Arnold Brecht

Who was Arnold Brecht?

Arnold Brecht was a German jurist and one of the leading government officials in the Weimar Republic. He was one of the few democratically minded high-placed officials that opposed the Machtergreifung in 1933.

An alumnus of the University of Göttingen, Brecht served as a government official from 1918 to 1933. He was dismissed from his post shortly after the Nazi seizure of power, and emigrated to the United States. He became a lecturer at The New School, and also a foreign policy adviser to the United States government.

After World War II he returned to Germany and helped drafting the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1959 he received the Federal Cross of Merit.

Brecht also made contributions to political science. Brecht's law is the academic basis for one of the components of the equalization payments between the states of Germany.