Lawyer, Littérateur, and Legislator: On Gronemann’s Profession, Self-Perception and Place in Scholarship

1 Introduction^[1]

Within the framework of a joint project with two law professors, Profs. Eyal Katvan and Boaz Shnoor,^[2] that investigates Zionist concepts of honor in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine, I was exposed to hundreds of honor delicts, mostly cases of libel and slander, tried in the Zionist Court of Honor and Congress Court. These files are currently housed in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem. A substantial number of these proceedings were presided over by a judge called Sammy Gronemann. These court protocols often contain stenographic notes that chronicle “laughter in the audience” right after that judge would say something.^[3] It is quite extraordinary to witness a judge who is out to entertain the audience in his courtroom and is something one would not necessarily expect. After further research on Gronemann, his life and his work, this detail quickly ceased to surprise me. After all, it is his wit and his humor for which Gronemann is particularly renowned.^[4]

The purpose of this anecdote is not to share how I became acquainted with Gronemann. What I wish to emphasize instead is that, while Gronemann is generally known as a “Man of Letters,” I have come to know him primarily as a “Man of Law.” Accordingly, the focus of this paper is on the latter, rather than on the former – if such a distinction can be made at all; and this observation too, will play a role in this brief survey. It is for this reason that I chose to accentuate an important, yet hitherto overlooked aspect of Gronemann’s life and legacy, namely his career and work as a lawyer and judge in the service of the Zionist enterprise.

This essay is divided into three parts: In the first part, I will offer some reflections on Gronemann’s place in modern scholarship. The second part focuses on Gronemann’s professional life as a lawyer, and his activities and importance as a lawyer and legislator in the service of the Zionist movement and beyond. An exhaustive biographical study of Gronemann’s professional life, however, cannot be presented here, and we must content ourselves with a brief overview of the most important episodes in Gronemann’s professional life. The purpose here is twofold: firstly, these episodes underline the less-known aspect of Gronemann’s persona, namely his activities as a lawyer, a profession that defined him; and secondly, as I will show below, it seeks to put Gronemann’s professional life into the larger context of his literary work. In the third and final part, I will scrutinize Gronemann’s professional self-perception. This inquiry will be concluded by an attempt to explain the results of Part 1 by means of my findings in Part 2, and to show all this stands in relation to Part 3. Let us begin with Gronemann’s professional life.

2 Trends in Scholarship on Sammy Gronemann

While conducting research on Gronemann for my work on the Zionist Court of Honor, I was surprised by how little information is easily obtainable about Gronemann, the lawyer. However, looking for one thing led me to another, and to an entirely new facet of the same person, namely Gronemann’s wit and humor, which is so vividly displayed in the court protocols of the Zionist Court of Honor. It also led me to Gronemann the writer. But the lion’s share of the literature about him, for that matter, focuses precisely on that particular facet of his life: it essentially describes a writer, a littérateur, a man of letters, and his works, whose daily job was the law. The following examples shall illustrate this point:

In Hanni Mittelmann’s seminal biography of Gronemann, Sammy Gronemann (1875–1952) Zionist, Schriftsteller und Satiriker in Deutschland und Palästina, there are references to Gronemann’s legal career but his professional career as a lawyer is clearly not a focus of her study. Her book, as the title promises, underscores his career as a Zionist and author, and predominantly contains profound discussions of Gronemann’s literary works.^[5] The same conclusion may be reached with respect to another seminal work about Gronemann, César Merchán-Hamann’s unpublished 2002 PhD dissertation, Life and Works of Sammy Gronemann, which to date, remains the only major publication on Gronemann’s life and works in English.^[6] In this case as well, and in spite of mentioning Gronemann’s activities as a lawyer and Zionist legislator, his literary activities (and his literary works) stand at the center of his dissertation.^[7] The same holds true for Jan Kühne’s dissertation, which focuses on Die zionistische Komödie im Drama Sammy Gronemanns.^[8]

