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.
Read more about this topic: Hans-Jochen Vogel
Famous quotes containing the words early, years, professional and/or career:
“Foolish prater, What dost thou
So early at my window do?
Cruel bird, thou’st ta’en away
A dream out of my arms to-day;
A dream that ne’er must equall’d be
By all that waking eyes may see.
Thou this damage to repair
Nothing half so sweet and fair,
Nothing half so good, canst bring,
Tho’ men say thou bring’st the Spring.”
—Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)
“Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they don’t brag about it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not die—at least not in the act—and yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)