Eduard Kern

This article deals with the lawyer Eduard Kern; for the politician of the same name, see Eduard Kern (politician) .

Eduard Hugo Robert Otto Kern (born October 13, 1887 in Stuttgart ; † March 6, 1972 in Tübingen ) was a German lawyer and university professor.

Life

Kern was born the son of the officer Hugo von Kern and his wife Freiin Josephine von Scholley. Hugo von Kern had received his title of nobility as a personal nobility together with the Knight's Cross of the Württemberg Military Merit Order . Hans-Heinrich Jescheck counts the sculptor Leonhard Kern among the family's ancestors.

Kern attended elementary school in Tübingen and elementary school in Ellwangen (Jagst) . After attending the humanistic grammar school there , Kern studied law in Tübingen and Leipzig from 1905 to 1910 . During his studies he joined the student association AV Igel Tübingen . After completion of the higher judicial exam in the spring of 1910 was core to 1913 as a trainee at the Royal District Court Ellwangen worked and received his doctorate in 1912 in Tübingen Dr. jur.

From 1910 to 1914, Kern served as a one-year volunteer and signed up as a war volunteer when the First World War broke out . He was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve in 1915 and subsequently received the Iron Cross in classes I and II. In 1919 , Kern completed his habilitation with Ernst von Beling in Munich and taught in the following winter semester as a private lecturer. In 1920 he married Eugenie Renz (born January 25, 1898). The daughter Effie was born on February 17, 1926.

In the summer semester of 1920 he took over a professorship in Cologne and in October became a regular associate professor in Freiburg im Breisgau and from April 1923 a full professor of criminal and procedural law.

In April 1934, Kern was asked to take over the office of university rector after the failure of the attempt to make Freiburg professors such as Hans Mortensen rector who were closer to National Socialism than the liberal and emphatically constitutional core. Another reason for his appointment was the expectation that Kern would submit to the National Socialists more obediently than his predecessor Martin Heidegger . In his inaugural address on May 29, 1934, Kern spoke of educating students to be good Germans, of bringing the university closer to the people, and of wanting to focus on the principle of achievement. At the same time he tried to combine the values ​​of the empire with those of National Socialism, since the majority of the professors were more nationalistic like Kern. During the rectorate he did not put up with every advance of the National Socialists and fought several conflicts with their organizations, including the junior teachers, a sub-organization of the Nazi teachers' association and the German student body . Despite the guidelines issued on April 1, 1935 for the standardization of the university administration , Kern succeeded in implementing his initially rejected proposals for the deaneries and the vice-rectorate. In the course of his concern for the unity of the university he succeeded u. a. to settle the dispute between Adolf Lampe and Erik Wolf , which had previously led to Heidegger's resignation. He did not take action against the removal of the lawyer Fritz Pringsheim , who was recorded as a " full Jew " by the Civil Service Act , and saw that he could not be held for teaching at the university as a "non-Aryan" in the long term. However, he asked to be assigned a research assignment. According to his biographer Bernd Grün, Kern's anti-Semitic remarks have not been passed down. On 18 February 1935, the core was under Rector proposal u. a. prevail against Theodor Mayer , who had been favored by the Nazi Lecturer Association . At the beginning of April 1935, the Freiburg Mayor Franz Kerber complained to the Ministry of Culture that the university senate under Kern had refused to revoke the honorary doctorate from SPD member Adam Remmele and attributed this to the "influences of the theological faculty and the Stahlhelm". In November 1934, Kern left it to the Ministry to decide on the revocation. A few days after Kerber's letter of complaint, the medical faculty withdrew Remmele the title he had acquired for his commitment to the new buildings of the Freiburg University Hospital .

