Erwin Stein (judge)

Erwin Stein (born March 7, 1903 in Grünberg ; † August 15, 1992 in Fernwald ) was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and a judge of the Federal Constitutional Court . He is considered one of the fathers of the constitution of the state of Hesse .

Live and act

Erwin Stein was born on March 7, 1903 in Grünberg, Upper Hesse, as the son of Wilhelm Balthasar Stein and his wife Frieda (née Ruppel). His father was a railway engineer and as such a senior inspector of the Reichsbahnbau. Erwin Stein was baptized as a Protestant . The family moved to the Ruhr area , so that Stein attended the preschool of the Realgymnasium in Hamborn from 1909 to 1912 . Then the family settled in the Rhine-Main area . Erwin Stein first attended the secondary school in Vilbel until 1917 and the secondary school in Offenbach am Main for a year and a half . Finally, from Easter 1919, he attended the Lessing Gymnasium in Frankfurt am Main . There he passed the final exam in March 1922 . Stein then completed his law studies at the universities of Heidelberg , Frankfurt am Main and Giessen . He passed the first state examination in November 1925. Then Stone began legal training and received his doctorate in 1928 for Dr. iur. utr. in Gießen with a paper on the assertion of additional claims after a final judgment . He passed the second state examination on April 8, 1929 at the Darmstadt Higher Regional Court .

Erwin Stein initially worked as a public prosecutor and judge at various Hessian courts until 1933. On May 21, 1931, he had married Hedwig Herz, who came from Gaulsheim in Rhineland-Hesse and was of Jewish faith. After coming to power , due to this mixed marriage, he was forced to apply for dismissal from civil service on July 17, 1933 and henceforth to work as a lawyer in Offenbach. On April 12, 1934, his wife Hedwig had declared her departure from the Jewish religious community. Nevertheless, the couple experienced reprisals and forged plans to emigrate to the United States and England . After Hedwig Stein had received a postcard in March 1943 asking to report to the local Gestapo office in Offenbach, Erwin Stein planned his wife's escape to Switzerland . She committed in 1943 on 23 March suicide to be an imminent deportation to a concentration camp to escape. A short time later, Erwin Stein was as a tank gunner in the Army confiscated and fell briefly into British captivity .

In the summer of 1945 Stein returned to Offenbach and resumed his practice as a lawyer. He also became a notary on September 1, 1945 . He was involved in the CDU and as a city councilor in Offenbach from 1946 to 1948.

For the CDU Hessen , Stein was a member of the state assembly for Greater Hesse , which met from July 15 to November 30, 1946, and its constitutional committee. As early as May 1946, Stein had summarized his thoughts on the future constitution on 18 pages. His work in the constitutional deliberations was also considered formative. In September 1946 he and Karl Kanka presented the "Vollradser Draft", a constitutional draft for Hesse, to the constitution-advising state assembly, which was intended as a counter-draft to the official constitutional draft of the constitutional committee of the state assembly coined by the SPD and KPD. The Vollradser draft was not really a material alternative. Rather, it was essentially the text of the official draft from which, in the sense of an organizational statute or a constitutional constitution, the essential disputed areas, e.g. B. were simply excluded from the basic social rights and the religious constitution. Following the submission of the Vollrads counter-draft, compromise negotiations took place on September 30, 1946 between three members of the SPD and three members of the CDU, which then created the basis for a Hessian state constitution that was acceptable to both major people's parties . Stein himself did not attend the compromise negotiations.

The CDU nominated Erwin Stein for the first state election in Hesse in 1946 as a list candidate. From 1946 to 1951 Stein was a member of the Hessian state parliament . On January 7, 1947, Stein became the Hessian Minister of Culture in the Stock Cabinet . As such, he was President of the Conference of Ministers of Education in August 1948 . After Georg August Zinn resigned from the cabinet as Minister of Justice, Stein was also Hessian Minister of Justice from November 9, 1949 . Under his aegis, the Hessian State Library was merged with the library of the TH Darmstadt to form the Hessian State and University Library on July 16, 1948 , and the Marburg Archive School was founded in 1949 . Together with Erich Hylla , Stein also initiated the establishment of the University for International Educational Research in Frankfurt. From 1952 to 1991 he was President of the Board of Trustees and the Board of Trustees of the university, which is now called DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education carries.

On April 1, 1951, Stein became a judge at the Federal Court of Justice with a special permit from the Federal Personnel Committee . His term of office in III. Civil Senate of the Federal Court of Justice only lasted from April 2, 1951 to September 7, 1951.

The Federal Council elected Stein to the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court for life on September 6, 1951 . It was the first time to fill the Federal Constitutional Court. The name Steins was on the list of proposals from the CDU / CSU, SPD and the federal government for the first appointment . Stein was a member of the Senate from September 7, 1951 until his retirement on December 31, 1971. During this time as a federal and constitutional judge, he lived in Baden-Baden . Among other things, Stein was the Senate's reporter on the KPD ban and the Mephisto decision . His successor was Hans Joachim Faller . Erwin Stein had been an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main since 1963 . On December 17, 1975 he was also appointed honorary professor at the University of Giessen .

