HAAS, LUDWIG

HAAS, LUDWIG (1875–1930), German politician. Born in Freiburg, Baden, Haas practiced law in Karlsruhe, where he was a city councilor from 1908 to 1919. In 1912 he entered the Reichstag as a member of the Progressive People's (later Democratic) Party. On the outbreak of World War i Haas volunteered for the army and was decorated for distinguished service on the Western front. At the end of 1915 he was seconded to the German military government of occupied Poland as head of the Jewish department, where he worked in close contact with Emanuel Carlebach and Pinchas *Kohn in an attempt to reorganize Polish Jewry. The Jewish community statute, which was the fruit of this collaboration, regulated the life of Polish Jewry until the end of the Polish republic in 1939. During the war he protested against the census of the Jewish soldiers in the German army (1916) because of its antisemitic connotation. After the 1918 revolution in Germany, Haas became minister of the interior in the first republican government of Baden. He continued to represent his party in the Reichstag, and became its chairman in 1929. Haas founded the *k-c Jewish student society at Freiburg, supported the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold (1924), and was active in the *Central-Verein deutscher Staatsbuerger juedischen Glaubens (Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith).

bibliography:

Schrag-Haas, in: BLBI, 4 (1961), 73ff.; Carlebach, in: ylbi, 6 (1961), 62ff. add. bibliography: L. Luckemeyer, "Ludwig Haas als Reichstagsabgeordneter der Fortschrittlichen Volkspartei und der Deutschen Demokratischen Partei," in: G. Schulz (ed.), Kritische Solidaritaet – Betrachtungen zum deutsch-juedischen Selbstverstaendnis (1971), 119–74.