Arthur Wegner

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Arthur Otto Rudolf Wegner (born February 25, 1900 in Berlin ; † June 29, 1989 in Halle ) was a German lawyer and professor at the universities in Breslau , Halle / Saale until 1937 and after returning from emigration in Great Britain or internment in Canada in 1945 he taught in Hamburg, Kiel and Münster - there he was director of the Institute for Canon Law from 1958 - and in 1963, after moving to the GDR, he became a law professor at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg .

Life

Arthur Wegner was born as the son of the Berlin carpenter and later master carpenter Robert Wegner (1875-1942) and his wife Auguste Wegner († 1933). His father came from Pomerania on the Baltic coast and his mother from Lower Silesia. He came from a "deeply pious, poor family" and grew up in the north and east of Berlin. He was confirmed in the Segenskirche in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg by the pastor Richard Wieck (* 1869), who was then employed there and came from a master carpenter's household in Potsdam . Before Wegner became a soldier in 1918, he attended the Friedrichswerder high school in Berlin. Arthur Wegner got his Abitur in 1919 after returning from the First World War , where he did military service in an artillery regiment from June to December 1918.

Studies and PhD

He studied law in Berlin at what was then Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität and received his doctorate in 1923 in Breslau with a political and legal dissertation under the title On High Treason. Historical and dogmatic presentation of the principles of the state jus puniendi against the attacks on the state constitution . In place of Eberhard Schmidt , who had been appointed to the University of Breslau , he took over his assistant position in Berlin with Eduard Kohlrausch .

Teaching at universities

In 1924 Wegner became a private lecturer at the University of Hamburg , after having previously worked as an assistant at the Institute for Criminal Investigation at the University of Berlin . In 1926 he was appointed full professor of criminal law and criminal procedure law at the University of Wroclaw . Before that he had successfully passed the habilitation examination in Hamburg . In 1934 he was transferred to the University of Halle and moved to Döhlau .

Because of his Jewish wife Anna Edith (1906–1963), née Prausnitz, whom he married as a Protestant baptized in 1927, he was removed from his position as a law professor at the University of Halle by the Nazi rulers in 1937 . His wife - daughter of the medical doctor Carl Prausnitz (1876–1963), who emigrated in 1933 - also fled to Great Britain with their daughter Anna Elisabeth (1928–1947). On the basis of Section 6 of the Law on Civil Servants , Wegner was formally retired on June 11, 1937 with effect from September 30 of the same year. Subsequently, the Gestapo arrested him on the basis of denunciations and he was charged with the so-called treachery law . In the criminal proceedings, his defense lawyers were Eduard Kohlrausch and Helmuth James Graf von Moltke . He moved from Halle to Potsdam . In order to reorient himself professionally, he attended the seminar of the Berlin Mission from there and intended to work as a university professor and at the same time become an ordained missionary with the support of Mission Director Siegfried Knak at the Madras Christian College in Tambaram , South India, founded in 1837 . After all proceedings had been discontinued, Wegner emigrated from his last residence in Potsdam to his family in England at the end of 1938 and stayed in Canada from 1940.

Internment in Canada

In his Canadian captivity in Toronto , where he was interned as a hostile foreigner , he worked in Christian camp communities. There he was able to fall back on his knowledge and experience as a member of the Confessing Church in Halle an der Saale, as a guest guest at the missionary seminar of the Berlin Mission Society under the direction of Siegfried Knak and as a student at the Theological College of the Anglican Church in Chichester .

Return to Germany

At the end of the Second World War he returned to Germany, while his wife and daughter stayed in England. He first worked in a Hamburg law firm. He then took on a substitute chair at the universities in Hamburg and Kiel . In 1946 he received a professorship for canon law, criminal law, international law and legal philosophy at the University of Münster , where he became director of the Institute for Canon Law in 1958. In 1959 Wegner accepted an invitation to a meeting of the National Council of the National Front in (East) Berlin. His political statements there were charged with disciplinary proceedings by the Westphalian minister of education.

