Adolf Süsterhenn

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Adolf Süsterhenn, 1949
Adolf Süsterhenn at the Rittersturz conference in 1948
Memorial plaque on the former residential building in Unkel
Süsterhenn's house in Unkel, Bahnhofstrasse 7, where the constitution for Rhineland-Palatinate was drafted and edited

Adolf Süsterhenn (born May 31, 1905 in Cologne , † November 24, 1974 in Koblenz ) was a German constitutional lawyer and politician . Süsterhenn is considered the "spiritual father" of the state constitution for Rhineland-Palatinate . He was a minister in Rhineland-Palatinate , as one of the leading figures in the Parliamentary Council, one of the “Builders of the Federal Republic of Germany”, President of the Higher Administrative Court and Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Rhineland-Palatinate, and a member of the German Bundestag .

Life

In 1923 he passed the Abitur at the Schiller-Gymnasium in Cologne-Ehrenfeld , with whose "direttore" Albert Maier he kept in contact until the 1950s. During the Weimar Republic, Süsterhenn was a member of the Catholic University Community and the Center Party in Cologne. He enrolled at the University of Freiburg in the summer semester of 1923 , where he became a member of the KDSt.V. on May 14, 1923 . Hohenstaufen Freiburg im Breisgau in the CV . was. In addition, he was a member of the following connections in the CV : KDStV Rappoltstein, AV Rheinstein, VKDSt Hasso-Rhenania Mainz , CV connection Rheno-Palatia Breslau to Mainz and KDStV Asgard. In Freiburg he initially lived at Erbprinzenstraße 16. In the winter semester of 1923 he moved to the University of Cologne , where he passed the first state examination in 1927.

From 1933 he was a city ​​councilor in his hometown. During the time of National Socialism he defended former central politicians and religious as a lawyer .

In his adopted home Rheingönheim , he was one of the founders of the CDU in 1945 . He soon became chairman of the preparatory constitutional commission for the new state of Rhineland-Palatinate , where he held various ministerial offices in the provisional government and in the first electoral term (May 18, 1947 to May 17, 1951) from 1946:

  • from December 3, 1946: Minister of Justice in the provisional state government of Prime Minister Wilhelm Boden
  • in the interim cabinet from June 13, 1947: Minister for Justice and Culture
  • from July 9, 1947 in the Peter Altmeier cabinet : Minister for Justice, Education and Culture
  • from December 14, 1949 in the Peter Altmeier cabinet: Minister for Justice, Education and Culture

As early as 1946, Süsterhenn advocated a federalism based on strong state rights, but open to a federation of German states . His views, he led from a natural law founded principle of subsidiarity from.

The constitutional lawyer Adolf Süsterhenn already represented his conception of natural law , influenced by ancient thinkers and Catholic church scholars, in the Constitutional Convention on Herrenchiemsee and from September 1948 in the Parliamentary Council in Bonn , where he became vice-head of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group. The “responsibility before God” in the preamble of the Basic Law , the commitment to a strong position of the Federal Constitutional Court and the presumption of competence in favor of the states go back to his commitment. Süsterhenn understood the constitution as an act of intellectual confrontation with the previous injustice regime. He wanted to set limits to the omnipotence of the state. For him, the binding of state power to fundamental rights was decisive. So that these postulates did not remain non-binding clauses in the program, it was important for him to strengthen the judicial power, in which he saw a conservative, protective element. The special achievement of Adolf Süsterhenn was to create additional institutions and procedures that enabled the constitutional binding of the state powers to be enforced . These include effective administrative jurisdiction and the establishment of a constitutional jurisdiction as an effective guardian of the constitution. Despite his Christian character, he was an advocate of the death penalty . Süsterhenn claimed that the death penalty was necessary "in the service of justice".

A serious car accident on May 5, 1949 prevented him from taking part in the final vote of the Parliamentary Council on May 8, 1949, in which the majority of the council decided to abolish the death penalty.

He had to give up his ministerial offices in Mainz due to the consequences of the accident; After the state elections in 1951, he decided not to be reappointed to the state government.

From 1951 to 1961, Süsterhenn was President of the Constitutional Court and the Higher Administrative Court of Rhineland-Palatinate, and from 1951 he was an honorary professor at the University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer . From 1954 to 1974 he was active as a member of the European Commission for Human Rights in Strasbourg and as a member of the Assembly of the Western European Union and the NATO Parliamentary Conference and from 1961 to 1965 as a member of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe . He belonged to the environment of the Occidental Academy .

In 1961, however, Süsterhenn returned to politics. He was a member of the Bundestag until 1969. Süsterhenn caused a sensation in 1965 with the clean screen campaign he helped initiate , with which, in his opinion, he wanted to ban immoral things from the cinema.

In May 1965 he applied to change the Basic Law. The constitutional provision “Art and science, research and teaching are free” should be supplemented by the passage that this freedom only applies “within the framework of the general moral order”. About two thirds of the CDU / CSU MPs in the Bundestag supported this request. However, the leading party members lacked support, while the FDP and SPD resolutely opposed an amendment to the Basic Law. In an interview in the magazine Der Spiegel on May 19, 1965 under the title Threat of a dictatorship of indecency? he referred to the " healthy popular feeling ".

In the CDU / CSU parliamentary group , he was one of the opponents of Federal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard , whom he accused of neglecting Franco-German relations.

In 1973 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Trier Theological Faculty .

Süsterhenn died on November 24, 1974 in Koblenz and was buried in the cemetery in the Horchheim district where he lived for years. His estate is administered in the Koblenz State Main Archive.

