Hans-Jochen Vogel - Early Years and Professional Career

Early Years and Professional Career

Hans-Jochen Vogel attended grammar school in Göttingen and in Gießen, where he did his A-levels in 1943. Although he was an active Catholic, he joined the Hitler Youth and even became one of its squad leaders (Scharführer). "… in spite of all my doubts about details it did not occur to me at the time that you can, or even must, resist the state. Especially if I consider the biographies of other young people, for instance, Sophie and Hans Scholl, who came to completely different conclusions. I lived with my parents in Gießen then, I saw the synagogue burn. And nobody helped, on the contrary, the police and the firebrigade made the fire even worse. But not even that really opened my eyes."

In July 1943, at the age of 17, Vogel was conscripted. At the end of the war he was a non-commissioned officer. He was captured by the Americans in Italy. On his return from prison camp he worked as a transport worker for a short while, before he was able to study law in Marburg and Munich. He received his doctorate ("summa cum laude") in 1950.

His professional career began in February 1952, when he became a junior official in the Bavarian Ministry of Justice. At the age of 28 he was a county court judge, and in the following year he was appointed chairman of a commission in the Bavarian Prime Minister's Office which was to review Bavarian law for a new survey published by the Bavarian state parliament. Munich City Council made him their legal secretary in 1958.