Kiel School

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The Kiel School is a group of National Socialist legal scholars who worked at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel at the time of National Socialism .

After the National Socialist seizure of power, an above-average number of Jewish and politically unpopular professors had to leave their posts at Kiel University, which was called “Grenzlanduniversität des Nordischen Raumes Kiel” in Nazi parlance . Without creating new professorships, targeted new appointments to the professorships with young system-compliant legal scholars offered the opportunity to create a type of National Socialist model faculty ("shock troop faculty") that was supposed to serve the National Socialist idea of ​​"legal renewal".

Members and origins of the Kiel School

The necessary handling for the desired staffing of the chairs of the Kiel Faculty of Law with National Socialists was provided by the “ Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service ” of April 7, 1933 and the “Law on the Exemption and Relocation of University Lecturers on the Occasion of the Reconstruction of the German University System” from January 31, 1935. These laws made it possible to dismiss professors on both “racial” and “political” grounds.

The following law professors were recalled or retired early due to the above-mentioned laws - because of Jewish descent and / or democratic or communist or pacifist or against National Socialism - or left the University of Kiel due to external and internal - partly also by the Kiel student body and pressure from colleagues:

Among the newly appointed, reliably National Socialist-minded lecturers who were to form the Kiel School , were:

Karl August Eckhardt only taught for a short time (from 1933 to March 21, 1934) himself at the University of Kiel. Nevertheless, with the help of his ministerial office, he exerted a tremendous influence on the staffing and content positions of the Kiel School. As the main speaker at the university department of the Ministry of Science for the subjects law, state, politics, economics and history he made by Berlin among other things that Hans was replaced by Hentig by Friedrich Schaffstein. Eckhardt was the editor of the magazine “Deutsche Rechtswwissenschaft”, newly founded in 1936 for the purpose of the “legal renewal”, which served as a mouthpiece to spread the ideas of the Kiel School.

As a result of the personnel policy measures, the average age of the professors working at the Kiel Faculty of Law decreased from 53 years in 1933 to almost 35 years in 1935.

Also in connection with the Kiel school is the lecturer academy organized by Karl August Eckhardt in the Kitzeberg camp . In this community camp on the Bay of Kiel, National Socialist lawyers came together to give a lecture on the national reform of law . The lectures held in the Kitzeberg camp were published a year later in the first volume of the newly published journal “ Deutsche Rechtswwissenschaft ”. In addition to the Kiel lawyers, came here from outside:

One of the participants in the Kitzeberger camp - Franz Wieacker - summed up the atmosphere of the event as follows:

"Hikes, marches, morning exercise and the smallest events in camp life created relaxation and the comradely relationship in which the agreement in thinking deepens to the fighting working group."

Teaching

In terms of content, the Kiel School was not completely homogeneous, but its members tried harder than elsewhere to anchor National Socialist doctrine, ethnic thinking and racial ideology in law. At least in terms of their self-image, they had the goal of not merely “revising” the existing jurisprudence in the National Socialist sense, but rather to establish a completely “new jurisprudence”. For this, in their opinion, it was necessary to rethink all the basic concepts of law. Abstract and, in their opinion, empty (“bloodless”) as well as “liberalist” or “rationalist” terms such as “ property ”, “ subjective right ” or “ legal interest ” should be replaced by new constructions. This self-image of the Kiel School was summarized as follows in the foreword written by Karl Larenz to the joint work "Basic Issues in New Jurisprudence":

“It is the common conviction of the employees of the volume that German jurisprudence is at a turning point in its development, that it has to start from scratch, but that it is also called upon to lead the way in the struggle of our time for the species-appropriate German Legal thinking that is 'concrete' and 'holistic' at the same time. "

General and methodology

The “völkisch” legal thinking of the Kiel School was characterized in particular by a rejection of rational methods of interpretation. For this purpose, Larenz developed his doctrine of the “concrete general” terms , deliberately differentiating it from the “abstract general terms” (Larenz) of the “traditional” legal theory, and mainly referred to the logic of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel . In a very similar way, Georg Dahm and Friedrich Schaffstein also called for the abandonment of clear conceptual delimitations and their replacement by a "holistic and at the same time concrete" vision of the essence . In a conscious turning away from traditional logic - accepting contradictions on the basis of "overcome" rational thinking - Larenz defined the "essence" of the concrete general terms as follows:

"The unity of the concrete-general concept is not the formal identity, but the concrete unity of the articulated whole that preserves the difference."