Last place of residence in Halle (Saale)

In October 1959 he moved to the GDR and in 1961 demanded that the proceedings against him be closed in a letter to the Public Prosecutor Pottgießer from the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Hamm Higher Regional Court . As early as 1959, Wegner told the daily Neue Zeit, when asked about a possible change in his basic attitude, that he was by no means denying his conservative life work and that Christian faith was still at the center of his life. He was originally a Protestant Christian and converted to Catholicism in 1942. In July 1963, the then Dean of the Law Faculty of the University of Halle Reintanz judged him against the GDR government and pointed out that Wegner's creative period began in the Weimar Republic when a "conservative trait emerged in history." Wegner became a professor with a chair for Criminal law and history of criminal law at the law faculty of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg . At Christmas 1965 he wrote to the CDU chief in the GDR, Götting , in addition to wishes for Christmas, that in his "little life ... he was trying to realize the unity of the Catholic Christian faith and communism ".

Wegner continued to live in Halle (Saale) as a professor emeritus until his death at the age of 89. He found his final resting place in the St. Gertrauden cemetery .

Awards

Works (selection)

  • Criminal injustice, state injustice and international law. 1925.
  • Youth Law , 1929, Reprint 2012, ISBN 3-11-151642-3 .
  • About the two roots of self-government and their value for the administration of criminal justice. 1930.
  • with Heinrich Pohl: Cases and questions of international law. 1930.
  • About recognition in international law. 1931.
  • Introduction to Law. Volume 1. Structure of the law. 1931.
  • History of international law. [ Handbook of International Law; Volume 1, Division 3]. 1936.
  • Introduction to Law. 1948; 2nd, enlarged and improved edition.
  • Criminal law. General part. 1951, DNB 455410232 .
  • The position of the individual in current international law. 1953.
  • The King of Prussia, issue 1. 1955, DNB 455410208 .
  • The King of Prussia, issue 2. 1958, DNB 455410224 .
  • Servant. Narrative. 1958, DNB 455410186 .
  • To the students! 1959, DNB 576895296 .
  • Paths in the history of criminal law . In: Willi Büchner-Uhder / Hans Spiller et al. (Red.): State - Law - Economy. Contributions by the law faculty of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg , "Sonderheft der Wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift", Halle (Saale) 1964, pp. 217–229; DNB 458790702 .

literature

  • Ditt, Thomas: "Stosstruppfakultät Breslau". Law in the "Grenzland Schlesien" 1933 - 1945 , Tübingen 2011, pp. 26 - 29; ISBN 978-3-16-150374-0
  • Breithaupt, Dirk: Legal Biography GDR , 1993, p. 537 f. [Wegner, Arthur]; DNB 940131013
  • Lieberwirth, Rolf: History of the law faculty of the University of Wittenberg after 1945. Facts and memories. Cologne / Munich 2008, pp. 18, 62, 71 f. [Wegner, A.]; ISBN 978-3-452-26840-2
  • Steveling, Lieselotte: Lawyers in Münster. A contribution to the history of the law and political science faculty of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster / Westf. , [Arthur Wegner], pp. 684 ff., Münster 1999; ISBN 3-8258-4084-0
  • Werner Schuder (Ed.): Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar 1966. Tenth edition. N – Z and register. Berlin 1966, p. 2630 Wegner, Arthur.
  • Wegner, Arthur: From Münster to Halle . In: Günter Wirth (ed.): We live in the GDR , Union Verlag, Berlin 1963, pp. 131–142; DNB 455704910

