[1] Walther Eduard Hermann Neye was born, the youngest of three children, at the start of the twentieth century in Arnsberg, a prosperous mid-sized town in central western Germany.
After that, during the confused year of political and social turbulence that for Germany followed national defeat in the First World War, he briefly joined the "Upper Silesian Border Force" (Grenzschutz Oberschlesien), a freelance quasi-military body set up by the Council of the People's Deputies (interim government) to guard Germany's south-eastern border with the newly re-created Polish state in a region where many districts were of mixed ethnicity and national identity.
[2] In autumn 1919 he returned to Berlin and started a period of legal study at the Frederick William University (as the Humboldt was then known), graduating successfully in 1923.
[1] In summer 1938 Neye faced official censure from the legal regulator because he had sold a piece of land to a Jewish woman, which was by now contrary to government policy.
Neye managed to persuade the magistrate of greater Berlin that he had never been a member of the Nazi Party and in June 1945 was readmitted to the legal profession in the city.
For the Dean of the Law faculty, Hans Peters [de], Neye's experience as a repetitor during the early 1930s, counted decisively in favour of his appointment.
It was only in March 1948 that the DVV [de] informed Rostock that they had decided that Neye should remain in Berlin, and his appointment to a professorship eventually took place in July 1948.
[2] During the 1950s Neye remained quietly but determinedly apolitical: his career success within the education sector is attributed to his exceptional talent for organisation.
Like many of East Germany's elite artists and academics, Neye lived in the prestigious Street 201 quarter of Pankow on Berlin's northside.