Life until 1933

Hans Buttersack came from Hamburg. His father Ludwig’s ancestors had however been pastors in Württemberg. The family moved back to Wiesbaden when his father, a successful cheese merchant, went into retirement. Buttersack received a broad humanist education modeled on ideals from all over Europe in his parents’ liberal conservative home. He also had a pronounced sense of justice.

Hans Buttersack studied law at the universities in Tübingen, Berlin and Leipzig. He followed his first exam at the university in Kiel with his doctorate with a dissertation on securities law in 1904, then military service and a clerkship in Hamburg. After taking his second exam and working as an assessor in Hamburg, he toured England for four months in 1908. As of 1909, Buttersack practiced as an attorney at law in Wiesbaden. He started his own law firm in 1912. He married Margarethe Glaser in 1909 and their marriage produced four daughters and three sons.

Buttersack fought in World War I from the very beginning. He served in Russia and France and was decorated with the Cross of Iron twice. The captain in the reserves did not return from his internment as a prisoner of war in France until early 1920. At first, he worked as a salaried attorney but was able to open his own law firm again in 1925. He was a member of a Masonic Lodge from 1912 to 1925.