Günther Küchenhoff

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Günther Küchenhoff (born August 21, 1907 in Breslau ; † February 13, 1983 in Würzburg ) was a German legal scholar. He is considered a pioneer of space law .

Life

Küchenhoff attended elementary school from 1913 , received private lessons and attended the Sankt Elisabeth-Gymnasium , where he graduated from high school in 1925. He then studied law , philosophy and economics at the University of Wroclaw . In September 1928 he passed the first state law examination (later also the second). On August 1, 1929, he received his doctorate with Hans Helfritz with summa cum laude. From 1934 he was a faculty assistant at the law faculty of the University of Wroclaw.

According to a résumé presumably dated from February 1940, Küchenhoff, who describes himself as hitherto unpolitical, “immediately joined the NSDAP ” after the National Socialist “ seizure of power ”.

In 1934 the treatise National Community State , People's Law and People's Jurisprudence also appeared , in which he demanded, among other things, a tough crackdown on the part of the Nazi state: "Against the lawbreaker, the public enemy and enemy of the national community , there is only one thing in terms of punishment and penal execution : powerful severity and if necessary complete annihilation ... ". In addition, he focused entirely on a racist understanding of law: "The basic principle of law [is] the racially conditioned legal conscience of the people ."

In 1934, Küchenhoff was also appointed district judge and district judge . In 1936 he worked as an assistant judge at the Higher Regional Court in Breslau .

In the book Die Rechtsentwicklung der Jahre 1933-1935 / 36 (de Gruyter, Berlin & Leipzig 1937) published by Küchenhoff together with Erich Volkmar and Alexander Elster in 1937 , which is a supplement to the seven-volume handbook of jurisprudence (1926-1931 ) acted, wrote Küchenhoff on the newly listed legal terms “ Führer ”, “Führergrundsatz”, “Führertum” among other things: “Where the leader of the national community judges, it speaks right itself. (…) When it comes to the right to life of the people themselves, the Führer is responsible for the fate of the people and therefore also his judge ”. Furthermore, the Führer is responsible “to his conscience and thus to the people and their selection in the NSDAP”, although this does not mean “that the people can hold the Führer accountable in any concrete way”. The font was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the GDR .

On December 19, 1939, Küchenhoff completed his habilitation. He held his public teaching rehearsal on the subjects of "Legislators and legislative procedures in the Third Reich", "Municipal code and municipality organization according to the German municipal code of January 30, 1935" and "Judicial independence and civil service status of the judge in the Third Reich". In the same year he was appointed to the higher regional judge and lecturer for constitutional and international law in Breslau. From November 1942 to February 1943 he was at the Higher Regional Court in Stettin . In 1943 he took over a professorship at the University of Greifswald .

After being captured by the Soviets and being expelled towards the end of the Second World War , Küchenhoff began working as a lawyer in professional medical organizations from 1949 . From 1951 he worked as a lawyer in Werl . On November 1, 1955, he took over a chair at the University of Würzburg as acting representative , where he became a full professor on February 1, 1956. In 1973 a weak heart became noticeable. He retired on October 1, 1975, but Küchenhoff took over a professorship until 1976.

In his legal history work on jurisprudence at the University of Wroclaw, Thomas Ditt calls Küchenhoff's change after 1945 "[b] izarr" and quotes from his natural law and love law (1962): "God's meaning is love. And love is the meaning of the world. Shouldn't the law then also be affected by this meaning of the world? ”.

Pioneer of space law

When the development of space began in 1957 with the Russian satellite Sputnik 1 , it was Günther Küchenhoff who announced space law as a new legal discipline. Who is liable for the damage if a satellite falls to earth? Can a nation's satellite fly over all other countries? Where does the airspace end and where does the - at that time still unlawful - space begin ? Küchenhoff was the first to raise these and other questions. Today, Küchenhoff is considered a German pioneer of space law.

Honors

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Gerhard Köbler: Who was who in German law , p. 420 ( http://www.koeblergerhard.de/juristen/tot/totkSeite420.html ).
  2. ↑ a b Quoted by Thomas Ditt: "Shock Troop Faculty Breslau". Jurisprudence in the "Frontier Region of Silesia" 1933 - 1945 . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2011, p. 208. FN. 34.
  3. ^ Complete quote from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 346.
  4. ↑ Benjamin Lahusen: “At any price. About Carl Schmitt and the justification of the Röhm murders ”, in: Lettre International No. 85 (2009), pp. 83-87
  5. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-q.html
  6. ↑ Ditt 2011, p. 208 and there FN. 36.
  7. ↑ a b 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. 346.
  8. ↑ Ditt 2011, p. 271, see also FN there. 22nd
personal data
SURNAME Küchenhoff, Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German legal scholar
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1983
Place of death Wurzburg