Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz

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Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz, 1989

Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz (born June 18, 1929 in Göttingen ; † January 28, 2021 in Hanover ) was a German lawyer , politician ( SPD ) and NDR functionary. After a career as an administrative lawyer, he was director of the Funkhaus Hannover , from 1974 to 1976 minister of culture and from 1974 to 1981 member of the Lower Saxony state parliament . Mahrenholz was a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court from 1981 to 1994 , from 1987 as its vice-president.

Life

Mahrenholz was the son of the Protestant pastor and church musician Christhard Mahrenholz . From 1948 he studied theology , psychology and philosophy at the University of Göttingen , later law at the Universities of Tübingen and Göttingen. At these universities he became a member of the Christian student union Wingolf , from which he resigned in 1971. He received his doctorate in 1957 in Goettingen the Dr. jur. His dissertation on electoral equality in the parliamentary party state of the Federal Republic , supervised by Gerhard Leibholz , was rated cum laude .

In 1959 he became a speaker at the Church Law Institute of the EKD , which was then headed by Rudolf Smend . After a year he switched to a position as personal advisor to the Lower Saxony Prime Minister Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf ( SPD ). Various positions followed in state and local government, around 1962/63 in the Lower Saxony Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs and 1963-1965 as head of the building administration office of the state capital Hanover . The Lower Saxony state parliament elected Mahrenholz to the Broadcasting Council of North German Broadcasting (NDR) in 1963 , and from 1965 to 1970 he headed the NDR radio house in Hanover . After leaving the government, he worked as a lawyer from 1976.

Even after his time as a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court, Mahrenholz was an often sought-after interview partner ; the Deutschlandfunk website alone lists 32 interviews and conversations with him that have been available since 1999, particularly on constitutional and political issues.

Mahrenholz died at the end of January 2021 at the age of 91 in his house in Hanover's Heideviertel .

Political career

From 1970 the SPD member Mahrenholz was head of the Lower Saxony State Chancellery as State Secretary under Prime Minister Alfred Kubel . In the state elections in Lower Saxony in 1974 , he entered the state parliament and was then appointed minister of education in the social-liberal cabinet Kubel II . After Ernst Albrecht (CDU) was elected Prime Minister of Lower Saxony in February 1976, Mahrenholz left the government, but remained in the state parliament as an opposition member, was re-elected in 1978 and was a member of the state parliament until his election as constitutional judge.

Constitutional judge

In 1981 the Bundestag elected Mahrenholz as judge at the Federal Constitutional Court on the proposal of the SPD, where he succeeded Martin Hirsch . Until his retirement on March 24, 1994, he was a member of the second Senate, as its chairman he served since 1987, while he also held the office of Vice-President of the Federal Constitutional Court. Successor to his post was Jutta Limbach . During his work at the Federal Constitutional Court, Mahrenholz was instrumental in making decisions on imprisonment leave for life imprisonment , the stationing of medium-range missiles ( Pershing II ) in the Federal Republic, the right to conscientious objection , the control of the intelligence services by the Bundestag , the storage of chemical weapons , and positions of the non-attached MPs in the Bundestag , on the presumption of innocence , on the suspension of the remainder of a life sentence , on the termination of pregnancy and in the decision on the EU Treaty of Maastricht .

Other offices and functions

The Presidium of the German Section of the International Legal Commission elected Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz as its chairman in 1990.

From 1991 Mahrenholz was an honorary professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Frankfurt am Main .

From 1998 to 2003 Mahrenholz was President of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Society , which then appointed him honorary president. He also became president of the German-Israeli Lawyers Association . Since 2004 Mahrenholz has been an advisory board member of the Pro Justitia Foundation , which promotes research into legal facts.

Honors

On June 24, 2019, Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz was honored by Prime Minister Stephan Weil with the highest award in Lower Saxony, the Lower Saxony State Medal.

Publications

  • With Adolf Laufs et al. (Expert commission "Property Issues Baden" at the Ministry of Science, Research and Art Baden-Württemberg): The ownership of Baden cultural assets from the time of the monarchy , Stuttgart 2007 ( link to the digitized version of part of the report - criteria for property allocation and summary)
  • A kingdom becomes a province - on Hanover's fateful year 1866 . MatrixMedia Verlag, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-932313-46-2 .
  • It is the atmospheric that is communicated to children - youth in Hanover . In: Ingrid Dietsch (ed.): Conversations from the war - Collected experiences and insights . Wartburg-Verlag, Weimar 2013, ISBN 978-3-86160-414-3 , p. 63 ff . (204 pp.).

literature

  • Rita Schoeneberg: Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz , in this: 13 out of 500,000 people from Hanover , Hamburg: Urban-Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-924562-04-0 , pp. 46-55

Web links

Commons : Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fatina Keilani: Minister, Funkhausdirektor, constitutional lawyer Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz died at the age of 91. . In: Der Tagesspiegel , January 31, 2021. Accessed February 1, 2021.
  2. ↑ a b Press release of the Federal Constitutional Court of June 9, 2009 , accessed on February 1, 2021
  3. ↑ a b Kerstin Migas: Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz, judge at the Federal Constitutional Court. In: Bernhard Großfeld, Herbert Roth: Constitutional judge. Finding law at the US Supreme Court and the Federal Constitutional Court. Lit Verlag, Münster 1995, p. 403.
  4. ^ "Smart contender for public broadcasting" - NDR director marble on the 90th birthday of Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz. Press release by Norddeutscher Rundfunk, June 18, 2019.
  5. ↑ List at Deutschlandfunk.de , accessed on February 1, 2021
  6. ↑ Michael B. Berger: Intellectual and down-to-earth: Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz is dead ... In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung of February 1, 2021, p. 5
  7. ↑ BVerfGE 64, 261
  8. ↑ BVerfGE 68, 1
  9. ↑ BVerfGE 69, 1
  10. ↑ BVerfGE 70, 324
  11. ↑ BVerfGE 77, 170
  12. ↑ BVerfGE 80, 188
  13. ↑ BVerfGE 82, 106
  14. ↑ BVerfGE 86, 288
  15. ↑ BVerfGE 88, 203
  16. ↑ BVerfGE 89, 155
  17. ↑ Prof. Dr. Ernst Gottfried Mahrenholz / Career ( memento from October 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on the raplaw.de page , last accessed on September 22, 2012
  18. ↑ Foundation Advisory Board on the Pro Justitia Foundation website , accessed on February 1, 2021
  19. ↑ Press release of the Lower Saxony State Chancellery from June 24, 2019 ( recognition for an outstanding lawyer, wording of the press release ), accessed on June 30, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Mahrenholz, Ernst Gottfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, politician (SPD) and NDR functionary, judge at the BVerfG
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 2021
Place of death Hanover