Curt Joël

Curt Walter Joël (18 January 1865 – 15 April 1945) was a German jurist and civil servant. He was the senior civil servant in the Ministry of Justice for much of the 1920s and early 1930s, during the Weimar Republic era. Joël also served as acting Minister of Justice and in 1931/32 was a member of Heinrich Brüning's second cabinet.

Early life Curt Walter Joël was born on 18 January 1865 at Greiffenberg, Silesia, in what was then the Kingdom of Prussia. His father, Hermann (1827–80), was a lawyer and notary there (later at Bromberg) and came from a family of Jewish merchants from Danzig. Curt Joël's mother was Else (née Pollack, 1843–90), also from a family of Jewish merchants. After her husband's death, she married Theodor Römpler in 1883, founder and head physician at the family-owned Sanatorium Görbersdorf (Waldenburg, Silesia). Curt's siblings included Eugen (1863–1911), Dr. med. and after 1902 head of the Sanatorium Görbersdorf, Arthur (b. 1866), textile merchant and manufacturer at New York, and Walter (1867–1947), president of a Finanzgericht (Fiscal Court). His cousin (1856–1916) was founder and long-serving president of Banca Commerciale Italiana.

Curt Joël married Vally von Dressler (1880-1968) at Breslau in 1899. They had a daughter and a son.

Though Joël personally never joined a political party he was a committed reactionary serving as the DNVP’s steward throughout his ministerships.

However, in October 1931, at that point again acting minister since 1930, Joël acceded to Brüning's request to become Minister of Justice in his second cabinet. The cabinet resigned in June 1932 and Joël then refused the offer by Franz von Papen to join its successor, since he did not want to be a party to the planned lifting of the legal ban on Sturmabteilung and Schutzstaffel, which he had earlier co-signed into law.

Nazi Rule Joël's Jewish ancestry did cause him some suffering during Nazi rule, but his powerful friends shielded him from becoming a victim of the Holocaust.

Joël died on 15 April 1945 in Berlin.