Erich Kaufmann (lawyer)

Erich Kaufmann at the Annual General Meeting of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (1931)

Erich Kaufmann (born September 21, 1880 in Demmin ; † November 11, 1972 in Heidelberg ) was a lawyer who was one of the leading constitutional and international law experts of the Weimar period and the early Federal Republic. In the methodological dispute of the Weimar constitutional doctrine, the lawyer took a position against positivist neo-Kantianism . Kaufmann was an advocate of classical natural law and a proponent of an ontological and metaphysical approach to law. During the time of National Socialism , Kaufmann was persecuted as a "Jew" because of his origins from a family of Jewish faith. His competitor, law professor Carl Schmitt , was particularly active . Kaufmann lost his professional existence and had to flee abroad in 1938.

life and work

Kaufmann attended the French grammar school in Berlin and initially pursued the goal of studying literary history and philosophy. However, he switched to law studies and spent his studies in Heidelberg and Freiburg, among others with Georg Jellinek . His doctorate in Halle (1906) was also shaped by the latter's academic style , dealing primarily with the work of Friedrich Julius Stahl , which was initially announced as the prelude to an unfinished three-volume work.

In 1908, Kaufmann completed his habilitation in Kiel on a comparative law topic. In 1911 his most misunderstood work followed on the clausula rebus sic stantibus in international law , which was often interpreted in the sense of a cynical power positivism. Kaufmann became an associate professor in Kiel in 1912 and then a full professor in Königsberg in 1913 . In his concise dictionary article on administrative law , he turned against Otto Mayer 's French-influenced understanding of this discipline.

During World War I , Kaufmann served as a Bavarian artillery officer at the front and was seriously wounded. In 1917 he was appointed to Berlin, but moved to Bonn in 1920 . After he had fundamentally criticized the Neo-Kantian legal philosophy in a partly polemical work in 1921 , he turned mainly to practice. Kaufmann served as an advisor to the Foreign Office, initially in relations with the Eastern European countries, then also in connection with the Dawes Plan . He also represented the German Reich , the Free City of Danzig and the Republic of Austria before the Permanent International Court of Justice in The Hague. In 1927 Kaufmann returned to Berlin and became an honorary professor at the university. In 1933 he became a full professor.

After the so-called seizure of power , the National Socialists began to persecute Erich Kaufmann because of his Jewish origins. He and his wife were considered Jews, although both were baptized Protestants. The National Socialist law professor Carl Schmitt drove his colleague out of the Berlin University. Schmitt achieved the 'exemption' as honorary professor and prevented a further teaching assignment, which Kaufmann was supposed to be granted as a result of a settlement with the Ministry of Education, with a denunciating letter to the Ministry of Education:
Prof. Kaufmann is undoubtedly a very unusual example of Jewish adaptation. He is a full Jew, but he has succeeded in hiding his Judaism, which is particularly irritating to some, from others with the greatest success and to conceal it by loudly professing Germanism ... For the German feeling, this is entirely based on concealment of descent and camouflage Existence difficult to understand. It must inevitably lead to morally impossible situations ... Every German student to whom such a man would be placed by the state as a teacher of law in the most important areas would either succumb to its art of camouflage or, if he sees through the camouflage, go mad about national socialism become …

Kaufmann was dismissed in 1934 with the help of the law for the restoration of the civil service , despite strong resistance . In the following years he succeeded in gathering a group of students in his house in Berlin-Nikolassee ("Nikolasseer Seminars"). After the Reichspogromnacht in 1938 he fled to Holland, where he hid during the Second World War . In the thirties he published the lectures at the Hague Academy for International Law from the summer of 1935, the Règles générales du Droit de la Paix, which is considered to be his most systematic work and the last great coherent exposition of the problems of state and law .

Kaufmann returned to Germany in 1946 and was full professor in Munich from 1947 until his retirement in 1950 . He was also director of the Institute for International Law and Dean of the Faculty of Law.

From 1950 to 1958 he served as an advisor to the Federal Chancellery and the Foreign Office and was honorary professor in Bonn. From 1949 to 1955 he was a member of the " Heidelberger Juristenkreis ", a lobby group that campaigned for an amnesty for Nazi criminals. He spent the last decade of his life in Heidelberg .

Kaufmann was the recipient of numerous honors, including two honorary doctorates from Kiel and Munich. He was a member of the Order Pour le Mérite for Science and the Arts , of which he was Chancellor from 1959 to 1963, as well as the holder of the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany with a star and shoulder ribbon . In 1960 he received the Harnack Medal from the Max Planck Society . Since 1951 he was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . The Heidelberg Academy of Sciences , he belonged since 1960 as a full member.