The members of the Kiel School - especially Dahm and Schaffstein - emphasized the independence of their methodological approach. They explicitly rejected the similarities of their thinking with the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, alleged by Erich Schwinge and Leopold Zimmerl , and emphasized the differences between their conception of the “concrete general term” and the “ concrete orderly thinking ” of Carl Schmitt . In spite of this self-image, lines of connection to Carl Schmitt's concrete organizational thinking were already drawn in many cases in contemporary literature. Corresponding comparisons have also been made in modern research literature, for example by Bernd Rüthers. In contrast to Dahm and Schaffstein, Karl Larenz - like his academic teacher Julius Binder - openly admitted to neo-Hegelianism . In his 1974 monograph Von Hegel zu Hitler, Hubert Kiesewetter also counted Dahm and Schaffstein among the New Hegelians, a point of view that Larenz himself faced shortly before his death. In his opinion, Dahm and Schaffstein “didn't want to know anything” about Hegel.

The jurisprudential contributions of the Kiel School were not only of purely academic importance, but also provided the jurisprudence with interpretation techniques and argumentation models for the reshaping of the existing legal system in the sense of the "National Socialist legal idea". In addition, especially Karl August Eckhardt tried to reform the legal education . Among other things, he suggested that the distinction between public and private law should disappear from legal training and that the curriculum should be reformed in accordance with the National Socialist worldview . Eckhart's plans were reflected in the guidelines of the Ministry of Science for the Study of Law of January 18, 1935.

The theoretical contributions to the discussion at the Kiel School were on a very general level. The focus was on the development of the general fundamentals of the required "new jurisprudence", especially in the areas of civil law (Karl Larenz, Wolfgang Siebert), philosophy of law (Karl Larenz), criminal law (Georg Dahm, Friedrich Schaffstein) and constitutional law ( Ernst Rudolf Huber). On the other hand, the Kiel School did not deal with individual problems in a detailed legal and dogmatic manner.

Civil Law and Public Law

In the area of ​​civil law, the Kiel School was primarily dedicated to “overcoming” the “individualistic” concept of subjective law and replacing it with the so-called “concrete legal position of the national comrade”. For example, Larenz said in his 1935 article "Legal Person and Subjective Law":

“Not as an individual, as a person par excellence [...] he has rights and duties and the opportunity to shape legal relationships, but as a member (..) of the national community. He only has his honor as a member of the national community, he enjoys respect as a legal comrade. "

Larenz therefore proposed to change the basic regulation of § 1 BGB , according to which the legal capacity of (i.e. every ) person begins with the completion of the birth, as follows:

“Legal comrades are only those who are national comrades; People are comrades who are of German blood . "

Ernst Rudolf Huber - a student of Carl Schmitt - was one of the leading German constitutional lawyers during the Nazi era . Similar to Karl August Eckhardt, he also considered an exaggerated distinction between public and private law to be an obsolete part of the civil constitutional state . He therefore suggested replacing the terms private law and public law with the terms “sovereign” and “national” law. In particular, the tendency of the bourgeois constitutional state to subordinate public institutions to the primacy of “individualistic” private law thinking has been overcome. The völkisch state, on the other hand, emphasizes the obligation of the individual to the "völkisch" community. All institutes previously under private law would therefore be subject to the guiding principles of sovereignty and leadership. As a consequence of these basic ideas, Huber saw the non-existence of individual fundamental rights and freedoms . So it was said in his work "Constitution" in 1937:

“In particular, the individual's rights of freedom […] are incompatible with the principle of national law. There is no personal, pre-state or extra-state freedom of the individual that the state would have to respect. "

Criminal law

The renewal efforts in Kiel were most influential in the field of criminal law . The efforts of the criminal lawyer Georg Dahm and Friedrich Schaffstein was there in sharp distinction between the "traditional" legal methodology, a specifically Nazi criminal law dogmatik to develop. Among other things, they rely on a “holistic and concrete view of the essence” as the supreme principle of interpretation (1), on “ honorary punishments ” linked to medieval legal ideas (2) and on a material term of crime in which the dogmatics of criminal law previously used - “artificial and alien “- The differentiation between offense , illegality and guilt should be abolished (3). The elaboration of a substantive concept of crime went hand in hand with viewing the crime as "treason" (Dahm) or as a "breach of duty towards the ethnic community" (Schaffstein), which should completely replace the conventional view of crime as a violation of certain legal interests. The following quote from Georg Dahm from his essay "Crimes and Acts" (1935) illustrates the radical nature of these approaches:

"Concept and word of the offense should disappear from criminal law dogmatics."

