Hilde Neumann

Hilde Neumann (born Hilde Martha Betty Rosenfeld: 13 April 1905, in Berlin-Karlshorst – 11 September 1959, in Berlin) was a German lawyer.

She was politically leftwing and of Jewish provenance: she spent the Nazi years in exile.

Life

Provenance and early years Hilde Rosenfeld was born into a Jewish family in Berlin. Their daughter, Hanna, was born in Berlin on December 16, 1930 and they separated in 1931. One of Hilde Kirchheimer's projects in Paris was her participation in producing the so-called Brown Book which, in its 1933 version, set out to chronicle the events surrounding the Reichstag Fire and the ensuing Nazi Terror which the fire was used to justify. At this time she met Denis Pritt, head of the "International Commission of Enquiry for Enlightenment about the Reichstag Fire", which was a London-based "alternative enquiry" set up as a response to the official "Reichstag Fire Trial" conducted in Leipzig by the government. During 1935/36, at the invitation of the Workers International Relief organisation, Hilde Kirchheimer made a study of the Soviet justice system, and in 1936 she belatedly became a member of the German Communist Party. Her husband, from whom she had already been separated for several years, emigrated to the United States in November 1937, probably with their daughter, Hanna: She was for many years the secretary to the "German League of Democratic Jurists" ("Vereinigung Demokratischer Juristen Deutschlands"), In addition, between November 1953 and July 1959 she was editor in chief of the professional journal, "Neue Justiz".

Awards and honours On 7 October 1958 Hilde Neumann received the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze. The next year, om 9 September, it was announced that she had been awarded the Banner of Labor. However, she had by t4his stage become seriously ill, and she died on 11 September 1959 without being able to receive the award.