The short life of the feisty lawyer Hans Litten, who was driven to suicide in the Dachau concentration camp in 1938.
In a spectacular trial before the Berlin Criminal Court in Moabit in 1931, the young lawyer Hans Litten confronted the »writer« Adolf Hitler as a witness for the violent tendencies of the SA and NSDAP. Litten defended delinquent youths in numerous trials, appeared as joint plaintiff for communists attacked by fascist roll-call squads, and disputed with the right-wing judiciary of the Weimar Republic.
His biography is a German life story that began with the Jewish youth movement in East Prussia and ended in the Dachau concentration camp. In divided Germany, it was handed down in different versions. Some paid tribute to the anti-fascist ally of the working class, others – with decades of delay – to the defender of the republican legal system. Today, Hans Litten is known far beyond Germany – not least through the TV series »Babylon Berlin« - as a political lawyer who stood up for his clients with uncompromising courage.
Knut Bergbauer, born 1962, graduate social pedagogue, currently research associate at the Technical University of Braunschweig, publications on Jewish youth movement, history of the labor movement as well as resistance in the NS.
Sabine Fröhlich, publicist and filmmaker, Frankfurt a. M.
Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, born 1962, historian and director of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at the TU Berlin and co-director of the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg.