Building on the concepts of “treason” and “breach of duty”, Dahm and Schaffstein also developed the basic features of a “holistic and specific” criminal law . This was done in deliberate delimitation from the criminal law approaches of Franz von Liszt , whose theory of offender types Schaffstein rejected as “ rationalistic ” and “ utilitarian ”. The offender type theory of the Kiel School completely dispensed with psychological research into the perpetrator's personality in favor of a “folk and uneducated” way of thinking. Instead, the method of “essence vision” should also be used here.

The approaches developed by the Kiel School were received and evaluated very differently in contemporary literature. The criminal theories of Dahm and Schaffstein, which Erich Schwinge and Leopold Zimmerl castigated as criminal irrationalism , met with sharp criticism . More often, however, were mediating positions that on the one hand adopted certain approaches from the Kiel School, but tried to embed them in the framework of the “traditional” legal terms. Edmund Mezger had taken offense at Schaffstein's attempts to remove the demarcation between illegality and guilt and at the deletion of the term legal asset without substitution by the concept of so-called " contrary to duty ", but at the same time had part of this approach in his own conception of the "criminal offense as a whole" accepted.

The end of the Kiel school

The project of the Kiel School ended before 1945. On the one hand, this was due to purely personal reasons: with the exception of Larenz, Dahm and Schaffstein, the participating professors no longer taught in Kiel in the winter semester of 1937/38. The remaining lecturers were transferred to other universities because the Ministry of Education had concerns as to whether, given the general lack of politically compliant junior staff, it would make sense to concentrate all of the law teachers who are devoted to the system at a single faculty. In 1939 Dahm also moved to Leipzig University . Schaffstein was appointed to the University of Strasbourg in 1941 , so that Karl Larenz was the only member of the Kiel School to remain in Kiel. For this reason alone, it was of course not possible for the members of the movement to maintain the close cooperation sought in the foreword of the joint work on basic questions of the new jurisprudence .

In terms of content, some members of the Kiel School - in particular Georg Dahm and Friedrich Schaffstein - partially withdrew some of the positions they had previously represented by 1938 at the latest. This withdrawal is also due to the sharp criticism that the approaches of the "Kieler" had encountered. In particular, Erich Schwinge and Leopold Zimmerl had thrown out the methodological approach of Dahm and Schaffstein and accused them of representing "criminal irrationalism". Dahm and Schaffstein responded to this criticism. In 1935 Dahm had wanted to completely abolish the criminal category of the offense , he now declared that he only wanted to have made a “shift in emphasis”. Similar qualifications were made in the area of ​​the doctrine of “legal interests” and the criminal law systematics (distinction between illegality and guilt). The later publications (after 1935) by Karl Larenz, however, do not reveal any corresponding changes in position.

In the post-war period, the members of the Kiel School sometimes had greater problems to be accepted again in academia because of their positions held at the time of National Socialism. The only former member of the Kiel School who publicly and self-critically acknowledged his National Socialist past - albeit only in the 1990s - was Friedrich Schaffstein, who became one of the most influential juvenile criminal lawyers in the post-war period . Karl Larenz never made a public statement regarding his involvement in Nazi teaching, but went on to the scientific agenda and soon after 1945 became one of the leading German civil lawyers again . It was only after his death that the Göttingen professor Ralf Dreier published a letter addressed to him from Karl Larenz, in which the latter admitted on the one hand that he had been too naive in the years after 1933, but on the other hand denied having had any significant influence as a New Hegelian .

For a long time after 1945, Huber was unable to continue his academic career. In the end, however, he also managed to re-establish himself scientifically. Above all, a multi-volume work on German constitutional history that he wrote and is regarded as the standard work in this discipline received special recognition.

Georg Dahm, who was discredited as a criminal lawyer after the war, devoted himself primarily to international law after 1945 . A remark by Georg Dahm in the third edition of his basic legal work "German Law" (1963) may serve as a characteristic for dealing with one's own academic past:

“It is not yet time to talk about National Socialism. […] Excessive overestimation was followed by excessive rejection and degradation […]. [...] Neither one nor the other way of looking at things seems appropriate to us. "

After 1945, Kiel University repeatedly dealt critically with its own history at the time of National Socialism. It all started with Erich Döhring's “History of the Law Faculty 1665–1965” from 1965. Furthermore, the legal historian Jörn Eckert in particular dealt with the history and impact of the Kiel School in several essays. In 1995 an anthology was published by the Kiel sociologist Hans-Werner Prahl with the title “Uni-Formierung des Geistes. University of Kiel under National Socialism ”, which makes a cross-faculty presentation. As a consequence of the university's particularly close involvement in the Nazi dictatorship, all graduates with doctorates in Kiel since 1946 have also had to take an oath that they only want to serve the truth (and not a regime).

literature

swell

  • Georg Dahm, Ernst Rudolf Huber, Karl Larenz, Karl Michaelis, Friedrich Schaffstein, Wolfgang Siebert (Hrsg.): Basic questions of the new jurisprudence. Junker and Dünnhaupt Verlag, Berlin 1935.
  • Heinrich Lange: The development of the science of civil law since 1933. Tübingen 1941.

