Friedrich Giese (legal scholar)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dietrich Kaspar Friedrich Giese (born August 17, 1882 in Eitorf , † April 25, 1958 in Wiesbaden ) was a German constitutional lawyer . Since his appointment in 1914 he taught continuously at the University of Frankfurt and cultivated a distant relationship to National Socialism , but was dismissed in 1946 because of a book on international law published in 1938 . He was one of the most respected constitutional lawyers of his time. His work and legal comments on the Weimar Imperial Constitution and the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany are now viewed as out of date due to their right-wing positivist views. His son Hans Giese was a sexologist.

Life

Until the First World War

Giese was born the son of a senior industrialist. He was still a child when the family moved to Bonn , where he attended the humanistic royal high school. After graduating from high school in 1901, he began studying law and economics , which he completed in 1904 with the legal trainee examination. With the international lawyer Philipp Zorn he received his doctorate in 1905 with a study on basic rights .

Giese had been in the Prussian judicial service since 1904 , at the same time was Zorn's assistant in his constitutional society from 1906 and passed the major state law examination in 1908. In 1910 he completed his habilitation under Ulrich Stutz on German church tax law and acquired the venia legendi for state , administrative , church and colonial law . In 1911 he took a chair at the University of Greifswald . In 1912 he left the judicial service as a court assessor to concentrate on his academic career. In the same year he was appointed full-time professor in the law faculty of the Royal Academy in Posen , which was founded in 1903 to “promote German intellectual life in the Eastern Marches” .

On August 14, 1914, Giese became a full professor of public law at the University of Frankfurt . His teaching activity was interrupted by his participation in the First World War. From 1915 to 1916 and from 1917 to 1918 Giese served as a Landsturmmann in the field artillery . After the Battle of Cambrai he was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class.

During the Weimar Republic

From 1931 Giese also taught at the Technical University of Darmstadt . From 1927 to 1933 he was director of studies at the administrative academies he founded in Frankfurt am Main , Wiesbaden and Saarbrücken . In this context, Giese also published a three-volume civil service college.

In addition to his academic teaching activities, Giese held positions at the Evangelical Consistory in Frankfurt am Main (1920 to 1925), at the presbytery of his Reformed parish in Frankfurt, at the Prussian Supply Court in Wiesbaden (1923 to 1925), at the Reich Disciplinary Chamber (1926 to 1935) and at the Reich Economics Office (Cartel Court Department) in Berlin (1931 to 1933). In 1923 he was commissioned to draft the constitution of the Frankfurt Evangelical Church. He was consistorial councilor of the Evangelical Church in Frankfurt am Main and served as a judge in arbitration proceedings in the property dispute between the Hessian Church and the Free State of Hesse . The active member of the DVP , who described itself as a “ Republican of Reason”, was one of the founders of the German Democratic State Party in 1930 .

During the National Socialism

Giese lost his part-time functions by August 1933. Politically, he held back. He mainly devoted himself to international, tax and foreign exchange law issues and, for example, worked out a commentary on the foreign exchange law (1939) together with Engelhard Niemann , the head of the foreign exchange office in Frankfurt am Main for many years . He became a member of the NSV and the NS-Rechtswahrerbund , but not the NSDAP . For this he was a supporting member of the SS from 1934 to 1940 . He was also a member of the Academy for German Law .

In 1938 Giese published together with his faculty assistant Eberhard Menzel the book Vom deutscher Voelkerrechtsrechte der Gegenwart , which was based on a seminar held by the two during the summer semester of 1937. In this book, the attempt was made to transfer the Nazi racial ideology of Hans FK Günther, for example, to international law. According to Giese, the content of this book was discussed several times between the two of them and Menzel “worked it out thoroughly and wrote it down in context”. Menzel is therefore considered to be primarily responsible for the content. The legal historians Michael Stolleis and Stefan Ruppert refer to a footnote by Gieses on page 147 of the book, with which Gieses carefully distanced himself from the content and confessed to classical international law.

post war period

Giese experienced the end of the war in 1945 while substituting a professor in Jena . After returning to Frankfurt, as an apparently unencumbered person, he issued dozens of Persil notes for friends and colleagues such as Hans Erich Feine , Ulrich Scheuner and Otto Koellreutter . On March 5, 1946, he was dismissed with immediate effect at the instigation of the American military administration . He was also forbidden from entering the university. The background was the Americans' concerns about the book on international law that they wrote together with Menzel. Giese then submitted an application for retirement , which was granted in October 1946.

Giese then resumed teaching at the new University of Mainz in the French occupation zone . He also taught at the State Academy for Administrative Sciences in Speyer and at the interpreting school in Germersheim . On his 70th birthday he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Frankfurt. On his 75th birthday he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

plant

Giese made a name for himself above all with the first commentary on the Weimar Imperial Constitution . Immediately after its adoption, he also submitted a commentary on the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany . Other foundational works by Giese were his Prussian legal history (1920), the German state and legal history (1947), the outline of the Reichsstaatsrechts as well as the German constitutional law (1930) and the general constitutional law (1948). He also authored many legal opinions on constitutional and administrative law issues. His work as an appraiser of the Free State of Prussia against the Reich in the process before the State Court for the German Reich after the so-called Prussian strike in 1932 was particularly well known. However, Giese limited himself in his report to legal considerations.

Giese is considered a legal positivist in the Paul Laband tradition . Similar to Richard Thoma and Gerhard Anschütz , he understood jurisprudence as an exact science that stood above the times, even when the constitutional requirements of the republic were removed. He had neither taken a position on the constitutional dispute over methods nor on political developments, but limited himself to rendering the law. Stefan Ruppert therefore characterizes Giese as a “technocrat of law”. During National Socialism, he adapted on a large scale and delimited on a small scale. However, his works are hardly known today.

