User:Eli185/Bernhard Falk

Bernhard Selmar Falk (born March 26, 1867 in Bergheim; died December 23, 1944 in Brussels) was a Cologne lawyer, judicial councilor and German politician of the DDP.

Family
Bernhard Falk was the son of the butcher Salomon Falk and his wife. In 1894 he married Else Wahl (born April 25, 1872). Daughter of the banker Hermann Wahl and his wife from Barmen, Elsa Falk became an important German women's rights activist and social politician.

The Falk family lived in Cologne from 1898. The couple had four sons. The eldest son Alfred was killed as an air force officer in 1917; the second son Fritz Falk (b. 1898), a lawyer at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court, committed suicide on September 11, 1933. Son Ernst H. Falk (b. August 26, 1901; d. 1978) fled with his parents first to Belgium in 1939 and then to Brazil via France in 1940; his brother Hermann J. (b. May 20, 1905) emigrated to Australia in 1932. After 1945, the widowed Else Falk moved to her son in Sao Paulo. She died there in January 1956.

Life and profession
Bernhard Falk studied law in Bonn and Munich after graduating from the Apostelgymnasium in Cologne in 1885. He passed his legal traineeship exam on September 29, 1888, and was appointed a court assessor in May 1893 after passing his second state law examination. In July 1893, Bernhard Falk was admitted to the bar at the District and Regional Court in Elberfeld and the Chamber for Commercial Matters in Barmen. On May 1, 1898, he moved to the Higher Regional Court in Cologne. During World War I, he was a captain in the Landwehr and for one year was adjutant to the district chief of Bastogne. In 1912 he was awarded the title of judicial councilor.

Nazi persecution
After the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933, Bernhard Falk was persecuted due to his Jewish heritage. Lawyers were targeted by the Nazis. Due to Nazi laws against Jewith lawyers from April 7, 1933, Bernhard Falk was forced to submit petitions (on April 8 and May 3, 1933) to continue to practice law. He was a former front-line fighter and father of a son killed in the World War. However this was a temporary measure, and his license was finally revoked on November 30, 1938, according to the Fifth Decree of September 27, 1938. During the anti-Jewish pogrom known as Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, Falk's home was vandalized by Nazi SA men. After that, Bernhard Falk was forced to leave Germany. In April 1939 he emigrated with his wife to Brussels. There they found refuge with a judge and officer friend from Cologne at Rue Beffrai 41. Emigration to Switzerland was prevented by Berlin authorities. Bernhard Falk died in Brussels on December 23, 1944. In Cologne-Longerich, Bernhard Falk Street was named after him on April 14, 1957. On October 5, 2020, Gunter Demnig laid stumbling blocks in front of the Falk family's longtime residence in Cologne-Bayenthal - initiated by the Rhineland-Cologne section of the German Alpine Club - in memory of Bernhard Falk, his wife Else and his son Ernst Hermann.

Political activities
In his youth, Bernhard Falk was active in the National Liberal Party. In 1918 he became a member of the left-liberal DDP. From 1908 to 1930, Falk was a city councilor in Cologne, where he had been chairman of the left-liberal parliamentary group since 1916. Since the election to the German National Assembly on January 19, 1919, he was a member of the Weimar National Assembly, until its end in 1920. From 1924 to 1932 he was a member of the Prussian Parliament, where he was chairman of the DDP parliamentary group. Bernhard Falk was a member of the executive committee of the Prussian Association of Cities and was the managing director of the Cologne synagogue community. As a patriotic German Jew, he belonged to the main board of the Central-Verein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens. On the occasion of the Cologne Millennium Exhibition in 1925, in the Cologne exhibition halls on the occasion of the "thousand-year affiliation of the Rhineland to the German Reich," Bernhard Falk published the editorial in the CV-Zeitung with the title Der deutsche Jude auf Rheinischer Erde.

Literature

 * Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): M.d.R. Die Reichstagsabgeordneten der Weimarer Republik in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus. Politische Verfolgung, Emigration und Ausbürgerung, 1933–1945. Eine biographische Dokumentation. 3., erheblich erweiterte und überarbeitete Auflage. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1.
 * Volker Stalmann: Bernhard Falk (1867–1944). Liberaler, Jude und deutscher Patriot. In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 24 (2012), S. 161–192.
 * Horst Matzerath, Elfi Pracht, Barbara Becker-Jákli (Hrsg.): Jüdisches Schicksal in Köln 1918–1945 – Katalog zur Ausstellung des Historischen Archivs der Stadt Kön/NS-Dokumentationszentrum (8. November 1988 bis 22. Januar 1989, im Kölnischen Stadtmuseum/Alte Wache), Stadt Köln 1988, S. 44–45, 86–87.
 * Volker Stalmann: Rheinische Linksliberale in der Weimarer Republik. Bernhard Falk und Anton Erkelenz. In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 30 (2018), S. 177–199.
 * Volker Stalmann: Rheinische Linksliberale in der Weimarer Republik. Bernhard Falk und Anton Erkelenz. In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 30 (2018), S. 177–199.
 * Volker Stalmann: Rheinische Linksliberale in der Weimarer Republik. Bernhard Falk und Anton Erkelenz. In: Jahrbuch zur Liberalismus-Forschung 30 (2018), S. 177–199.

Weblinks

 * Bernhard Falk in der Datenbank der Reichstagsabgeordneten
 * WERNER Rechtsanwälte Informatiker: Gründerjahre bis 1945 – Biografie Bernhard Falk
 * Nachlass Bundesarchiv N 1641
 * Nachlass Bundesarchiv N 1641