Wilhelm Hoegner (23.9.1887 Munich – 5.3.1980 Munich)

The seventh of 13 children, Wilhelm Hoegner was born in Munich in 1887, the son of railroad official Michael Georg Hoegner and his wife Therese . A bright student, he received a state-funded ‘free place’ at the secondary school in Burghausen, passing his school-leaving examinations at Ludwigsgymnasium in Munich. This was followed by legal studies in Berlin, Munich and Erlangen, which Hoegner completed in 1911 with a doctorate. In the same year he met Anna Woock, a bank clerk; they married in 1918 and had two children.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Hoegner volunteered for military service but was rejected due to a heart condition. After initial attempts to establish a career as an employee, he decided to join the civil service and was employed as a trainee lawyer in 1914, supplementing his meager salary with tutoring and paperwork for a prisoners’ charity. Having obtained his license to practice law in 1918, he then embarked on a remarkable legal career: from 1920 to 1933 he rose from Third Public Prosecutor to District Judge (1925), First Public Prosecutor (1929) and Regional Court Judge (January 1933).

Parallel to this professional success, Hoegner pursued a career as an SPD politician. His sense of justice was sharpened early on due to his outsider role among privileged classmates at school, as well as the experience he had gained in his professional environment: he had wanted to join the Social Democrats as early as 1907 as a school-leaver, but was put off until later by the Munich branch chairman at the time due to his youth and inexperience. Twelve years later, he finally joined the SPD as a lawyer, quickly becoming secretary of the Munich branch, a member of the state parliament in 1924, and a member of the Reichstag in 1930.

In addition to his interest in policy issues relating to church, school, culture and law, Hoegner saw his most important political mission in the fight against the rise of National Socialism. In 1924 he became chairman of a committee of inquiry he initiated himself to investigate the background to Hitler’s attempted coup in November 1923 and the involvement of members of the Bavarian administration, judiciary and police. The committee’s explosive findings were ignored, however, and those involved never had to face consequences for their actions. This prompted the state committee of the Bavarian SPD to publicize the judicial scandal in 1928 by putting out the pamphlet ‘Hitler and Kahr. The Bavarian Napoleonic Greats of 1923’. To this day, the investigation report written by Hoegner remains a valuable source of information on the events surrounding the Hitler putsch.

Hoegner became an arch enemy of the National Socialists in Bavaria during the Weimar Republic, holding his ground courageously in the fight against Hitler. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Hoegner – a passionate mountain hiker – fled via adventurous routes across the Karwendel mountains to Tyrol, where he briefly worked as secretary of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, moving on to the safer Swiss city of Basel as early as February 1934 His professional and political options were severely limited in exile, and he worked as a writer and translator under precarious financial conditions. Together with other emigrants, including the constitutional lawyer Hans Nawiasky, he outlined the first drafts of a democratic constitution in a federalist Germany during this period.

Hoegner returned to Munich immediately after the end of the war, in May 1945. The American military government initially invited him to join the judicial administration and in September 1945 appointed him successor to Fritz Schäffer as Bavarian State Premier, while he also took up the office of Minister of Justice. In this position he was one of two German representatives to be present at the execution of those sentenced to death at the main Nuremberg trial in October 1946. Hoegner then became a member of the State Council, and in 1946 chairman of the Preparatory Constitutional Committee and a member of the Constituent Assembly in Bavaria. Extensive sections of the Bavarian constitution bear Hoegner’s hallmark, including the equality of denominational and community schools, strong municipal self-government, and universal participation in the “enjoyment of natural beauty”. For this reason, Hoegner is regarded today as the ‘father’ of the Bavarian constitution.

The CSU won the first state parliamentary election on December 1, 1946, with Hans Ehard replacing Hoegner as State Premier. Hoegner remained Minister of Justice and Deputy State Premier until the SPD left the coalition against his opposition in 1947, whereupon he also resigned as chair of the Bavarian SPD. He then served as President of the Senate at the Higher Regional Court, as Attorney General, and from 1950 as Minister of the Interior in Hans Ehard’s third cabinet. From November 1954 to 1957, Hoegner once again governed as State Premier, leading a four-party coalition. He remained politically active as an elected representative until 1970, his final office being that of Deputy President of the Bavarian Parliament.

Throughout his life, Wilhelm Hoegner was committed to fighting right-wing extremism, anti-semitism and intolerance. He is the author of several books. In 1977 he published his memoirs under the title ‘Flucht vor Hitler’ (Escaping from Hitler). Wilhelm Hoegner died in 1980 in his home town of Munich, where he was awarded honorary citizenship in 1957 (as he was later in the towns of Burghausen and Vohburg).