Gustav Spier
1875 - 1952

Gustav Isaak Spier was born in Frankfurt on the Main in 1875 as the second of seven children of Rudolph Spier (1834-1904) and Bertha, née Spier (1851-1917). His siblings were Ludwig (1872-1932), Paul Rudolf (1878-1934), Arthur (1879-1939), Rosie/Rosy Gochsheimer (1884-1926), Julius Philipp (1887-1942) and Alice Julia Krijn-Spier (1892-1942).

Both Spier families originally came from Alsfeld in the Vogelsberg area (Hesse), where there was an active Jewish community. His father owned a purse factory founded in 1860, first in Seiler street, then in Lange street in the backyard. He is later listed in the Frankfurt address books as a merchant for export and commission. The Spier family owned two houses in Frankfurt. His maternal grandmother Charlotte Spier, née Hecht (1827-1906), lived in his parents' house.

His older brother Ludwig Spier also lived in Frankfurt on the Main and earned his living as a general agent for insurance companies. His younger brother Julius Philipp worked for the metal trading company Beer-Sontheimer & Co in Frankfurt until 1927, including as head of personnel, before moving to Berlin and running the Iris publisher house, which had already been founded in Frankfurt in 1925. He then worked as a psycho-chirologist. Julius Philipp Spier was a student of the psychologist C.G. Jung.

Dr. Gustav Spier married Margarethe (also Grete) Koch (1900-1970). They had a daughter named Birgit Spier (1933-1991). According to issue no. 10 of the Jewish Community Gazette of Frankfurt on the Main from June 1930, Dr. Gustav Spier left the Jewish Community. We cannot say for the time being why this happened, perhaps for economic reasons or in connection with his marriage.

Dr. Gustav Spier was admitted to the Frankfurt District Court as a lawyer in April 1902. According to the Frankfurt directory of 1904, Gustav Spier lived in Lange street and had a law firm on the Zeil. He already had a telephone connection. From the following year, his office was located at Börsen street 11. In August 1920, he was appointed notary. From December 1927, he was no longer admitted as a lawyer at the District Court, but at the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt. After the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933, he was able to continue practicing law as a "Altanwalt" (i.e., lawyer before 1914), but in February 1937 he was removed from the list of lawyers at his own request.

Dr. Gustav Spier later worked in Frankfurt in a law firm with Dr. Emil Benkard and his son Dr. Georg Benkard. Dr. Max Hermann Maier also joined this law firm. The latter wrote that Spier was "an excellent practitioner with whom the clientele rightly felt they were in good hands" (Maier 1972, p. 126). Gustav Spier was also a member of the Legal Examination Office at the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court and, according to Max Hermann Maier, of the Examination Board for the Referendarexamen in Frankfurt. At the request of the examination board, Spier, like the other partners in the firm, occasionally submitted simple but instructive cases from their practice, slightly modified, as examination questions. A file in the Hessian Main State Archive in Wiesbaden contains a description of Dr. Spier's activities by Max Hermann Maier:

"Dr. Spier hatte die Stadt Frankfurt a. Main vor dem Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt a. Main vertreten und war jahrzehntelang ständiger juristischer Berater zahlreicher städtischer Gesellschaften, für die er auch Generalversammlungen protokollierte. Ich führe nur beispielsweise einige solcher Gesellschaften an wie die Aktienbaugesellschaft für kleine Wohnungen[,] Städtereklame G.m.b.H. mit Untergesellschaften, Hausrat G.m.b.H. Es kommt noch hinzu, dass mein Socius überwiegend christliche Klientel aus Alt-Frankfurter Bürgerkreisen besass, die mit der Machtentfaltung des Hitlerismus ebenso wenig wie die erstinstanzlichen christlichen Anwälte im Oberlandesgerichtsbezirk ihre Mandate ihm weiter überlassen konnten. Auch verlor Dr. Spier seine Aufsichtsratsposten sowie die Beratung von Firmen, mit denen wir laufende Syndikatsverträge hatten, oder deren sämtliche juristischen Angelegenheiten wir bearbeiteten. Ich nenne in dieser Beziehung auch lediglich beispielsweise: Deutsche Dunlop Gummi Compagnie A.G. in Hanau, Mosser und Co. G.m.b.H., Appel und Zahn Baugesellschaft, Wirtschaftsberatungs- und Revisionsgesellschaft, Seekler und Co. G.m.b.H."

