Hermann Heller - An Introduction

Hermann Heller (July 17, 1891 - November 4, 1933) came from a Jewish family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He interrupted his law studies to volunteer for service in the Austrian army during the First World War. His experiences as a front-line fighter left him with a heart condition which contributed to his death at the age of forty-two. But his poor health did not dampen his deeply combative spirit-a spirit which he put at the service of German social democracy.

In March 1920, together with Gustav Radbruch (who had just successfully promoted Heller's Habilitation, his senior doctorate, at Kiel), he participated in the armed resistance to the Kapp Putsch, aimed at the overthrow of the Weimar Republic. In 1932, he appeared as the legal representative for the parliamentary party of the Prussian social democrats in the case Preuben contra Reich, which tested the constitutional validity of the conservative federal government's coup d'etat against the Prussian (socialist-dominated) state government. In oral argument before the Court, Heller frequently incurred the wrath of the President of the Court by refusing to allow the Court to ignore the fact that the complex legal issues at stake were also life and death political issues.