Anton-Hermann Chroust

Anton-Hermann Chroust was a German-American jurist, philosopher and historian, from 1946 to 1972, professor of law, philosophy, and history, at the University of Notre Dame. Chroust was best known for his 1965 bookThe Rise of the Legal Profession in America.

Chroust was born on January 28, 1907, in Wurzburg, Germany, the son of Johanna and Anton Julius Chroust, an Austrian-born professor of German history at the University of Wurzburg.

Anton-Hermann Chroust earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Wurzberg in 1925, a law degree from the University of Erlangen in 1929, and a doctorate from the University of Munich in 1931 .

He arrived in the United States in September 1932 to study for an advanced law degree at Harvard Law School. Chroust finished his academic work at Harvard in 1933, earning a doctorate in juridical science, Harvard's most advanced law degree. Although not on the Harvard payroll, Chroust then served as a special assistant to Harvard Law Dean Nathan Roscoe Pound until 1941, while at the same time applying for academic positions at universities across the United States.

On December 9, 1941—two days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor—FBI agents arrived at Chroust's rooming house in Boston and took him into custody as an enemy alien who was suspected of sympathy with the Nazi Party and possibly working for Nazi Germany. The federal government case listed at least fourteen informants, including members of the Harvard faculty. Chroust was strongly defended by his friend, Harvard Law School dean Roscoe Pound.

German records identify Chroust as a member of the Nazi Party as late as July 15, 1939. In March 1943, Chroust was released on parole with Pound designated as his parole sponsor. In 1945 Chroust was again detained by the U.S. authorities, was released on parole on February 23, 1946, but faced possible deportation.

Chroust joined faculty of the University of Notre Dame in the summer of 1946 after being recommended by Pound.

On March 29, 1941, Chroust married Elisabeth Redmond of Brookline, Massachusetts. The couple separated in 1946 and divorced in 1950.

Chroust became a naturalized U.S. citizen on February 7, 1951, at a ceremony in South Bend, with Pound serving as his sponsor.

Chroust retired from the full-time faculty at Notre Dame in 1972 and died on January 11, 1982, in South Bend, Indiana. He is buried at Cedar Grove Cemetery at the University of Notre Dame.