Hans Litten

Hans Achim Litten (June 19, 1903 – February 5, 1938) was a young lawyer, born in Halle, who had represented anti-Nazis at nearly all the important political trials after 1929.

In May, 1931 he had even subjected Adolf Hitler to a two-hour cross examination in a case concerning two workers stabbed by stormtroopers. He was not forgotten, and, on the night of the Reichstag fire he was aroused from his bed, arrested, and sent without trial to Spandau Prison. From there he was moved, despite efforts by his mother to free him, to Sonnenberg concentration camp. From Sonnenberg he passed to the notorious Sachsenhausen, where his treatment was later described by an eyewitness to his mother.

He survived this ordeal only to be sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was reported to have hanged himself. His mother Irmgard Litten wrote a book about his ordeal titled in English, "Beyond Tears."

When East and West Germany were reunited, the lawyers association of Berlin chose to call itself the Hans Litten Bar Association. Every two years a lawyer is given the Hans Litten Prize by the German and European Democratic Lawyers Association. The Israeli lawyer Leah Tsemel and the American lawyer Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, have both received the Litten prize.