of Graz.^[32] Nonetheless, he was subject to the law banning National Socialists due to his party membership or applicant status – during the registration process he claimed to have only been a "party applicant" from August 1938 until December 1939. Because of this he asked for clemency on June 25^th, 1945, from the provisional government by highlighting his "repeatedly mentioned opposition to the Nazi system" in his lectures until 1938 and the support of his Jewish brother-in-law Maximilian Reich in 1938. Moreover, "as a declared Mischling, the fall of the Nazi rule in Austria was the last and only hope for my life, destroyed by this gang of bandits".^[33] In his letter to the ministry of the interior one and a half weeks earlier he portrayed his sons’ support of National Socialism (one of his sons had died in the war, another was missing since 1945) as having had "a constant fight in my own home since 1932". In 1937, "when the crimes and acts of sabotage by the Nazi bandits became more frequent in Austria", he had "repeatedly spoken out publicly [spaced out in the original, author’s note] against these crimes".^[34] There was no word of a close relationship to National Socialism and he explained his enrollment in the Wehrmacht with trying to "evade the impending racial persecution".^[35] On August 13^th, 1945, Leifer had an audition with Karl Renner, who gave him the "assurance that he would personally support the positive completion of the appeal for clemency".^[36] At first this positive completion did not occur and Leifer was finally also confronted with the existing NSDAP membership number in February 1947. He justified it by claiming to have "been issued a membership number by a party authority that had obviously not been informed of my case in the year 1940 or 1941", which he however had "never [spaced out in the original, author’s note] been informed of". He had only had the "brown party applicant card" and had handed this in at the Gau Court on September 9^th, 1940.^[37] Apparently the registration office believed this account, since it informed Leifer on May 10^th, 1947, of his exemption from the registration lists.^[38] The "exoneration" at the University of Vienna had taken far less time. Already on December 21^st, 1945, the Special Commission II had decided that Leifer was "guaranteed to wholeheartedly stand up for the independent Republic of Austria at any time" since the evaluations had revealed that he had never "showed himself to be a special supporter of National Socialism" in any way.^[39] Thus, no obstacles stood in the way of a return to the university: On April 11^th, 1946, the juridical faculty requested Leifer’s reinstatement, against which the ministry for public enlightenment had no objections.^[40] Since the second chair for Roman law remained vacant immediately after the war, Leifer also was responsible for "an important part of its functions", "as far as this was possible in accordance with the academic laws".^[41] Also due to the fact that through Leifer’s help it was possible to teach Roman law to the planned extent after the war, the faculty moved to confer on him the title of full professor on January 27^th, 1948.^[42]Apparently, this request was not approved. In 1956 the faculty for jurisprudence and political science meanwhile renewed Leifer’s doctorate as a sign of honor. Apart from his teaching duties, Leifer also worked as a criminal lawyer and as a tax advisor and as such held the chairmanship of the disciplinary committee of the Court of Honor among other positions. In 1957 he published "Das Berufsrecht der Wirtschaftstreuhaender".

Lit.: Austrian State Archive/AVA, PA Leifer; Archive of the University of Vienna/J PA 350; Vienna City Archive/Gauakt, NS-Registrierungs- und Einspruchsakt; MUEHLBERGER 1993, 14; Thomas Olechowski, Tamara Ehs u. Kamila Maria Staudigl-Ciechowic, Die Wiener Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftlichen Fakultät 1918–1938, Göttingen u.a. 2014, 84f., 284f. ; EMOEDI/TEICHL 1937; DEGENER 1935; Wer ist wer in Oesterreich. Neuausgabe, Wien 1953; Hans Kreller, Nachruf, in: Die Feierliche Inauguration des Rektors der Wiener Universitaet fuer das Studienjahr 1957/58, Wien 1958, 62–63; RATHKOLB 1989.

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Andreas Huber (translated by Thomas Rennert)