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Biographical
data
Berlin 1894 - 1925
Adolf Moritz Steinschneider was born in Berlin on June 20, 1894,
the eldest son of attorney and jurist Max Steinschneider and his
wife Léopoldine, née Fischlowitz. His grandfather
was the well known Judaic scholar Moritz Steinschneider (1816-1907).
His father Max Steinschneider was involved with the founding of
consumer and producer cooperatives, and was one of the founders
of the German League for Human Rights. In 1899 and 1900, respectively,
his brothers Gustav and Karl came into the world.
After a sheltered childhood in the Döberitz residential area
developed by his father, and his studies at the French Gymnasium
in Berlin, Steinschneider studied law and business administration
in Berlin and Munich. Around 1915, he became acquainted with Adrien
Turel.
In 1917, Steinschneider was called up for military service, first
stationed in Krossen. A year later, he was transferred to the press
archive of the Foreign Office in Berlin. In 1918-19, Steinschneider
played an active rôle in the Revolution on the side of the
Spartacists. After the collapse of the Spartacist rebellion in January
1919, he was sentenced to a term in prison, which he served from
June 1919 until March 1920 in the Plötzensee prison in Berlin.
After release from prison, he underwent training in the Berlin Kammergericht
court and the law firm of Max Tucholski and Felix Wolff, sitting
for the examination for admission to the bar in 1923.
During the early 1920´s, he participated, together with Adrien
Turel and his brother Gustav in the meetings of the Working Group
for Biogenetic Psychology, a circle of young intellectuals and artists
centered on the Berlin psychologist Arthur Schinnagel.
Frankfurt-on-the-Main 1926-1933
In 1926, after a brief stint practicing law in the firm of Dr. Seckel
in Celle, Steinschneider began his own practice in Frankfurt (at
Untermain Quais, 20), where after dealing with several cases involving
"squabbles among various political and financial swindlers,
proletarians, divorces, alimony and artists' fees," he opted
to have no more to do "with litigation."
In 1927, Steinschneider's children Marie-Louise and Stefan were
born: the daughter, Marie Louise on June 7 to Eva Hillman Reichwein,
who at that point was still legally married to the educator Adolf
Reichwein); and the son Stefan, on Sept. 18, to Friederike Kaetzler.
Friederike Kaetzler and Steinschneider were probably married in
1926. The marriage ended in divorce after the birth of the son,
but his relations with Friederike Kaetzler remained friendly thereafter.
In 1928, Steinschneider's markedly political defense of the murderer
Friedrich Weichmann aroused wide-ranging notoriety, resulting in
social difficultiesfor his wife and his three children. The course
of the spectacular trial, in which the sexual researcher Magnus
Hirschfeld testified, is documented in the first volume of Schriften
zur Psychologie und Sociologie von Sexualität und Verbrechen.
[Studies in the Psychology and Sociology of Sexuality and Criminal
Law] (Stuttgart: 1928.)
From about 1927, until 1930, Adrien Turel lived in Steinschneiders
spacious law office and living quarters at Untermain Quais, 20.
Using this address, and with Steinschneider's support, Turel published
in 1928 the pamphlet Keinen Gott als nur de Menschheit: Enfügung
de Diagonalkategorie des Werdens in das Sein und in die Arbeit [No
God, Only Humankind: Inserting Diagonal Categories into Becoming
in Existence and Work (sic).]
Steinschneider's political sympathies lay on the left, although
he was a member of no political party. He appeared frequently in
Frankfurt in the context of political trials as a speaker on behalf
of the Communist Party, but his political home was rather with the
Socialist Workers Party (SAP for its German initials), which upon
the merger in 1931 of leftist opposition groupings became the German
Socialist Party (SPD).
Among Steinschneiders friends and acquaintances figured, among others,
Paul Froelich, Joseph ("Jola") Lang, Arthur Rosenberg,
Karl Korsch and Wolfgag Abendroth. Steinschneider appeared also
as the attorney for the Rote Hilfe ("Red Aid"), for the
German Peace Association, and the German League for the Rights of
Man. He was also the legal representative of the Soviet commercial
mission in Germany.
In the last years of the Weimar Republic, there were numerous cases
in which Steinschneider represented the whole of the Social Democratic
and Communist left.
In the struggle against the gathering storm of National Socialism
and its growing acceptance in widening bourgeois circles, he became
a frequent target for smears. In his several political trials he
faced off against National Socialist Workers Party members Friedrich
Kirebs, Jakob Sprenger and Roland Freisler.
