Ernst Friesenhahn

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Ernst Friesenhahn (born December 26, 1901 in Oberhausen ; † August 5, 1984 in Bonn ) was a German constitutional and canon lawyer in Bonn.

life and work

Ernst Friesenhahn, who received his doctorate from his academic teacher Carl Schmitt in 1927 , but turned away from him because of his involvement in the Nazi regime, began and ended his academic career at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn. He had a special bond with the institute from the beginning of his assistantship at the Faculty of Law in 1925. Here he initially represented Johannes Heckel's chair as an adjunct professor from 1938 .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in 1933 he had his name registered as a candidate for the NSDAP and also joined the SA . But he resigned from the SA in 1934. In contrast to Schmitt and Heckel, Friesenhahn subsequently rejected the National Socialist regime , which he partly publicly stated. As a result of statements critical of the system, he was hindered in his scientific career. Nevertheless he was ao in 1938. Professor of Constitutional and Tax Law in Bonn. During the war years he even withdrew entirely from teaching for political reasons. He therefore received his first scheduled professorship only after the end of the Third Reich . On April 1, 1946, he became professor for constitutional, administrative and international law in Bonn. In this role he played a key role in the rebuilding of the faculty, which is why he still holds him in special honor. Just four years later, Friesenhahn was appointed rector. From 1951 to 1963 he was also a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. In 1970 he retired. In 1981 he received the Ring of Honor of the Görres Society .

Friesenhahn's life was concerned with constitutional and canon law issues. With his dissertation on the "Political Oath" written by Carl Schmitt , which is still one of the few systematic works on the subject today, he devoted himself to a question that was rapidly gaining political relevance. As a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court, he also kept a keen eye for functionally important but less systematic questions. So he coined the current content of the term " state management ", which would be due to parliament and the government "to the whole hand". Since the "state management" described by Friesenhahn for the first time is a central state-political function, the term is also used regularly in science in the sense of Friesenhahn. Another example of the orientation towards the "constitutional reality" is Friesenhahn's description of the political parties as "the real power bearers in free democracy". This is by no means a matter of course, as the Basic Law only explains in Art. 21: "The parties participate in the formation of the political will of the people." In the Weimar Republic, the role of the parties was not standardized at all. It is therefore the merit of Friesenhahn, together with Gerhard Leibholz , to have shaped the idea of ​​the Federal Republic as a party state or a party state democracy .

Since his student days, Friesenhahn was and remained an active member of the Catholic student associations Vandalia Bonn and Alamannia Tübingen in the KV .

Awards

Fonts (selection)

  • The political oath , 1928 (also dissertation).
  • Constitutional law teacher and constitution . Rector's speech on November 5, 1950, Krefeld 1950.
  • About the concept and types of jurisprudence with special consideration of state jurisdiction under the Basic Law and the West German state constitutions , 1950.
  • Parliament and Government in the Modern State , 1958.
  • The position of the political parties in the constitution , in: Negotiations of the 2nd German-Italian Congress of Jurists from 26. – 28. September 1968 in Berlin , Karlsruhe 1969, p. 1 ff.
  • Edited with Ulrich Scheuner : Handbook of the State Church Law of the Federal Republic of Germany , 2 volumes, Berlin 1974/75.
  • Federal Constitutional Court and Basic Law I / II. Ceremony on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Federal Constitutional Court , in association with Martin Drath , Ernst Friesenhahn, Wilhelm Karl Geck, Gerhard Leibholz , Gerd Roellecke , Hans F. Zacher and Konrad Zweigert ed. by Christian Starck , 1976.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 168.
  2. ↑ List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB).
personal data
SURNAME Friesenhahn, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German constitutional lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberhausen
DATE OF DEATH 5th August 1984
Place of death Bonn