This tendency to ignore Gronemann’s achievements as lawyer is also visible in shorter, encyclopedic biographies. For instance, in the respective Encyclopedia Judaica entry, where its authors (M. M. Geis and J. Schlör) describe his career in the following way: “After studying at the Klaus [synagogue, MP] in Halberstadt, the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary, and the University of Berlin, Gronemann qualified as a lawyer and then embarked on a career as a journalist, playwright, and novelist … ”. This description leaves the reader with the impression that Gronemann jumped into his literary career straight away after finishing law-school, without ever having practiced law at all.^[9] Only after a lengthy description of his literary activity, dedicate Geis and Schlör two sentences to Gronemann’s “other life” as a Zionist and lawyer. Then they again revert to a discussion of another of Gronemann’s literary creations, namely his memoirs Erinnerungen, which concludes their entry.^[10] Similarly, in David Tidhar’s Encyclopedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel, Groneman’s career as a lawyer is briefly sketched but it notably ignores Gronemann’s long-time chairmanship of (and his work for) the Zionist Court of Honor.^[11]

Similarly, this research lacunae is strikingly apparent in the growing body of research articles published on Gronemann’s work in the past four decades. Even a fleeting glimpse at the titles of these papers readily reveals a strong literary (and theatrical) bias.^[12]

There are, however, also two exceptions that point to a major research lacuna with regard to Gronemann’s legal profession and its Jewish context: Kühne’s focus on the theme of death penalty and talion in Gronemann’s drama and Piotrkowski’s analysis of the conflation between Zionist agitation and legal rhetoric in Gronemann’s autobiography.^[13] Both articles are concerned with Gronemann and things legal, although they do not totally ignore Gronemann the writer. Between the two, however, Piotrkowski’s article is more concerned with Gronemann the lawyer than Kühne’s. Still, about half of Kühne’s study concerns Gronemann the Talmudist/legislator; the other half concerns Gronemann the author, while Kühne seeks to understand the first half through the second and vice versa. In this article, Kühne notably describes Gronemann as a “German-Jewish Zionist, lawyer and writer,” whereas his contribution to this issue analyses Gronemann’s role and legacy as supreme Congress judge and chief-architect of the Zionist judicial system. Increasingly, thus, Gronemann’s legal role is foregrounded, while his literary role can be said to recede somewhat into the background.

By way of summary, the examples of this rough survey clearly indicate a developing trend in research; and it is this trend I wish to single out and strengthen with my contribution. Namely, contemporary scholarship recognizes Gronemann chiefly as a Man of Letters, secondly as a Zionist, and hardly ever as a Man of Law. From the perspective of an onlooker, this observation is not only clear, it also has to do something, I suggest, with the way that Gronemann perceived of himself which is what I will discuss in the final part of this essay. But first, let us have a look at Gronemann’s illustrious legal career.

3 Sammy Gronemann: Lawyer and Legislator

Sammy Gronemann was born in 1875 in Strasburg, West Prussia, the son of Helene Breslau and Rabbi Selig Gronemann (1843–1918). His father belonged to the Neo-Orthodoxy and had studied at the rabbinical seminary in Breslau with Zacharias Frankel and Heinrich Graetz. Sammy spent most of his childhood and school years in Hanover, where his father was elected chief rabbi (from 1883 to 1918). In Hanover, he attended the Hanoverian Lyceum II. After finishing school in 1894, he decided to study Law after witnessing the renowned case lawyer Fritz Friedmann (1852–1915) operating in court during a prominent case.^[14] Gronemann’s father, however, harbored different ambitions for his son and insisted him spending at least one year studying the Talmud. Gronemann gave in and went to Halberstadt to study at the local rabbinical seminary (Yeshiva), which was established and run by Rabbi Esriel (Azriel) Hildesheimer (1820–1899).^[15] This period of his life is important to mention with respect to Gronemann’s legal career as it provided him with better tools than those, he thought his studies would supply him with. He wrote in his memoirs: “I am furthermore convinced that the basis for my legal thinking was laid there [at Halberstadt, MP] for me. There can be no better training for a jurist than an intensive study of the Talmudic discipline … ”^[16]

A few pages later, Gronemann specifies this thought:

As far as jurisprudence is concerned, I have, in fact, seriously neglected the acquisition of thorough knowledge. I put more emphasis – to lend a Talmudic expression – on Harifut (חריפות), i.e. the ability to think legally, than on Bekiut (בקיאות), that is, the accumulation of great knowledge.^[17]

After swapping rabbinical seminars from Halberstadt to Berlin in 1894, Gronemann gave up the Talmud and enrolled in the University of Berlin, first hearing Philosophy but then switching to Law after one semester.^[18] He completed his studies in 1898 and became a Law Clerk (Referendar), initially in Nienburg an der Weser, where he started working as the secretary of the local judge. From there, he moved to Bassum, south of Bremen, where he stayed for five months, because at Nienburg, he was required to work on Saturdays.^[19] After finishing his tenure as a clerk at the district court, he returned to Hanover in 1900, where he stayed for three years, and worked as a public prosecutor at the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandsgericht), before taking his bar exam in Berlin in 1903.^[20]

