Arthur Baumgarten

Arthur Edwin Paul Baumgarten (31 March 1884 in Königsberg, East Prussia – 27 November 1966 in East Berlin, East Germany) was a German-Swiss jurist and legal philosopher. After voluntary exile in Switzerland, Baumgarten became a prominent legal scholar in East Germany.

Biography

Baumgarten was born on 31 March 1884 in Königsberg, East Prussia, a son of the anatomist and bacteriologist Paul Baumgarten. He visited the Humanistisches Gymnasium in Tübingen, where he graduated in 1902, and went on to study jurisprudence in Tübingen, Geneva and Leipzig.

He earned a doctorate in jurisprudence in 1909 in Berlin. His doctor father was Franz von Liszt. In the same year, he became professor for criminal law at the University of Cologne. In the years from 1923 to 1930, he taught in Basel. Following a stay in Frankfurt am Main, Baumgarten chose voluntary exile in Switzerland by returning to Basel, as the Nazis eventually took power in Germany in the summer of 1933. There he taught legal philosophy from 1933 to 1946.

In 1935, he visited the Soviet Union, where he contacted likewise exiled German communists. In 1944, he co-founded the Swiss Party of Labor.

In 1946, he accepted an invitation as visiting professor in Leipzig. Eventually, he was appointed full professor in Berlin in 1948. From 1952 to 1960, he was the president of German Academy for State- and Legal Sciences.

Baumgarten died on 27 November 1966 in Berlin, East Germany. He remained a Swiss citizen until his death.

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