Various

Dr Robert Michaelis was born in 1903 in Berlin. Michaelis was of Jewish origin and emigrated to Shanghai in 1939, becoming president of the organisation of emigrant lawyers. He worked in a legal capacity; wrote articles on the rights of emigrants in Shanghai and returned to Germany in 1948 where he became Senatpräsident for Mainz.

Michaelis had been interested in the Dreyfus affair for many years and on retirement in 1957, he devoted much of his time to researching the legal aspects of the case against Dreyfus. The Dreyfus affair was an antisemitic scandal which divided France from the 1890s to the early 1900s. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer in the French Army was found guilty of treason for passing military secrets to the German embassy in Paris. Drefus was suspected for many reasons including his Jewish heritage. Michaelis died in Mainz in 1973.