As a young lawyer for a German bank in the early 1930s, Rudolf Schlesinger helped numerous fellow Jews liquidate their assets to transfer their property.
In 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht, he escaped the country for the United States, where he applied his knowledge of the European legal system to a long and distinguished career as a scholar of international and comparative law.
Schlesinger, a retired faculty member at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, died earlier this month at age 87. Wife Ruth, 76, former art curator for Hastings, died with him in the couple’s San Francisco home. The bodies were found Nov. 10, apparent suicides, according to the legal newspaper The Recorder.
“I would describe them both as enormously courageous, having ultimate integrity, unbounded generosity,” said their daughter, Fay Freed of Novato, adding that her mother had a terminal illness.
“In terms of their relationship, which was really most important to each of them, the sweetness between them was palpable. They called each other Schatze,” German for “dearest one.”
After coming to this country, Rudolf Schlesinger — Rudi to his friends — received a second law degree from Columbia University Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review. He clerked for New York Chief Judge Irving Lehman, who presided over the New York Court of Appeals. Schlesinger taught law at Cornell University for years before joining the faculty at Hastings in 1975.
Schlesinger played a key role in introducing international and comparative law into the regular curriculum of many American law schools.
Among his extensive writings were a seminal study of the common core of legal systems and the first casebook on comparative law, which became the leading text on the subject, used in classrooms throughout the United States.
That casebook “opened the field to thousands of students,” said Hastings Dean Mary Kay Kane. “His influence has spanned generations.”
Aaron Kaufmann, a Hastings graduate who took a class taught by Schlesinger in 1990, recalls his former teacher as a “true Continental gentleman.
“He was a witty raconteur who often contrasted the various theories of justice throughout the world with everyday stories of how those justice systems actually work,” Kaufmann said.
Schlesinger’s wife, Ruth, was born in Essen, Germany, in 1920 and came to the United States in 1936. After receiving a B.A. cum laude in 1941 from Wheaton College in Massachusetts, she served as an intern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She worked as director and curator at various museums and galleries before becoming Hastings’ art curator in 1978.
Because of her efforts as the only law school art curator west of the Mississippi, Hastings was able to develop a notable permanent art collection.
The couple did not belong to a synagogue, nor did they practice Judaism formally, according to their daughter.
“However, they embodied love and they lived it,” she said. “That was their expression of Judaism.”
A memorial service for the Schlesingers was held at the Saint Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. Another will be held at Hastings in late January; information on that service can be obtained after Dec. 15 by calling (415) 565-4805.
The Schlesingers are survived by daughter Fay Freed and son Steven Schlesinger of Silver Spring, Md. Another daughter, June Katz, died in 1985. The Schlesingers are also survived by grandchildren Jonah and Winston Friedman, Elliot and Jason Katz, Hart Eddy, Lyle Nesse and Marc Schlesinger.
The family asks that donations in the Schlesingers’ honor be made to the June Schlesinger Katz Fund, Pre-School Family, Middlefield Road, Palo Alto, CA 94303. The fund aids developmentally challenged preschool children.