Just two weeks short of his 17th birthday –the cut off date for Kindtertransport children – Guenter Treitel fled Berlin with his brother in March, 1939. His father could not bear to show his emotion, so he was seen off by his mother at the station.
But as he boarded the train to Hamburg, the young refugee had no idea of the academic future that awaited him, as an expert in contract law, a Fellow of Magdalen and later of All Souls, and the Vinerian Professor of English Law.
Professor Sir Guenter Treitel, who has died aged 90, was still technically an enemy alien when he embarked on his law studies after the war, which obliged him to report regularly to the police. Yet he would one day gain a reputation as the best “black letter” lawyer (scholar of basic legal principles) in the English-speaking world. His textbook Treitel on Contract was first published in 1962, proving something of a legal bible for students and lawyers ever since. He authored many books on contract law and edited a vital handbook, Chitty, contributing to the law of carriage of goods by sea, and regulating the international sale of goods.
Although the legal world may seem an arid place to some, he gained much inspiration from a surprising source: the novels of Jane Austen, of whom Guenter was a devotee. He loved unravelling the legal complexities and anomalies faced by Austen’s characters.
His one time pupil Lord Browne-Wilkinson said: “Few contemporary lawyers have played as big a role in developing the law.” This was largely because of Guenter’s rare precision and attention to detail. While other lawyers may be challenged to amplify the legal profession’s often ponderous linguistics, his refusal to simplify the complex also caused him great satisfaction. He may never have been totally assimilated into the British way of life, but he did assume a kind of Oxonian identity, partly due to his early intellectual influences, and his habit of quoting Shakespeare. It was at Oxford that he met Phyllis Cook whom he married in 1957.
The son of Hanna née Levy, a kindergarten teacher, and Theodor an entertainment lawyer and active member of the Social Democratic Party, his family were a notable part of the leftist ambience of the Weimar Republic. But the rise of Nazism and the Nuremburg racial laws put paid to Theodor’s work as a public notary and resulted in expulsion from school for the seven year old Guenter. who was shunned and abused in the street by former good friends who had come to his birthday party.
But worse followed. His favourite uncle, awarded the Iron Cross on the Western Front, was sent to the Sachsenhausen camp in 1938, and Theodor’s attempts to gain visas for America for his family were denied. He narrowly escaped arrest by the Gestapo on Krystallnacht with his elder son Kurt in November that year, after being denounced by a neighbour. They were hidden by friends and Guenter was accepted by Kindertransport.
He and other children were forbidden to take more than one mark in cash or any gold or silver objects. He was terrified that he might be shot by the Nazis before he could leave. Interrogated on the train, he realised only later that he had a gold-nibbed fountain pen in his pocket! He compared the relief he felt walking up the gangplank of the transatlantic liner that would carry the children to Southampton, to the moment the albatross fell from the neck of the Ancient Mariner! In the same poetic mood, he would recall being met as the ship docked, with the vision of springtime daffodils. While Kurt stayed in their uncle’s home, there was no room for Guenter, who was put up in a refugee hostel established in Putney by the Sainsbury family.
Fortunately his parents and sister managed to reach Britain a few months later. In 1940 Guenter was evacuated to Reading, but had to move on when the family to whom he was assigned, who had a son-in-law in the RAF, feared he was a fifth columnist!
He won a scholarship to Kilburn Grammar School and gained another to read Law at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was naturalised in 1947 and called to the Bar in 1952, but instead opted to lecture at the LSE before returning to Magdalen as a Fellow in 1954. Lauded for his forceful intellect in his tutorial work, he moved to All Souls to take up his chair. In 1997 he was knighted. He became a fellow of the British Academy, an honorary QC – although he did not practice – and a trustee of the British Museum. Graced with a natural modesty, it did not deter him from speaking in any debate.
Guenter read all Jane Austen’s novels in strict rotation, in accordance with his legalistic mind. By contrast he liked watching Westerns. He is survived by his wife and two sons.
GLORIA TESSLER
Sir Guenter Treitel:
born October 26, 1938.
Died June 14, 2019