During that period, some Zionist leaders, with Herzl leading the way, realized Gronemann’s potential not only as a public speaker but also as a staunch lawyer.^[21] When Herzl was verbally abused during the infamous VI. Zionist Congress in 1903 (the “Uganda Scheme”) by Davis Trietsch (1870–1935) and his partner Alfred Nossig (1864–1943), who harbored different colonization ideas than Herzl had,^[22] Herzl suggested solving the dispute by means of an investigative commission headed by Nachum Sokolov (1859–1936).^[23] The commission had the task of presenting its findings before a disciplinary court, or court of “arbitration,” which is just another term for a “Court of Honor.” Herzl chose Gronemann as his representative.^[24] After the congress had ended, it turned out to be difficult to physically bring the parties together again. In January 1904, Gronemann wrote to Herzl with a request for permission to continue the proceedings, but unfortunately, Herzl’s reply did not survive.^[25] Herzl died a few months later (in July), and apparently, the dispute remained unresolved. Gronemann never published the relevant papers.^[26]

After passing his bar exam, he was sworn in on the same day as Herzl’s funeral on July 7, 1904.^[27] He started his own private practice in Hanover, but moved to Berlin in December 1906, where he opened a law firm together with Alfred Klee, Fritz Simon, and Hermann Lelewer, who joined them later.^[28] The law firm was doing well, and by August 1913 they had moved to new offices.^[29] Their office was in operation until 1933, when the notorious Nazi professional restitution paragraph (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums, aka Berufsbeamtengesetz) of April that year disallowed them to continue practicing their profession.^[30]

A particularly important moment in his career as a lawyer and an aspiring author came in 1909 with the foundation of the Association for the Protection of the Rights of German Authors (Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller; SDS), which he co-founded and for which he worked as councilor (Syndikus). At the SDS, Gronemann provided free legal advice to needy authors twice a week.^[31] He became a specialist in international and literary copyright and was a driving force behind the standardization of contracts involving authors’ and publishers’ rights. He was a permanent Board member of the association from the time of its inception until Hans Heinz Ewers (1871–1943), a former friend of his who became a Nazi, deprived him of his position under orders from Goebbels.^[32]

The SDS, however, was not the only venture mixing his profession with the literary world: From 1927 to 1931, Gronemann took over the legal representation of Habima, which was founded in Białystok (Russia) in 1912.^[33] All of these activities put Gronemann in even closer contact with writers and playwrights, and it would eventually help to push his own literary career.

Around the same time, another seminal moment in Gronemann’s career as a lawyer and Zionist occurred. In 1910, for reasons unbeknownst to us, Heinrich Elchanan York-Steiner (1859–1934), a writer, publicist, and close associate of Herzl, made slanderous remarks about the prominent industrialist and Zionist historiographer Adolf Böhm (1873–1941) and several other members of the Zionist party.^[34] Complaints against York-Steiner were brought before the Western-Austrian Central Zionist Committee for review and the committee demanded his prosecution – notably not in a regular regional court, but in a Jewish Court of Honor. This choice was made, presumably, to avoid the case attracting the attention of the “broader (non-Jewish) public.”^[35] The case triggered all kinds of reactions but demonstrated, first and foremost, to the Zionist leadership the need for a special legal institution dealing with issues of honor, slander, and libel.

The foundations for a Zionist internal judicial body were already laid at the IV. Zionist Congress in London where Max Bodenheimer suggested introducing a Schiedsgericht (Court of Arbitration) or an Ehrenrat (Council of Honor). This idea was eventually materialized at the V. Zionist Congress in Basel a year later in 1901, which authorized the foundation of a Congress Court.^[36] That court was established, mainly, to settle election issues, but also tried a variety of other cases. In 1911, with honor cases piling up in the decade after its creation (such as the aforementioned Trietsch-Nossig affair or the York-Steiner case), it was decided to add a Court of Honor to the already existing Court of Congress. The former would decide on disputes between members of the Zionist Organization involving insults of honor, libel, and slander.^[37] The Zionist executive quickly realized that the foundation of the Court of Honor was intimately linked to a reform of the entire statutes of the WZO (World Zionist Organization).^[38] In consequence, Max Bodenheimer (1865–1940), Emil Margulies (1877–1943), and Gronemann were delegated the task of producing a revised statute of the WZO and of the Court of Honor. Several drafts were produced, mainly by Gronemann. One file in the Central Zionist Archives (CZA A15/141) contains the note that the final draft by Gronemann and Margulies was eventually approved on 3 June 1912, an event that was also published in Die Welt.^[39] Regardless of Bodenheimer’s and Margulies’ involvement, Gronemann’s long-time friend and associate Aron Barth (1890–1957) once wrote that Gronemann alone should be fully credited with the foundation of the Court of Honor.^[40]