Stein, author of numerous legal writings, was co-editor of the journal Neue Politische Literatur . His legal commentary on the Hessian constitution, published together with Georg August Zinn (first published in 1954, updated to this day), known for short as Zinn / Stein , is considered a standard work.

Erwin Stein died childless on August 15, 1992 in his house in the Fernwald district of Annerod . He was buried in the cemetery of the Arnsburg monastery. Stein bequeathed his house to the University of Giessen as a guest house. Stein's demand for a “Christian socialism” was condemned by later CDU politicians as a time-related confusion.

Awards and honors

The Justus Liebig University in Giessen named Stein an honorary senator on July 4, 1957 in recognition of his services to the medical faculty. Stein's name is not only borne by a foundation he founded shortly before his death, which awards the Erwin Stein Prize for outstanding scientific works , but also (since 1983) the Glass College in Hadamar and (since 2002) the Erwin Stein House in Frankfurt , Seat of state institutions in the field of education, and the Erwin Stein building in Gießen , formerly the tax office building, today the seat of administrative offices and study services of the Justus Liebig University.

• 1954: Goethe badge from the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art
• 1963: Large Federal Cross of Merit with star and shoulder ribbon
• 1966: Wilhelm Leuschner Medal
• 1978: Erich Hylla Prize
• 1990: Hessian Order of Merit

Fonts

• (Co-author): Constitution of the State of Hesse and Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. With an introduction and an appendix: Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 44th edition, Gehlen, Bad Homburg vor der Höhe 1991, ISBN 978-3-441-00001-3 .
• Self-discovery in a time of self-alienation. Humboldt Society for Science, Art and Education eV, Mannheim 1983.
• Social studies as an interdisciplinary lesson in history, geography and social studies in the state of Hesse. German Institute for International Educational Research, Frankfurt am Main 1982.
• (Ed.): 30 years of the Hessian constitution. 1946-1976. On behalf of the Hessian state government and the Hessian state parliament, Steiner, Wiesbaden 1976, ISBN 978-3-515-02555-3 .
• The institution of the press officer. Report on the trial introduction of a press officer at the “Hessische Allgemeine” in Kassel and expert opinion on any legal regulations. Publishing house of the "Hessische Allgemeine" Dierichs, Kassel 1974.
• Proposals for school legislation in Hessen. Hirschgraben-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1950.
• Ways to popular education. Limes-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1950.
• Draft of the law on the development of the school system (basic school law) and justification. Limes-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1948.
• The assertion of additional claims after a final judgment. jur. Diss. University of Giessen 1929.

literature

• Erwin Stein , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 01/1993 of December 28, 1992, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Federal Constitutional Court: The Federal Constitutional Court: 1951-1971 . 2nd Edition. CF Müller, Karlsruhe 1971, ISBN 3-7880-1507-1 , p. 246 .
• Helmut Fetzer: Erwin Stein - A Bio-Bibliography . In: Peter A. Döring (Ed.): The new beginning in the course of time . In Memoriam Erwin Stein (1903-1992). German Institute for International Educational Research, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-88494-166-6 , p. 171-284 .
• Richard Ley: The first occupation of the Federal Constitutional Court . In: Journal for Parliamentary Issues (ZParl) . 13th year, no. 4 , 1982, pp. 528 .
• Richard Ley: Erwin Stein's obituary . In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (NJW) . No. 50 , 1992, pp. 3217 .
• Gerhard Menk : Erwin Stein - co-designer of the new state of Hesse . Ed .: Angelika Röming (= Hessian State Center for Political Education [Ed.]: Focus Hessen . No. 1/2003 ). Wiesbaden March 2003 ( hessen.de [PDF; accessed December 20, 2017]).
• Walter Gropp , Stefan Hormuth (eds.): Erwin Stein to memory. Academic commemoration on March 7, 2003 at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen . Forum Verlag Godesberg, Mönchengladbach 2003, ISBN 3-936999-01-5 (75 pages).
• Andreas Hedwig, Gerhard Menk (Ed.): Erwin Stein (1903–1992) - Political Work and Ideals of a Hessian Post-War Politician (=  Writings of the Hessian State Archives Marburg . No. No. 15 ). Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg, Marburg 2004, ISBN 3-88964-191-1 (202 pages).
• Anne Christine Nagel : One person and two lives: Erwin Stein (1903–1992). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2018, ISBN 978-3-412-50370-3 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Erwin Stein in the catalog of the German National Library
• Erwin Stein Foundation

Individual evidence

1. ^ Federal Archives Protocols of the Federal Government 138th Cabinet meeting on March 30, 1951 .
2. ↑ Erwin-Stein-Gästehaus of the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen , accessed on July 18, 2016.