Publications

  • Writings on natural, state and constitutional law. Edited by Peter Bucher. V. Hase & Koehler Verlag, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-7758-1246-6 ( publications of the commission of the state parliament for the history of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. 16).
  • The breakthrough of natural law in German constitutional legislation after 1945. In: Hermann Conrad / Heinrich Kipp (Hrsg.): Contemporary problems of law. Contributions to constitutional, church and international law as well as to legal philosophy. Vol. 1. Paderborn 1950, pp. 43-52.
  • Corporate freedom and abuse control: a constitutional investigation to amend the law of companies dominating the market (Sections 22–24 of the Act against Restraints of Competition). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1965.
  • The supranational protection of human rights in Europe. Athenäum-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1962 ( Democratic existence today. 6).
  • Federal order. Rhenania printing and publishing company, Koblenz 1961.
  • The intellectual-historical location of the Christian-Democratic and Christian-Social Union , in: Seidel, Hanns: Weltanschauung und Politik. A contribution to understanding the Christian Social Union in Bavaria. 2nd edition Munich 1961, pp. 27-57.
  • The spiritual foundations of NATO. State and Society Publishing House, Bonn 1960.
  • Christian spirit in the European Community. Association of Catholic Entrepreneurs, Cologne 1953.
  • Adolf Süsterhenn, Hans Schäfer: Commentary on the constitution for Rhineland-Palatinate, taking into account the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. Humanitas-Verlag, Koblenz 1950.
  • The natural law foundations of international cooperation. UNA European Publishing Company, Wiesbaden 1949.
  • Adolf Süsterhenn, Vinzenz Rüfner: We Christians and the renewal of state life. Bamberg publishing house, Bamberg 1948 ( Small general writings on philosophy, theology and history. H. 12/13).

literature

  • Walter Henkels : 99 Bonn heads , reviewed and supplemented edition, Fischer-Bücherei, Frankfurt am Main 1965, pp. 255ff.
  • Christoph von Hehl: Adolf Süsterhenn (1905–1974). Constitutional father, ideological politician, federalist. Droste, Düsseldorf 2012 (Research and Sources on Contemporary History, Volume 62), ISBN 978-3-7700-1913-7 .
  • Winfried Baumgart : Adolf Süsterhenn (1905–1974). In: Contemporary history in life pictures. Ed. by Jürgen Aretz , Rudolf Morsey and Anton Rauscher. Volume 6. Mainz 1984, pp. 189-199, pp. 276-277.
  • Helmut Mathy : The portrait - Adolf Süsterhenn (1905–1974). In: History in the West. 3: 203-217 (1988).
  • Helmut Mathy: "To secure human freedom and dignity ...". Adolf Süsterhenn (1905–1974), the "father" of the Rhineland-Palatinate constitution , in: Mainzer Zeitschrift. Middle Rhine Yearbook for Archeology, Art and History 83 (1988), pp. 193–232.
  • Rudolf Uertz: Adolf Süsterhenn (1905–1974) , in: Letter, Günter / Kleinmann, Hans-Otto (ed.): In responsibility before God and people. Christian Democrats in the Parliamentary Council 1948/49 . Freiburg / Breisgau u. a. 2008, pp. 355-364.
  • Gerhard Hirscher: The Federal Thought in the Bonn Basic Law: Adolf Süsterhenn's constitutional concepts and their implementation in the years 1945 to 1949 , in: Politische Studien, Sonderheft 1 (1989), pp. 27–44.
  • Burkhard van Schewick: The Catholic Church and the emergence of the constitutions in West Germany 1945-1950 (publication of the commission for contemporary history, series B: 30). Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1980, ISBN 3-7867-0815-0 .
  • Peter Brommer: Church and Constitution. On the Rhineland-Palatinate draft constitution of Süsterhenn from 1946 , in: Yearbook for West German State History 16 (1990), pp. 429-519.
  • Josef Bordat : Eternal in the Provisional: The Basic Law in the Light of Christian Faith , March 2019, ISBN 978-3-942605-08-3 .

See also

Cabinet Floor I - Cabinet Floor II - Cabinet Altmeier I

Web links

Commons : Adolf Süsterhenn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Uertz: Portrait of Adolf Süsterhenn. (PDF) Konrad Adenauer Foundation, accessed on February 19, 2019 . P. 355
  2. ↑ Christoph von Hehl : Adolf Süsterhenn (1905-1974) , Droste, Düsseldorf 2012, p. 28, note 8
  3. ^ Rudolf Uertz: Portrait of Adolf Süsterhenn. (PDF) Konrad Adenauer Foundation, accessed on February 19, 2019 . P. 355
  4. ^ Christoph von Hehl: Adolf Süsterhenn. P. 31.
  5. ↑ Ibid.
  6. ^ Rudolf Uertz: Portrait of Adolf Süsterhenn. (PDF) Konrad Adenauer Foundation, accessed on February 19, 2019 . P. 355
  7. ↑ Axel Schildt : Between Occident and America: Studies on the West German Idea Landscape of the 1950s , Munich 1999, p. 45f google-online
  8. ↑ Jürgen Kniep: No youth approval! , Pp. 140-141
  9. ↑ Is a dictatorship threatening indecency? , Interview with Erich Naumann and Rolf Becker, In: Der Spiegel , issue 21/1965 from May 19, 1965, seen May 20, 2012
  10. ↑ Clean canvas: Bells rung , In: Der Spiegel , issue 21/1965 of May 19, 1965, seen May 20, 2012
  11. ^ Rudolf Uertz: Portrait of Adolf Süsterhenn. (PDF) Konrad Adenauer Foundation, accessed on February 19, 2019 . P. 364
personal data
SURNAME Süsterhenn, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CDU), Member of the Bundestag, Member of the Bundestag, Minister, Lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1974
Place of death Koblenz