In July 1935, at the beginning of his second term in office, Kern was offered a position in Tübingen, which he accepted on October 11, 1935. In Tübingen he succeeded August Schoetensack . At the same time, he was a full member and speaker for the National Socialist Legal Guardian Association and was named as chairman for social law formation in the National Socialist Lecturer Association. In the latter office it is not certain whether he has ever given lectures on what u. a. is because he was in the Wehrmacht when the chairman list with his name was created. He had participated in reserve exercises in 1936 and 1938 before he was drafted on August 26, 1939. As a captain, company commander and, most recently, battalion leader, he was later deployed on the Eastern Front and retired from service in December 1941 after suffering several minor wounds near Vyazma in October 1941 . Kern received u. a. Clasps to his honor crosses of the world war as well as the silver wound badge . He gave several lectures on his war experiences, which also included war crimes, such as the execution of legally unrelated death sentences against Poles. In April 1944 he also wrote the memorandum The development of the relationship between the administration of justice and administration since the middle of the 18th century , in which he criticized, among other things, the abolition of the separation of powers and demanded joint training for lawyers and administrative staff. According to Kern, the unpublished memorandum was sent to the Reich Ministry of Justice , which, however, apparently did not comment. He was later to use the memorandum to prove that, as a lawyer, he had not remained silent about the legal violations of National Socialism.

Towards the end of the war, Kern was committed to the reintegration of those returning from the war and chaired the Tübingen student union . A Volkssturm unit from Tübingen under his command , which was supposed to march to Rottenburg on April 18 or 19, 1945 to be deployed there, disbanded Kern on his own accord, according to an expert report by Otto Herding , and sent the people home.

After the end of the war, Kern had to answer to the university cleaning committees in Tübingen (French zone) and - due to his property there - to the court in Ellwangen (Ostalb) (American zone). The French occupation judiciary let him return to office after about four weeks. The proceedings in front of the Ellwang judging chamber dragged on much longer and required more expert opinions than the cleaning committees. These came from Walter Eucken , Joseph Sauer , Sigurd Janssen and Julius Merkl , among others , and ultimately led to Kern being classified as “relieved” here as well. The fact that Kern had helped Alex-Victor von Frankenberg and Ludwigsdorff to escape in the spring of 1945 when his "liquidation had become acute" also contributed significantly to this . However, the French occupying power froze Kern's assets, which he could only access again on November 18, 1946.

When the university reopened in the winter semester 1945/46, Kern was once again allowed to hold lectures as a full professor. In 1950/51 he was elected Dean of the Law Faculty. Since there was no successor, Kern could not retire as planned in 1952, but was in office until the end of the winter semester 1955/56. During this time he published several textbooks that were published and revised several times. Even after his retirement, in 1965, he published Das Seelenleben des Verbrechers, a volume that had emerged from a series of lectures. He also worked as a voluntary judge at courts in Freiburg and Tübingen.

Eduard Kern died on March 6, 1972, three years after his wife, in his house on the Österberg in Tübingen .

politics

Kern was a member of the Young Liberal Association in Ellwangen in 1913/14. After the First World War he was a member of the German Democratic Party (DDP) in 1919/20 . From 1933 to 1935 he was a member of the Stahlhelm . After Kern had been selected for a leading position in the Volkssturm district staff in autumn 1944, he was retroactively registered as a member of the NSDAP from 1940. After the Second World War, Kern joined the FDP , but towards the end of his life he had a more skeptical relationship with the party.

literature

• Bernd Grün: The rector as a leader? The University of Freiburg i. Br. From 1933 to 1945, Freiburg / Munich 2010, pp. 268–346. ISBN 978-3-495-49607-7
• Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 88.
• Eberhard Schmidhäuser: Eduard Kern. 1897–1972 in: Ferdinand Elsener (editor): Life pictures for the history of the Tübingen Faculty of Law , Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 978-3-16-939742-6 , p. 177 ff., Preview in Google book search
• International Biographical Archive (Munzinger Archive) 40/1962 of September 24, 1962

Individual evidence

1. ^ Schmidhäuser, p. 178
2. ↑ Green p. 271
3. ↑ Grün, p. 284 ff.
4. ↑ Green p. 294
5. ↑ Grün, p. 295
6. ↑ Grün, p. 306
7. ↑ Grün, p. 331
8. ↑ Grün, p. 333
9. ↑ ^{a b} Schmidhäuser, p. 182
10. ↑ Grün, p. 335 f.
11. ↑ Grün, p. 331 ff
12. ↑ Grün, pp. 336 and 634
13. ↑ Grün, p. 625 ff.
14. ↑ Grün, p. 638
15. ↑ Grün, p. 626 f.
16. ↑ Grün, p. 658 ff.

predecessor	Office	successor
Martin Heidegger	Rector of the University of Freiburg 1934–1936	Friedrich Metz