Anne-Eva Brauneck

Anne-Eva Brauneck (born 9 December 1910 in Hamburg; died 6 March 2007 in Lich) became the first or second female (West) German professor of law in 1965. Brauneck studied law at the end of the Weimar Republic at the University of Heidelberg. She turned to studies on the family backgrounds of juvenile offenders. Her work was suspect to the National Socialists because it did not conform to the government mantras involving the "hereditary nature" of criminal proclivity. Anne-Eva Brauneck was born in Hamburg, the second of her parents' two daughters. The girls' father, who was very much older than their mother, was a secondary school head. She studied Jurisprudence at Heidelberg during a period of socio-economic nemesis, political polarisation and parliamentary deadlock which led to the ending of democracy in Germany during 1933. At Heidelberg she was one of the last pupils of the criminal lawyer, legal philosopher and former Minister of Justice, Gustav Radbruch, before his government mandated dismissal from his post. A student contemporary who was also taught by Radbruch, and who subsequently became a life-long friend (and professional ally in the overwhelmingly male world of the West German criminal law) was Helga Einsele. It was in 1933 that Brauneck passed her Level-1 national law exams: she passed the Level-2 (final) exams in 1937. During this period she was simultaneously working on her doctorate which would normally have been seen as a milestone on the path to a career in the universities sector. In 1936 she received her doctorate under the supervision of Rudolf Sieverts at Heidelberg. Her dissertation concerned "Pestalozzi's position on the problems of criminal law". Although she became, on paper, a fully qualified lawyer in 1937, women were still denied admission to the legal profession and higher judiciary during the period: there are indications that women's career options in the sector had actually been reduced under the Hitler government.