Erich Genzmer

Erich Stephan Hermann Genzmer (born July 22, 1893 in Marienwerder , † August 19, 1970 in Munich ) was a German legal scholar with a focus on legal history .

Live and act

Erich Genzmer came from a family of lawyers. The father Stephan Genzmer was a judge and administrative lawyer, the older brother Felix Genzmer later became a university lecturer and legal historian. Erich Genzmer graduated from high school in Berlin . In 1911/12 he studied law at the University of Lausanne , where he acquired very good French language skills. He continued his studies in Berlin and graduated in 1914 with the first state examination. Due to the First World War , he had to interrupt his legal traineeship: from 1915 to 1917 he worked as assistant to the governor general for the civil administration of Belgium, then until the end of the war as civil commissioner for the Bastogne district .

After the end of the war he continued his legal clerkship in Stettin , but did not finish it. Instead, he moved to Berlin to work scientifically with the lawyer Emil Seckel . After completing his doctorate, he completed his habilitation here in 1922. In the same year he went to the University of Königsberg as a private lecturer , where he was given an associate's position a little later. In 1927 he wrote an obituary for Seckel, who died in 1924, which was reprinted in 1979. In 1934 he was appointed full professor at the Königsberg University.

From 1935 to 1939 Genzmer taught at the University of Frankfurt am Main and in the meantime as a visiting professor in Rome. In 1939/40 he had a teaching position at the University of Leipzig . In 1940 he was appointed full professor of Roman and civil law at the University of Hamburg as the successor to Hans Reichel . Here he taught until his retirement in 1965. As acting director of the seminar for civil law and general jurisprudence at the time, he headed the seminar for commercial and shipping law as deputy director from 1941. As a visiting professor he taught at the Leipzig University in 1944/45 and at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1947.

Genzmer primarily researched the reception of Roman law during the Middle Ages. He attached great importance to strictly separating the pure “Roman legal history” from its long-term, interesting effect. He was also considered an internationally respected comparator . He earned his reputation not with monographs, but more with editions and the accompanying comparative-methodological concepts. In 1937 he participated with The ancient foundations of the doctrine of the just price and the laesio enormis at the 2nd International Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law.

Even though he belonged to the National Socialist People's Welfare Association and the National Socialist Lawyers' Association , Genzmer, unlike his brother, did not clearly support the National Socialists during the Nazi era . After his apartment was destroyed by bombs during Operation Gomorrah , he was accommodated in a hotel in Ludwigslust , where he lived until the end of the war. He then returned to an assigned apartment in Hamburg as dean of the law and political science faculty. He himself wrote in a denazification form in 1945 that he had deliberately refused a call from the radical Academy for German Law in Munich . His former student Helmut Coing confirmed that Genzmer had completely rejected National Socialist ideas.

His colleague Hans Möller immediately accepted Genzmer into the committee that wanted to found the Christian Democratic Party (CDP). Genzmer did not take part in the founding meeting, but headed the list of board members who applied for admission on October 12, 1945. One of the deciding factors for this was probably that he was a Protestant. In the meantime, Genzmer was considered a suitable candidate for the position of Hamburg Senator for Culture, for which, however, he would have had to forego his official status. Ascan Klée Gobert finally got the position , also because, unlike Genzmer, he was not yet a CDP member, but was linked to the party through his position.

Together with Philipp Möhring and Walther Fischer, Genzmer published Law and Law from 1947 to 1949 . These were legal clauses that came into force in Germany after May 8, 1945. He also wrote many articles for the Romance department of the Savigny Foundation's journal for legal history . The paper dedicated the 80th volume to him on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1963.

Genzmer belonged to numerous foreign academies, especially in countries where Romance languages ​​were spoken.

literature

• Helmut Stubbe da Luz : Genzmer, Erich . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 128-129 .

Web links

• Publications by Erich Genzmer in the Opac der Regesta Imperii
• Erich Genzmer obituary at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file)