Secondary literature (selection)

  • Jörn Eckert : What was the Kiel School? In: Franz Jürgen Säcker: Law and Legal Doctrine in National Socialism. Nomos VG, Baden-Baden 1992, ISBN 3-7890-2452-X .
  • Ders .: "Behind the scenes". The Kiel Faculty of Law under National Socialism , in: Christiana Albertina. Research and reports from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel , Vol. 58 (2004), pp. 18–32 ( online , accessed on August 3, 2020)
  • Ralf Frassek : Karl Larenz (1903–1993) - private lawyer under National Socialism and post-war Germany . In: Legal Training . (JuS), 1998, p. 296 ff.
  • Ewald Grothe : Between History and Law. German constitutional historiography 1900–1970 , Oldenbourg, Munich 2005 (=  Ordnungssysteme , 16), ISBN 3-486-57784-0 , pp. 168–172.
  • Ingo Müller : Terrible lawyers . Kindler-Verlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-463-40038-3 .
  • Martin Otto: The Kiel School . In: NJW-Aktuell. Issue 35/2005, pp. XVIII ff.
  • Bernd Rüthers : Degenerate Law. Legal teachings and crown lawyers in the Third Reich. 2nd Edition. CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-32999-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jörn Eckert : What was the "Kiel School"? In: Franz Jürgen Säcker (Hrsg.): Law and legal theory in National Socialism. Baden-Baden 1992, p. 41 ff.
  2. ↑ Jörn Eckert: What was the "Kiel School"? In: Franz Jürgen Säcker (Hrsg.): Law and legal theory in National Socialism. Baden-Baden 1992, pp. 43-45.
  3. ↑ Jörn Eckert: What was the "Kiel School"? In: Franz Jürgen Säcker (Hrsg.): Law and legal theory in National Socialism. Baden-Baden 1992, p. 50.
  4. ↑ Bernd Rüthers : Degenerate Law. Legal teachings and crown lawyers in the Third Reich. Munich 1994, p. 48 ff.
  5. ↑ Jörn Eckert: What was the "Kiel School"? In: Franz Jürgen Säcker (Hrsg.): Law and legal theory in National Socialism. Baden-Baden 1992, p. 54.
  6. ↑ Quoted from: Jörn Eckert: What was the “Kiel School”? In: Franz Jürgen Säcker (Hrsg.): Law and legal theory in National Socialism. Baden-Baden 1992, p. 58.
  7. ^ Karl Larenz: Foreword. In: Georg Dahm, Ernst Rudolf Huber, Karl Larenz, Karl Michaelis, Friedrich Schaffstein, Wolfgang Siebert (eds.): Basic questions of the new jurisprudence. Junker and Dünnhaupt Verlag, Berlin 1935, p. 9.
  8. ↑ Explicit: Karl Larenz: On the logic of the concrete concept - A preliminary investigation into the philosophy of law. In: German Law. Volume V, 1940, p. 291.
  9. ↑ Karl Larenz: On the logic of the concrete term - A preliminary investigation into the philosophy of law. In: German Law. Volume V, 1940, p. 285.
  10. ^ Georg Dahm: The method controversy in today's criminal law science. In: Georg Dahm, Friedrich Schaffstein: Method and system of the new criminal law. Berlin 1938, pp. 1–70: He (Georg Dahm) does not refer to the works of a Jewish philosopher as a matter of principle
  11. ↑ Cf. Georg Dahm: The three types of jurisprudential thinking. (Review of the work of the same name by Carl Schmitt) In: Journal for the entire political science . 95 (1935), pp. 181-188.
  12. ↑ See Heinrich Lange: The development of the science of civil law since 1933. Tübingen 1941, p. 11.
  13. ↑ Bernd Rüthers: Degenerate Law. Legal teachings and crown lawyers in the Third Reich. Munich 1994, p. 57 ff.
  14. ↑ Hubert Kiesewetter: From Hegel to Hitler. Hamburg 1974, p. 272 ​​ff.
  15. ↑ Ralf Dreier : Karl Larenz on his attitude in the "Third Reich". In: Juristenteitung 48 (1993), p. 457.
  16. ↑ Jörn Eckert: What was the “Kiel School?”. In: Franz Jürgen Säcker (Hrsg.): Law and legal theory in National Socialism. Baden-Baden 1992, p. 59.