The Court of Honor, with its seat in Berlin, operated for more than three decades (1911–1936) in parallel to its “bigger brother,” the Zionist Court of Congress.^[41] Later, in 1921, it was detached completely from the Court of Congress only to be re-united to a single court in 1960 (in Jerusalem), the Congress Tribunal.^[42] Gronemann, who was known for his fairness and freedom from bias was chosen to head it, which he did from 1912 to 1935.^[43] From the time of its foundation, the Court of Honor tried numerous cases which kept Gronemann constantly busy, as he remarks himself in his memoirs:

At that congress [namely the X. Zionist Congress, in 1911, MP] I received the dignity of President of the Zionist Court of Honor. In the following years, I was quite occupied with it; I remember, in particular, being forced to act against some Russian members of the Actions-Committee for indiscipline, and they were fined quite heavily. The institution of the Court of Honor soon gained a certain popularity, and non-Zionists, and sometimes even Gentiles, submitted themselves to its jurisdiction, given that the matter fell within the sphere of interest of the Zionist Organization. I remember once presiding over a case in which the German Patriotic Women’s Association sued a Zionist publicist for slander … ^[44]

From another file (CZA A15/141) we learn that in the brief period of a few years alone (from 1913–1915 and 1920–1921) Gronemann tried 16 cases, while the First World War (1914–1918) put a stop to the proceedings.^[45] Of the 64 honor cases we collected (most of them are in CZA L14), 35 were tried by Gronemann. These numbers show, as he himself noted, that his workload was intense.^[46] This notwithstanding, I find it curious that for something so substantial in his life, he dedicated only one meager passage to that episode in his ca. 650 paged memoirs, and I think that this is not by chance as I will discuss in Part 3.

In 1933 the Nazis come to power in Germany. As a front-line veteran, Gronemann could have continued to practice law fairly easily.^[47] But he chose to leave Germany for Paris in April 1933, where he resigned from the presidency of the Congress Court and, in 1935, from the Court of Honor. Moreover, the Nazis had stolen most of the files belonging to the court.^[48] His duties were taken over by Joseph Rufeisen (1887–1949). However, it did not take long for Gronemann to resume his presidency of the Congress Court. The XXII. Zionist Congress in Basel (December 1946) was the last one in which he took an active part. There, he rendered an account of his activities as President of the Congress Court and retired from the position amidst general acclaim.^[49] Some months later, in April 1947, he sent Barth all the protocols of pending cases.^[50]

From Paris, Gronemann emigrated with his wife to Palestine in 1936. But like all immigrants, he too faced the problem of fitting into the labor market. Initially, he attempted to gain admission to the bar in Palestine. But the demands that even younger people had failed to meet turned out to be too high even for him at the age of 61.^[51] One had to know both English and Turkish law and be fluent in English and Hebrew. Instead, Gronemann joined the ARBA Group^[52] (composed of Hermann Lelewer, Max Moritz, and Kurt Tuchler) as a legal advisor without having passed the relevant exams. Although the firm prospered prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, during the war years, it did not anymore, and Gronemann’s work as a lawyer was no longer profitable.^[53] He lived on the breadline.

For the meantime, and by way of concluding this section of the paper, I wish to emphasize that Gronemann was a passionate lawyer and an overtly important judge and legislator in the Zionist Organization. His profession, notably, also had quite a grip on him and influenced his literary work to a large extend, as we will discern in the next and final section.

