| Born: | 09-20-1901 |
| Faculty: | Law School |
| Category: | Deprivation of academic degree |
Egon Eduard Hugo GALLIA (born on September 20th, 1901 in Purkersdorf, Lower Austria), as the son of Hugo Eduard Gallia (railway official, 1866-1935) and Gabriele Gallia, née Danzer, remarried Modern (1875-1957), had studied law at the University of Vienna, passed the judicial state examination in 1925 and obtained the degree of "Dr. iur." from the School of Law on 28 January 28th, 1926.
He was Roman Catholic, became a magistrate ("Amtsrichter") and married Annemarie von Boschan (1904-1992), who had converted from Judaism to the Protestant A.B. faith, on January 31st, 1931 in the Protestant parish church of Vienna's 18th district. They had two children - Gotthart (Godfrey) Eugen Gallia (1932-2011) and Dorothea Gabriella Gallia (Dorothea Mary Cavenagh, 1935-1997) and lived in Vienna's 4th district, Prinz-Eugenstrasse 30/I/5 (last in the house of his brother-in-law in Vienna's 18th district, Julienstrasse 7).
Although he was considered "German-blooded", his wife was regarded "Jewish" and his children as "Mischlinge 1. Grades" so he and his family had to flee Austria after the National Socialist takeover and they were able to emigrate to England in time. There he first lived in London-Chelsea in 1939 and was initially exempted from internment as an "enemy alien" after the outbreak of war, but was then imprisoned from June 1940 to April 1941.
Since they had escaped racist persecution by the Nazi regime by fleeing abroad, the German Reich withdrew their German citizenship, confiscated all their assets and requested the University of Vienna to also deprive Eugen Gallia of his doctorate. In a letter to the Reich Ministry of Education dated May 18th, 1942, the Berlin Reich Ministry of the Interior assumed that they were still in France, and in a letter dated April 10th, 1943, it correctly assumed that they were in Great Britain.
On June 29th, 1943, Egon Gallia was deprived of his academic degree for racist reasons as a result of expatriation.
It was not until 12 years after the revocation and long after the end of National Socialism that his doctorate was restored on 15 May 15th, 1955, or the revocation declared "null and void from the beginning".
From the mid-1940s the family lived in Old Wharf, Shillingford, Oxon. After the end of Nazi rule in Vienna, his wife Annemarie Gallia applied for restitution of the expropriated villa in Pötzleinsdorf, which had, however, been confiscated first by the Russian occupying forces and later by the U.S. Army (she died in 1992 in Carmarthon, Carmartbenshire, England).
Dr. Egon Hugo Gallia died at the age of 75 on June 23rd, 1977 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England/Great Britain.
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") IUR 1924-1939 No. 304, Rectorate GZ 151 ex 1942/43, GZ 561 ex 1944/45 ONr. 15; Deutscher Reichsanzeiger No. 136 of 15 June 1943; POSCH 2009, 416.
Herbert Posch