(Dr. Spier had represented the City of Frankfurt on the Main before the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt on the Main and for decades was a permanent legal advisor to numerous municipal companies, for which he also took the minutes of general meetings. I will mention just a few such companies, such as the Aktienbaugesellschaft für kleine Wohnungen, Städtereklame G.m.b.H. and subsidaries, Hausrat G.m.b.H. In addition, my socius had a predominantly Christian clientele from old Frankfurt bourgeois circles, who, with the rise to power of Hitlerism, could no more leave their mandates to him than the Christian lawyers of first instance in the Higher Regional Court district. Dr. Spier also lost his supervisory board positions as well as his advisory services to companies with which we had ongoing syndicate agreements or whose entire legal affairs we handled. In this regard, I will only mention, for example: Deutsche Dunlop Gummi Compagnie A.G. in Hanau, Mosser und Co. G.m.b.H., Appel und Zahn Baugesellschaft, Wirtschaftsberatungs- und Revisionsgesellschaft, Seekler und Co. G.m.b.H.)

Dr. Gustav Spier joined the Frankfurt on the Main section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club in 1905. It is not clear from the documents we have seen so far whether he actively participated in events organized by the section. Unlike Prof. Dr. Karl Herxheimer, who had joined in the same year, Dr. Spier did not receive the silver badge for 25 years of membership at the annual general meeting in 1930, according to Nachrichten-Blatt No. 3 from March 1930.

Gustav Spier is still listed in the Frankfurt section's membership directory from 1925. It must therefore currently be assumed that he left the section after March 1925 but before March 1930, possibly as a result of the global economic crisis. The second secretary Wilhelm Schneider said at the annual general meeting on March 12, 1930 that after several years of growth, there was a decline of 77 section members in 1929. "Dieser Rückgang ist, wie viele Austrittserklärungen erkennen lassen, auf die wirtschaftliche Not zurückzuführen, in der sich unser deutsches Volk befindet." ("This decline, as many declarations of resignation indicate, is due to the economic hardship in which our German people find themselves.")

Dr. Gustav Spier was still able to practise his profession after January 1933 as an "Altanwalt", i.e., as a lawyer admitted before 1914. However, his notary's office was revoked in June 1933. Finally, he was removed from the list of lawyers in February 1937 at his own request. The Spier family emigrated to Denmark in November 1937 and lived in Copenhagen, where Margarethe Koch was born. In the autumn of 1943, Dr. Spier, like most Jews in Denmark, fled to Sweden to escape the persecution of Jews by the German occupying forces.

His brother Julius Philipp Spier emigrated to Amsterdam in January 1939, where his sister Alice Julie Krijn-Spier had lived since at least 1921. Alice Julie was murdered in the Auschwitz extermination camp in August 1942, while Julius Philipp died in September 1942 in Amsterdam due to cancer shortly before his deportation.

In 1949, Gustav Spier lived in Copenhagen at Frederiksallé 56 and from there, with the help of Frankfurt lawyer Rudolf Weber, made efforts to have his former property returned. The Staats-Anzeiger/Öffentlicher Anzeiger for Land Hesse No. 32 contains an announcement on page 330 that sheds light on his activities: In July 1949, he finally received restitution of fields on the Frankfurt street Schwalbenschwanz and, in the immediate vicinity, a house plot with yard space and garden at Kessler street 8. His former partners Dr. Georg Benkard and Dr. Max Hermann Maier testified on his behalf in his later compensation proceedings for damage to his professional advancement. In the end, his widow received a widow's pension from the state of Hesse for this professional loss.

Gustav Spier died in Copenhagen in March 1952, while his wife Margarethe Spier died there in 1970. His daughter Birgit lived in Frankfurt on the Main again from 1969. She studied literature and Etruscology and died in Frankfurt in 1991.