Switzerland and France 1933-1944
A few days after the Reichstag fire of Feb. 27, 1933, Steinschnier
fled-having been warned by some police officers-"head over
heels" to Switzerland. His office and living quarters at Untermain
Quais were sealed by SA Troops. Swiss immigration authorities tolerated
emigrants living in Zürich under the asylum laws, but denied
them nevertheless the right to work and to engage in political activity.
Eva Reichwein and Friederike Kaetzler followed Steinschneider with
both children to Switzerland. Eva Reichwein soon returned, in the
summer of 1934, to familiar ground with her daughter Marie-Louise,
going back to Frankfurt. Brothers Karl and Gustav emigrated to Palestine.
First attempts at publishing activity
Steinschneider obtained some financial assistance from, among others,
Serge Turel, the brother of his friend Adrien Turel. He distanced
himself from Turel because of the latter's ambiguous attitude toward
National Socialism. Steinschnieder took an interest in political
organizing and discussions, maintaining contact with, among others,
the physician and anarchist Fritz Brupbacher and the publisher Emil
Oprecht.
February 1935, intestinal surgery.
In March, 1935, Steinschneider sent his stage play New Dreamplay
to Friedrich Wolf (New York), as well as to the producers Lindtberg
(Zürich and Tel Aviv) and Burjan (Prague). He considered emigrating
to Palestine. In June, 1935, the Swiss immigation authorities used
a trip of Steinschneider's to Paris as an occasion for withdrawing
the prominent exile's residence permit.
Steinschneider, once again in Paris without any income, was dependent
on the financial assistance of his brothers Karl and Gustav, living
in Palestine. His efforts as a legal consultant, as a factory worker
or as a salesmen to make a living, were either fruitless or had
only brief success.
Steinschneider wrote numerous pieces on politics and social criticism.
His extensive letters to his brother Gustav in Palestine were seen
in the Chronik des Exils und Ideentagebuch [Chronicle of Exile and
Journal of Ideas]. In 1937, together with the writer Anselm Ruest
and the lawyer Afred Apfel, he founded the Entr'aide des savants
et gens de lettres allemand réfugiés [Society for
the Support of German Refugee Scholars, Artists and Writers.] He
took part in the cultural and political life of the German emigré
community in Paris. Debate with Georg Berhard. - Co-author of the
pamphlet, published in early 1937 by the World Jewish Congress,
Die wirtschafliche Vernichtunsgkampf gegen die Juden im Dritten
Reich ["The Economic Extermination Campaign against the Jews
in the Third Reich"]. In April, 1933 Steinschneider pens the
article Strukturelle Veränderungen in der jüdischen Bevölkerung
Deutschlands ["Structural Changes in the Jewish Community of
Germany"].
Because of the ever-growing threat of the Jewish policy of Germany,
Eva Reichwein and her daughter Marie-Louise join Steinschneider
in Paris. The family´s economic conditions gradually become
tolerable as Eva Reichwein's manual skills enable her to find work.
After the British and French declarations of war on Germany on September
3, 1939, Steinschneider, as a German citizen, is interned in various
camps, among them Villberbon near Blois (in the Loire), later at
Montmorillon. Eva and Marie-Louis must leave Paris, and set out
on the search for Steinschneider (after a stay in Angers), finally
in Blois.
After the invastion of France by German troops in June, 1941, the
family fled by separate routes to the southern part of the country.
Eva and Marie-Louise finally arrived in Bellac, near Limoges; Steinschneider
was interned by the Vichy Government in various camps, among them
Mauriac, and was forced to render labor service at hard labor. Becoming
gravely ill, he was first hospitalized in Clermont-Ferrand, then
in a camp for those incapable of labor, and in the Summer of 1942,
he was released in Bellac.
There followed two hopeful years of exile under modest living conditions
in Bellac. In 1942, Adolf and Eva were married. Devoting his time
to work on his book Menschheit und Polarität ["Humanity
and Polarity"], Steinschneider awaited the end of the war and
a return to his home, where he would be able to join in the rebuilding
of a democratic Germany.
On June 10, 1944, the "Das Reich" battalion of the SS
perpetrated the massacre at Oradour-on-Glane. The following day,
June 11, 1944, the SS troops targeted the small town of Bellac,
40 kilometers away. In his attempt to get away from Bellac, Steinschneider
was overtaken by SS troops and together with his friend Hans Lauterbach
was dragged out and murdered. The exact locations of his death and
his burial remain unknown to this day.
[Transl. from
the German by David M. Fishlow, Washington DC, USA, a distant relative
of Leopoldine Fischlowitz.]
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