4 Gronemann’s Self-Perception: Lawyer or Man of Letters?

There can be no doubt that Gronemann loved his profession as a lawyer and judge. The passion for his profession is poignantly illustrated in the following passage of his memoirs:

Thus, peace seems to have been restored in the Zionist camp, at least for now, and I was able to devote myself to my law practice with a clear conscience. I did this with great enthusiasm and dedication, because I loved my job with all my heart. And I knew that if I should ever come back to this world by way of reincarnation, there would be no other [profession] better or more appropriate to my abilities. Of course, I suspect that, as I candidly admit, my love for working as a lawyer is partly linked to a less noble motive, namely my fondness for all kinds of mental gymnastics. Law – or rather litigation – is basically nothing more than a form of the game of chess ….^[54]

In another passage, pertaining to an earlier stage in his life, yet written retrospectively at the same time as the previous one, Gronemann writes the following:

My school certificate stated that my future profession of choice was “lawyer.” I have always had a special interest in law, which was nurtured and enhanced when I had the opportunity to listen to the pleadings of famous lawyers in the Hanover Court of Justice. The fact that I might become a freelance writer myself, was out of the question … I myself thought far too little of my literary productions even to dare make such a suggestion.^[55]

So, in his memoirs, Gronemann considers himself a passionate lawyer and less so, a writer. In the previous part, I discussed all the empirical data of his legal activity to back up his claim. But things look different when taking into consideration a document I recently discovered in the Israeli National Archive, namely Gronemann’s 1936 Immigration Application (Figure 1).

Figure 1:

Gronemann’s Immigration Application 1936 (Israeli State Archives מ-17/1692).

In it, Gronemann wrote under “occupation”: “Author” (סופר); he could have written “Lawyer.” This is, at least, what we would have expected him to write, and especially so, considering his statements about his love of his profession and his impressive record as a lawyer. When asked about his profession by a British immigration officer in 1936 in Palestine, he clearly made a choice. This time, it would be against law, and in favor of literature! Did Gronemann attempt a career change? When the 1929 global economic crisis began to affect his legal practice, Gronemann hoped for a new career as a freelance writer in view of the success of Tohuwabohu, which by 1930 had already seen 16 editions and numerous translations.^[56] His plans, though, were foiled by the rise of the Nazis. Would things be different in Palestine? Was his new home signaling the beginning of an entirely new life and a new profession? Perhaps. It is impossible for us to project ourselves into Gronemann’s thoughts, but the fact remains that he kept writing and, for a while, kept being a lawyer in the Yishuv – perhaps reluctantly – because it certainly paid the bills.^[57] And regardless of which hat we choose to put on Gronemann’s head – that of a lawyer or that of a writer – as he seems to have preferred towards the last stretch of his life, it is also evident that it is impossible to divorce one from the other, i.e. Gronemann the lawyer from Sammy the author. Surely, his legal work gave him enough material for inspiration for his literary work, and here are a few examples of that:

1. He once saw the director of the Moabit district court (Landgerichtsdirektor) mercilessly mocking a Jewish lawyer. This event formed the basis for Gronemann’s description of a very similar episode witnessed by his literary character, Heinz Lehnsen, in the fifth chapter of Tohuwabohu.^[58]

2. In his Erinnerungen, he frequently brings (amusing) legal episodes he experienced throughout his professional life as an attorney for the entertainment of his readers.^[59] Although “officially” an autobiography, I consider his Erinnerungen a literary work in its own right, and one of Gronemann’s finest literary creations. His memoirs are highly stylistic and no less entertaining than, say, his Schalet. Beiträge zur Philosophie des “Wenn schon!” (published in 1927).

3. As a brief look at Gronemann’s recently collected and published short prose works from his literary estate reveals, a substantial part of these writings is legal in nature or are inspired by things legal.^[60]

Thus, in Gronemann’s own words, after all, “the most beautiful stage is still the courtroom.”^[61]

5 Conclusions

There is no doubt that Gronemann loved being a lawyer, especially when it required him to think out of the box – just as the Talmud incites one to do. Nevertheless, and besides law, Gronemann entertained two additional passions: political Zionism and literary writing. He was very good at, and quite successful in all three of them.^[62] He was fortunate enough to have been able to combine all three of his passions at times. A lawyer and Zionist by day and a writer by night, so to speak, his immigration document suggests that more than anything, Gronemann wanted to be a writer – not unlike other prominent Zionists with Theodore Herzl right up front.^[63] But do we need to decide that for him? I think not, and I do not think that he did so as well. What remains are the facts: Gronemann was a passionate lawyer, an important Zionist legislator, and his work fulfilled him and occupied him even when he followed his other profession, namely that of an author. Whether we see him as a lawyer or as an author – like in modern scholarship – I am sure he would have been content with both interpretations.