  17. ↑ Characteristic for this: Georg Dahm: Community and criminal law. Hamburg 1935, p. 1: The focus is still (1935) on dealing with basic questions
  18. ↑ a b Karl Larenz: Legal person and subjective law - for the change of the basic legal concepts. In: Georg Dahm, Ernst Rudolf Huber, Karl Larenz, Karl Michaelis, Friedrich Schaffstein, Wolfgang Siebert (eds.): Basic questions of the new jurisprudence. Junker and Dünnhaupt Verlag, Berlin 1935, p. 241.
  19. ↑ Ewald Grothe : Between history and law. German constitutional historiography 1900–1970 , Oldenbourg, Munich 2005 (=  Ordnungssysteme , 16), ISBN 3-486-57784-0 , pp. 172–189.
  20. ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: New basic concepts of sovereign law. In: Georg Dahm, Ernst Rudolf Huber, Karl Larenz, Karl Michaelis, Friedrich Schaffstein, Wolfgang Siebert (eds.): Basic questions of the new jurisprudence. Junker and Dünnhaupt Verlag, Berlin 1935, p. 150.
  21. ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: Constitution. Hamburg 1937, p. 213.
  22. ↑ So already the contemporary assessment of Heinrich Lange in: Heinrich Lange: The development of the science of civil law since 1933. Tübingen 1941, p. 15.
  23. ↑ Georg Dahm: Crimes and facts. In: Georg Dahm, Ernst Rudolf Huber, Karl Larenz, Karl Michaelis, Friedrich Schaffstein, Wolfgang Siebert (eds.): Basic questions of the new jurisprudence. Junker and Dünnhaupt Verlag, Berlin 1935, p. 89.
  24. ↑ Friedrich Schaffstein: On the problem of teleological concept formation in criminal law. Leipzig 1934, p. 11.
  25. ↑ Cf. Georg Dahm: Community and criminal law. Hamburg 1935.
  26. ^ Friedrich Schaffstein: The crime as a breach of duty. In: Georg Dahm, Ernst Rudolf Huber, Karl Larenz, Karl Michaelis, Friedrich Schaffstein, Wolfgang Siebert (eds.): Basic questions of the new jurisprudence. Junker and Dünnhaupt Verlag, Berlin 1935, p. 120.
  27. ↑ See Erich Schwinge, Leopold Zimmerl: Essensschau and concrete order thinking in criminal law. Bonn 1937.
  28. ↑ Gerit Thulfaut: criminal policy and criminal law theory with Edmund Mezger (1883–1962). Baden-Baden 2000, p. 201 f.
  29. ↑ Jörn Eckert: What was the "Kiel School"? In: Franz Jürgen Säcker (Hrsg.): Law and legal theory in National Socialism. Baden-Baden 1992, p. 70.
  30. ↑ in: Erich Schwinge, Leopold Zimmerl: Essensschau and concrete order thinking in criminal law. Bonn 1937.
  31. ↑ Cf. Georg Dahm: The method controversy in today's criminal law science. as well as Friedrich Schaffstein: Illegality and guilt in the construction of the new criminal justice system. In: Georg Dahm, Friedrich Schaffstein: Method and system of the new criminal law. Berlin 1938.
  32. ↑ See only Karl Larenz: About the subject and method of völkisch legal thought. Berlin 1938.
  33. ↑ Ralf Dreier: Karl Larenz on his attitude in the "Third Reich". In: Legal journal. 48: 454-457 (1993). The essay consists mainly of a copy of the aforementioned letter from Karl Larenz to Ralf Dreier.
  34. ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German Constitutional History since 1789. 8 volumes, Stuttgart 1957-1991.
  35. ^ Georg Dahm: German law. 3. Edition. Stuttgart 1963, p. 268.
  36. ↑ Erich Döhring: History of the Faculty of Law 1665–1965 , Neumünster 1965.
  37. ↑ See instead of many: Jörn Eckert: Was was the Kiel school. In: Franz Jürgen Säcker (Hrsg.): Law and legal theory in National Socialism. Baden-Baden 1992, pp. 37-70; Jörn Eckert: The law faculty under National Socialism. In: Hans Werner Prahl (Ed.): Uni-Formierung des Geistes. University of Kiel under National Socialism. Kiel 1995, pp. 51-86.
  38. ↑ Hans-Werner Prahl (Ed.): Uni-Formierung des Geistes. University of Kiel under National Socialism. Kiel 1995.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 30, 2007 .