Erich Kaufmann is buried in the family grave of the Pankok family at the Auberg cemetery of the Saarn Evangelical Church in Mülheim an der Ruhr . He was married to Hedwig ("Hede") Kaufmann, the sister of Adolf Pankok and Otto Pankok . The marriage remained childless.

The grave of Erich Kaufmann and his wife Hedwig in the Pankok family grave in the Auberg cemetery in Mülheim an der Ruhr.

Fonts (selection)

• Studies on the state doctrine of the monarchical principle (introduction: the historical and philosophical foundations) . Hallesche Inaugural Dissertation, 1906.
• External violence and colonial violence in the United States of America. A comparative study of the foundations of American and German constitutional law , 1908.
• The essence of international law and the Clausula rebus sic stantibus. Legal philosophical study on the legal, state and contract concepts , 1911.
• Administration, administrative law (dictionary of German constitutional and administrative law) , edited by Stengel-Fleischmann, Vol. III, 1914.
• Bismarck's legacy in the imperial constitution , 1917.
• Critique of the Neo-Kantian legal philosophy. A Reflection on the Relationship Between Philosophy and Law , 1921.
• The problem of the popular will , 1931.
• Règles générales du Droit de la Paix (Recueil des Cours. Académie de Droit international, 1936), 1936.

The collected writings were presented in 1960 in three volumes.

literature

• Emanuele Castrucci: Tra organicismo e “legal idea”. Il pensiero giuridico di Erich Kaufmann , Giuffrè Verlag, Milan 1984.
• Manfred Friedrich : Erich Kaufmann . In: Der Staat 27 (1987), pp. 231–249.
• Stefan Hanke / Daniel Kachel: Erich Kaufmann . In: Mathias Schmoeckel (ed.): The lawyers of the University of Bonn in the “Third Reich” , Cologne et al. 2004 (= Rechtsgeschichtliche Schriften , 18), pp. 387–424.
• Tilmann Krach: Max Alsberg (1877-1933). The defender's criticism as a creative principle in establishing the truth . In: Helmut Heinrichs et al. (Ed.): German lawyers of Jewish origin. Munich 1993.
• Peter Lerche : Erich Kaufmann † , in: AöR 98 (1973), pp. 115–118.
• Hans Liermann:  businessman, Erich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 349 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Anna-Maria Countess von Lösch: The naked ghost. The law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval in 1933 . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-16-147245-4
• Hermann Mosler : Erich Kaufmann zum Gedächtnis , in: ZaöRV 32 (1972), p. 235 ff.
• Karl Josef Partsch : The legal advisor to the Foreign Office 1950–1958 , in: ZaöRV 30 (1970), p. 223 ff.
• Klaus Rennert : The "humanities direction" in constitutional law doctrine of the Weimar Republic. Studies on Erich Kaufmann, Günther Holstein and Rudolf Smend . Berlin 1987, also Diss., Univ. Freiburg, 1986. ISBN 3-428-06229-9
• Jochen Rozek : Erich Kaufmann (1880–1972). In: Peter Häberle , Michael Kilian , Heinrich Wolff (Eds.): Constitutional law teacher of the 20th century. Germany, Austria, Switzerland. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 201–217.
• Rudolf Smend : On Erich Kaufmann's scientific work , in: Festgabe für Erich Kaufmann . 1950, p. 391 ff.
• About law and justice. Festival ceremony for Erich Kaufmann on his 70th birthday, September 21, 1950 . Stuttgart, 1950.
• Philipp Glahé: The Heidelberg Circle of Jurists and Its Struggle against Allied Jurisdiction: Amnesty-Lobbyism and Impunity-Demands for National Socialist War Criminals (1949–1955) , in: Journal of the History of International Law (2019), Volume 21, p 1-44, publisher Brill / Nijhoff, Leiden, ISSN: 15718050-12340125.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted according to Anna-Maria Countess von Lösch: The naked spirit. The law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval in 1933 . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-16-147245-4 , p. 206 f.
2. ^ Tilmann Krach: Max Alsberg (1877-1933). The defender's criticism as a creative principle in establishing the truth. In: Helmut Heinrichs et al. (Ed.): German lawyers of Jewish origin. Munich 1993, p. 701 f.
3. ^ Philipp Glahé: The Heidelberg Circle of Jurists and Its Struggle against Allied Jurisdiction: Amnesty-Lobbyism and Impunity-Demands for National Socialist War Criminals (1949–1955) . In: in: Journal of the History of International Law (2019) . tape 21 . Brill / Nijhoff, Leiden, p. 1-44 .
4. ^ Erich Kaufmann Obituary by Hans Liermann at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF file).

Web links

• Literature by and about Erich Kaufmann in the catalog of the German National Library