Fonts

  • The fundamental rights. Wagner, Freiburg i. B., Bonn 1905.
  • The catholic order system according to the current Prussian state church law. In: Annals of the German Empire. 1908, no. 3-5.
  • German church tax law. Basics and principles of the ecclesiastical tax law valid in the German states for the Protestant regional churches and for the Catholic Church. Enke, Stuttgart 1910.
  • The official character of the directors and senior teachers at the higher educational establishments in Prussia that are not maintained by the state. Koch, Leipzig / Dresden 1911.
  • On the validity of the imperial constitution in the German colonies. In: The Bonn Faculty of Law for Paul Krüger celebrates his doctoral anniversary. Weidmann, Berlin 1911.
  • The constitution of the German Reich of August 11, 1919. Heymann, Berlin 1919.
  • Prussian legal history. Overview of the legal development of the Prussian monarchy and its parts of the country. A textbook for students. Gruyter, Berlin 1920.
  • Outline of the new state law. Röhrscheid, Bonn 1921.
  • Constitutional law. Gabler, Wiesbaden 1925.
  • Introduction to Law. In: The commercial college. Economics textbook. 3 (1927-1931) 1927, pp. 1-98.
  • and Ernst Cahn : Administrative Law. In: The commercial college. Economics textbook. 3 (1927-1931) 1927, pp. 1537-1655.
  • and Johannes Hosemann: The constitutions of the German Protestant regional churches. Taking into account the church and state import and implementation laws. Warneck, Berlin 1927.
  • and Johannes Hosemann (ed.): Sources of German Protestant Church Law. Collection of the church laws applicable in the German Protestant regional churches. Warneck, Berlin 1927.
  • (Ed.): The civil service college. Teaching and manual for university-level advanced training for German civil servants. Spaeth & Linde, Berlin, Vienna 1928.
  • and Johannes Hosemann: The Suffrage of the German Evangelical Regional Churches. Warneck, Berlin 1929.
  • German constitutional law. Spaeth & Linde, Berlin, Vienna 1930.
  • Old and new colonial law. In: Foreign Policy Studies. Festival ceremony for Otto Köbner. Edited by Wilhelm Arntz. Abroad u. Heimat Verl.-Aktienges., Stuttgart 1930, pp. 89-102.
  • The Empire of Weimar. In: Kölnische Zeitung , January 18, 1931.
  • and Friedrich List : Sources for Reich Citizenship. Constitution and Administration. Elsner, Berlin 1937.
  • and Eberhard Menzel : About German international law thinking of the present. Considerations following a seminar on international law at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Breidenstein, Frankfurt a. M. 1938.
  • and Engelhard Niemann: The Foreign Exchange Act [Law on Foreign Exchange Management]. (Reich law of December 12, 1938 with all supplementary regulations). A systematic commentary. Schmidt, Cologne 1939.
  • and Eberhard Menzel: German Warfare Law. Collection of the legal provisions applicable to German warfare. Heymann, Berlin 1940.
  • German state and legal history. Ground plan for the lectures German legal history and constitutional history of the modern age. Hirschgraben, Frankfurt a. M. 1947.
  • General constitutional law. Mohr, Tübingen 1948.
  • General administrative law. Mohr, Tübingen 1948.
  • Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany of May 23, 1949. , Commentator, Frankfurt a. M. 1949.
  • Reich Tax Code. In: The Economic Commentator , Part A: Tax Law. Commentator, Frankfurt a. M. 1949.
  • The administration. P. Schlösser, Braunschweig 1950.
  • Expropriation and Compensation then and Now. A constitutional study. Mohr, Tübingen 1950.
  • and Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte : The Concordat Process. 4 volumes, Isar-Verlag, Munich 1956–1958.
  • Establishing a state then and now. A comparative law construction attempt. In: Political and administrative contributions. 10 years University of Administrative Sciences Speyer. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1957, pp. 63-71.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefan Ruppert: "Strictly scientific and completely apolitical". The constitutional lawyer Friedrich Giese in the time of National Socialism. In: Jörn Kobes and Jan-Otmar Hesse (eds.): Frankfurt scientists between 1933 and 1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 3-8353-0258-2 , p. 189 f.
  2. ^ Ruppert, Friedrich Giese , p. 190; Michael Stolleis: Friedrich Giese. In: Bernhard Diestelkamp and Michael Stolleis (eds.): Lawyers at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1989, ISBN 978-3-7890-1832-9 , p. 126.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 182.
  4. ^ Friedrich Giese and Eberhard Menzel: From the German international legal thinking of the present. Considerations following a seminar on international law at the University of Frankfurt am Main. Breidenstein, Frankfurt a. M. 1938, p. 10.
  5. ^ Stolleis: Friedrich Giese , p. 125; Ruppert: Friedrich Giese , p. 198.
  6. ^ Stolleis: Friedrich Giese , p. 126; Ruppert: Friedrich Giese , p. 199 f.
  7. ↑ Ruppert: Friedrich Giese , p. 188 f.
  8. ↑ Stolleis: Friedrich Giese , p. 122 f.
  9. ^ Ruppert: Friedrich Giese , p. 195.
  10. ^ Ruppert: Friedrich Giese , p. 184 f.
personal data
SURNAME Giese, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Giese, Dietrich Kaspar Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German constitutional lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH 17th August 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Eitorf
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1958
Place of death Wiesbaden