Restrictions and Preferential Treatment (1933–1945)

The Senate, the Presidential Board and the University Council of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover –

which are committed, in accordance with the moral and ethical goals of the university’s mission statement and its position in a democratic state that is based on the constitutional rule of law, to investigating and reviewing the darkest chapter of the university’s history during the years of the Nazi dictatorship as comprehensively as possible;

based on the recognition, looking back at history, that since 1945 only very inadequate attempts have been made to address the legal restrictions imposed as of 1933 on university members and their relatives at the Technische Hochschule Hannover, the university’s predecessor institution, as a consequence of Nazi ideology, and that instead of a general declaration of the nullity of such measures, action has only been taken upon request;

with the resulting knowledge that not all acts of injustice at the Technische Hochschule Hannover have received adequate attention and corresponding rectification;

in the awareness that today’s review and appraisal processes are at times made difficult due to war-related and other losses of files and documents, which preclude certainty regarding the conclusive investigation of impacts; and

with deep regret that any rehabilitative measures now come too late for those directly impacted, but in the hope that their lasting personal reputation in the eyes of the university community and for posterity more generally can be duly restored –

have, in the meetings held on 13 June 2012, 16 October 2013, 17 December 2014, 9 October 2013, 14 January 2015, 17 September 2012 and 19 February 2015, unanimously agreed on the following solemn declaration:

The restrictions on academic positions, degrees and honours imposed at the Technische Hochschule Hannover from 1933 to 1945 on the basis of political, “race-based” or other discrimination stemming from Nazi ideology constitute acts of injustice that flouted the law. They are and were, even at the time they were enacted, in clear contradiction of the known principles of the rule of law and disregarded – particularly in the university context – academic freedom, the self-governance which safeguards this freedom, and the foundations of the long-standing humanist-academic university tradition.

As the successor institution to the Technische Hochschule Hannover, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover therefore expressly condemns all of the Nazi-based restrictions imposed by the institution’s governing bodies beginning in 1933 and considers them acts of injustice that were null and void from the outset.

Because the injustices of that time cannot be undone in terms of the actual damage caused, it is the express aim of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover to afford justice to all those impacted at the Technische Hochschule Hannover by keeping their personal and scientific memory alive. For this reason, those people affected by these injustices who have since been identified are listed below, regardless of whether and to what extent their situation may have already been addressed on a case-by-case basis in the past. The declaration, which is also intended to apply to cases that are unknown as yet, obligates the university to add the names of any other affected individuals identified in future.