Fritz Bauer

Fritz Bauer was born in Stuttgart on July 16, 1903, the son of the Jewish textile wholesaler Ludwig Bauer and his wife Ella Bauer, née Hirsch. Together with his parents and his sister Margot, who was three years younger, he spent much of his childhood and youth in a house at Wiederholdstra e 10 in Stuttgart, which unfortunately no longer exists today (a memorial stele was erected opposite it in 2024). He spent his secondary school years at the Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium in the west of Stuttgart, where he also graduated in 1921.

Fritz Bauer studied law and economics in Heidelberg, Munich and Tübingen, completed his doctorate on "The Legal Structure of Trusts" and worked as a court assessor at Stuttgart District Court from 1928. In 1930, he became the youngest district court judge in the Weimar Republic.

As Attorney General in Hesse from 1956 to 1968, he was responsible for the positive re-evaluation of the resistance fighters of July 20. July of 1944 such as the then highly controversial Frankfurt Auschwitz trials and, through his work and perseverance, had a great influence on the slow process of coming to terms with Nazi crimes in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Fritz Bauer died on July 1, 1968 in Frankfurt am Main.