The disputed license to acquire a local drugstore which had been refused to Jewish pharmacist Norbert Brandt by the municipal Health Department, has now been awarded him by decision of the Superior Administrative Court.
The Court specifically set aside a decision by the former chief of the Health Department, Berlin’s then Deputy Mayor Dr. Walter Conrad, to issue the license to a Nazi pharmacist who had once before, in 1937, taken over a Jewish pharmacy. That decision, and the international publicity it attracted, so irked Berlin’s municipal parliament that Dr. Conrad was ousted by an overwhelming vote of “no confidence. ” In the meantime, the Health Department’s legal adviser has been placed on leave of absence by Dr. Conrad’s successor.
Brandt, a 51-year-old pharmacist with an excellent professional reputation, manager of a drugstore until the Nazis threw him out, took ever in 1950 the management of another pharmacy owned by an elderly widow. When she died last year, he applied for the “license” to run it himself. To that he was entitled by virtue of an Indemnification Chamber ruling, which took into consideration the fact that he had been persecuted by the Nazis and precluded by them from holding a license.
But Deputy Mayor Conrad disregarded the Indemnification Chamber ruling and awarded the license to a Nazi, so that Brandt for the second time found himself out on the streets. Later, Conrad gave an untruthful account of the matter to the House of Delegates, Berlin’s municipal parliament.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