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann-Josef Rupieper (ed.): Memories of the Martin Luther University 1945 to 1989. A discussion with contemporary witnesses. Halle (Saale) 1997, DNB 950961221 , p. 187.
  2. ^ Wegner, Arthur: From Münster to Halle . In: Günter Wirth (ed.): We live in the GDR , Union Verlag, Berlin 1963, pp. (131–142) ​​139; DNB 455704910
  3. ^ Arthur Wegner in the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland , July 2, 1959, p. 4.
  4. ↑ Fischer, Otto: Evangelical Pastor's Book for the Mark Brandenburg since the Reformation , Berlin 1941, Vol. II / 2, p. 958; DNB 365824267
  5. ^ Artur Wegner: About high treason. Historical and dogmatic presentation of the principles of the state jus puniendi [right to punish] against the attacks on the state constitution . Berlin 1923, DNB  361314744 .
  6. ^ Walter Wegner's curriculum vitae from 1937 in the archive of the Berliner Missionswerk , signature BMW 1/4369; Protection period: December 31, 2019
  7. ↑ Lüdke, Gerhard (ed.): Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar 1935 , Berlin / Leipzig, column 1499
  8. ↑ Walther, M./Breunung, L .: Biographical Handbook of the Emigration of German-Speaking Legal Scholars after 1933 , Berlin / Boston / Massachusetts 2012, p. 396; ISBN 3-11-025857-9
  9. ^ Michael Stolleis : Constitutional and Administrative Law Studies in West and East 1945–1990. [ History of Public Law in Germany, Volume 4.] Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63203-7 , p. 65, footnote 293.
  10. ^ Letter of January 3, 1939 from Ventnor on the British Isle of Wight to Mission Director Knak in the archive of the Berliner Missionswerk, signature BMW bmw 1/4369
  11. ↑ Walther, M./Breuung, L .: Biographical Handbook of the Emigration of German-Speaking Legal Scholars after 1933 , Berlin / Boston / Massachusetts 2012, p. 583 f .; ISBN 3-11-025857-9
  12. ^ A university professor lived in Potsdam. D. Dr. jur. Arthur Wegner at Schloßstraße 14
  13. ^ Wegner, Arthur: From Münster to Halle . In: Günter Wirth (ed.): We live in the GDR , Union Verlag, Berlin 1963, pp. (131–142) ​​134
  14. ^ Lieberwirth, Rolf : History of the Law Faculty of the University of Wittenberg after 1945. Facts and memories , 2nd, supplemented edition, Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg, Halle an der Saale 2010, p. 86; ISBN 978-3-86977-014-7
  15. ^ ADN notification, printed in Neue Zeit , March 9, 1961, p. 6
  16. ^ Neue Zeit , October 22, 1959, p. 2.
  17. ↑ Ditt, Thoma: Stosstruppfakultät Breslau , Tübingen 2011, p. 28 in connection with footnote 151: letter of July 8, 1963; ISBN 978-3-16-150374-0
  18. ^ Lapp, Peter Joachim : Gerald Götting - CDU chief in the GDR. A political biography , Aachen 2011, p. 164f .; ISBN 978-3-86933-051-8
  19. ↑ In Halle (Saale) he lived at Dessauer Straße 8, according to Werner Schuder (ed.): Kürschner's German Scholar Calendar. Ninth edition. O – Z, Berlin 1961, p. 2216 [Wegner, Arthur] 2019,
  20. ^ Lieberwirth, Rolf: History of the Law Faculty of the University of Wittenberg after 1945. Facts and memories , 2nd, supplemented edition, Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg, Halle an der Saale 2010, p. 97; ISBN 978-3-86977-014-7
  21. ^ Dirk Breithaupt: Legal Biography GDR. 1993, p. 539 f. [Wegner, Arthur]; DNB 940131013
  22. ^ Neue Zeit , December 8, 1963, p. 1.
  23. ↑ International lawyer and university professor (1883–1931)
personal data
SURNAME Wegner, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wegner, Arthur Otto Rudolph; Wegner, Otto Rudolf; Wegner, Arthur O. Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German criminal lawyer and international lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 1989
Place of death Hall