Hans Litten

Hans Achim Litten (19 June 1903 – 5 February 1938) was a German lawyer who represented opponents of the Nazis at important political trials between 1929 and 1932, defending the rights of workers during the Weimar Republic.

The family left Halle in 1906 and moved to Königsberg in Prussia.

Litten himself was baptized a Christian - his godfather was Franz von Liszt.

Nonetheless, as a youngster he learned Hebrew, choosing it as one of the subjects for his Abitur examinations.

From his mother, Litten acquired an interest in humanitarian ideas and art, and gained a strong sense of justice for the threatened, persecuted and disenfranchised.

While his father was away at war, Litten once took food from the kitchen to give to a beggar, addressing him as "sir".

Litten's relationship with his father was strained, and his initial interest in Judaism was out of rebellion; he felt his father's conversion was opportunistic.

Litten became interested in a German-Jewish youth group with socialist-revolutionary ideas, joining with a school friend, Max Fürst.

Nonetheless, at times, he considered himself a Christian.

In Dachau he was registered as a Jew, and had to wear the yellow star on his clothing.

Litten sought out political debate in his youth.

There is an anecdote from Litten's school years, when he was asked in the classroom if they should hang a picture of Paul von Hindenburg, victor of the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg.

Litten stated, "I've always been in favour of hanging him."

Litten was pressed into studying law by his father.

He was not interested in it, writing in his journal, "When the ox in paradise was bored, he invented jurisprudence."

He wanted to study art history, but nonetheless, he approached his law studies in Berlin and Munich with intensity, inspired by the events of the day.

He was shaped by important political and social events of the era, such as World War I, the anti-war demonstration in Berlin on 1 May 1916, when Litten was not quite 13, the German Revolution of 1918–1919, and the arrest and murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg by Freikorps soldiers in January 1919.

The Kapp Putsch, the 1924 court case against Adolf Hitler and other events convinced Litten that Germany was approaching a very dangerous period.

His perception that right-wing radicals were receiving more lenient treatment in court than their opponents led to his decision to become a lawyer.

Litten passed his examinations in 1927 with excellent grades and was offered a lucrative job in the Reich Ministry of Justice, as well as a good position in a flourishing law firm.

He declined both choosing instead to open a law office in 1928 with Dr. Ludwig Barbasch, a friend who was close to the Communist Party.

Politically Litten was on the left, though independent.

He valued his independence and once said, "two people would be one too many for my party."

Culturally, Litten was conservative, enjoying classical music and poetry such as that of Rainer Maria Rilke, whose work he could recite.

He was an internationalist and was able to read English, Italian, and Sanskrit, as well as enjoying the music of the Middle East.

During one trial in 1931, Litten subpoenaed Adolf Hitler to appear as a witness, and cross-examined him for three hours.

Hitler was so rattled by the experience that, years later, he would not allow Litten's name to be mentioned in his presence.

In retaliation, Litten was arrested on the night of the Reichstag fire along with other progressive lawyers and leftists.

Litten spent the rest of his life in one German concentration camp or another, enduring torture and many interrogations.

After five years and a move to Dachau, where his treatment worsened and he was cut off from all outside communication, he committed suicide.

A number of memorials to him exist in Germany, but Litten was largely ignored for decades because his politics did not fit comfortably in either the west or the communist postwar propaganda.

Not until 2011 was Litten finally portrayed in the mass media, when the BBC broadcast The Man Who Crossed Hitler, a television film set in Berlin in summer 1931.

Litten was born the eldest of three sons in a wealthy family in Halle.

His parents were Irmgard (née Wüst) and Friedrich Litten (Fritz).

Fritz was born and raised Jewish, but converted to Lutheranism in order to further his career as a law professor.

He was a nationalist conservative, and served in the army in World War I, earning the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd Class.

He opposed the postwar Weimar Republic.

A distinguished jurist and professor of Roman and civil law, he was dean of Königsberg's law school, later becoming rector of that institution.

He was also privy counsel (Geheimer Justizrat) and adviser to the Prussian government.

Irmgard was from an established Lutheran family in Swabia, the daughter of Albert Wüst, a professor at the University of Halle-Wittenberg.