Günther Krauss

Günther Krauss (sometimes Günther Krauss ; * January 2, 1911 ; † September 7, 1989 ) was a German legal scholar and notary who became known as a student of Carl Schmitt .

Life

Krauss studied law in Berlin from 1929 and moved to Cologne for the winter semester of 1931/1932 . At this time he was active in young revolutionary circles, published pseudonymously in several magazines in this context and expressed himself a.o. a. anti-Semitic in letters to Carl Schmitt. Schmitt became his academic teacher in Cologne and he followed this to Berlin after a semester in Cologne. There he did his doctorate summa cum laude with a thesis on the legal historian and canon lawyer Rudolph Sohm . The opponent in the public disputation was Otto von Schweinichen , a student of Schmitt and Carl August Emges . After completing his doctorate, Krauss moved back to Cologne and began his legal clerkship there . After the National Socialist seizure of power, Krauss became a member of the NSDAP and SA . From the spring of 1936 Krauss worked as a consultant and thus an employee of Schmitt in the Reich office of the National Socialist Lawyers' Association. Contrary to what is often stated in the literature, Krauss never worked as Schmitt's scientific assistant . When Schmitt, who had meanwhile been targeted by the security service , was heavily attacked in the media following the publication of a defensive article written by Krauss, Krauss asked for his release. Contact with Schmitt was broken off until the end of the war. Krauss fought in the Spanish Civil War and World War II as a radio squad leader on the Eastern Front. He was taken prisoner by the Soviets, from which he was released in autumn 1945.

After the end of the war Krauss worked as a notary in Cologne, but - although he had meanwhile become a CDU member - found no spiritual home in the Federal Republic. He was aiming for an academic career and was planning a habilitation at the University of Bonn with a thesis on the subject of Homo homini homo. Twelve chapters on the Relectio de Indis by Francisco de Vitoria . He temporarily held lectures on constitutional law at the Central Rhine Administration and Business Academy in Bonn and was later a lecturer at the Administration and Business Academy in Oberhausen. Krauss became a leading member of an association for the reintroduction of the death penalty and joined the Free Socialist People's Party , a right-wing extremist splinter party. As a notary he represented u. a. Edda Göring , who demanded the return of a Cranach painting that her father had previously owned from the city of Cologne. He played a key role in the development of the Academia Moralis Association , which was founded by his students and friends to support the financially troubled Carl Schmitt. Krauss supported Schmitt in particular in the preparation of the typescript of his works On the three types of legal thought and nomos of the earth . After 1945 he only appeared occasionally in journalism; the memories he wrote about Carl Schmitt in six parts, which are biographically valuable eyewitness accounts for the life of Carl Schmitt at the beginning of the 1930s, deserve special mention.

Krauss was a brother-in-law of canon lawyer Heinrich Flatten .

Fonts

• The legal concept of law. An examination of the positivist legal concept with a special focus on the jurisprudential thinking of Rudolph Sohm . (Dissertation), Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt , Hamburg 1935.
• with Otto von Schweinichen : disputation on the rule of law. Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1935.
• The totalitarian state idea. in: The New Order Vol. 3, 1949, pp. 494–508.
• The constitution of Germany 1945–1954. in: Public Administration 19-20 / 1954, pp. 579-583.
• Constitutional law of the federal and state levels. Social science publisher, Essen 1956.
• Memories of Carl Schmitt. (Part 1) in: Criticón Vol. 16, No. 95, pp. 127-130.
• Memories of Carl Schmitt. (Part 2) in: Criticón Vol. 16, No. 96, pp. 180-184.
• Memories of Carl Schmitt. (Part 3) in: Piet Tommissen (Ed.): Schmittiana I , Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1988, pp. 55-69.
• Memories of Carl Schmitt. (Part 4 + 5) in: Piet Tommissen (Ed.): Schmittiana II , Eclectica, Brussels 1990, ISBN 3-527-17715-9 , pp. 72-111.
• Memories of Carl Schmitt. Supplements. in: Piet Tommissen (Ed.): Schmittiana III , Eclectica, Brussels 1991, ISBN 3-527-17728-0 , pp. 45-51

literature

• Dirk van Laak : Chapter 7.2: Günther Krauss. in: Ders .: Conversations in the security of silence. Carl Schmitt in the political intellectual history of the early Federal Republic. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-002444-5 , pp. 246-250.

Web links

• Literature by and about Günther Krauss in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Carl Schmitt: State, Greater Nomos. Works from the years 1916–1969 (edited by Günter Maschke ), Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-428-07471-8 , SV
2. ^ Memories of Carl Schmitt. (Part 4 + 5) in: Piet Tommissen (Ed.): Schmittiana II , Eclectica, Brussels 1990, ISBN 3-527-17715-9 , p. 78.
3. ^ Reinhard Mehring : Carl Schmitt. Rise and fall. A biography. CH Beck , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59224-9 , p. 362 f.
4. ↑ Dirk van Laak : Conversations in the security of silence. Carl Schmitt in the political intellectual history of the early Federal Republic. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-05-002444-5 , p. 248 f.
5. ^ Reinhard Mehring : Carl Schmitt. Rise and fall. A biography. CH Beck , Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-59224-9 , p. 497.
6. ^ Memories of Carl Schmitt. (Part 4 + 5) in: Piet Tommissen (Ed.): Schmittiana II , Eclectica, Brussels 1990, ISBN 3-527-17715-9 , p. 81.
7. ↑ Wolfgang H. Spindler : A kind of coming to terms with the past. Carl Schmitt's confession in 1947. in: The New Order 62, 4/2008, p. 317.