Gottfried Schmitt

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Schmitt on the commission for the BGB (engraving by Hermann Scherenberg , 1875)

Gottfried Schmitt , since 1889 Knight von Schmitt (born September 30, 1827 in Hofheim in Lower Franconia , † August 25, 1908 in Ebern ) was a German lawyer. He was the editor of inheritance law for the German Civil Code , which came into force on January 1, 1900 in the German Empire. Schmitt worked out the first draft of inheritance law in the German Civil Code. He can be seen as the "father of German inheritance law".

Life

He came from a Catholic middle-class family and was the son of the innkeeper Joseph Schmitt and his wife Dorothea Müller. After graduating from high school in 1847, Schmitt studied law in Würzburg. He had been a member of the Germania Würzburg fraternity since 1846 . In 1852 he passed the state examination in law .

Since January 1857 he worked as a judge in Würzburg , Augsburg , Kempten , Nuremberg and Bamberg . In 1865 his only son Gottfried was born to him. On January 16, 1869, Schmitt was appointed appellate judge and convened in the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice .

On March 1, 1874, he was appointed Ministerialrat in the Bavarian Ministry of Justice . As such, he represented Bavaria in the Justice Committee of the Federal Council in Berlin, where he took part in the negotiations of the “preliminary commission” for the preparation of a civil code and defended Bavaria's interests. In a letter dated June 27, 1874, the Bavarian Justice Minister Johann Nepomuk von Fäustle proposed to the Bavarian King Ludwig II to send Schmitt and Professor Paul von Roth as Bavarian members to the first commission on the Civil Code. On the same day, Ludwig II approved his Minister of Justice's proposal. The Justice Committee of the Federal Council voted unanimously in favor of the Bavarian proposal and presented Schmitt as a candidate for the first commission on the BGB. The Federal Council then unanimously elected Schmitt to the first commission on July 2, 1874. Schmitt accepted the election as member of the commission, was exempted from the Bavarian judicial service and moved his permanent residence from Munich to Berlin, where the first commission on the BGB met.

On September 1, 1883, he was appointed President of the Higher Regional Court extra statum and on September 1, 1886, President of the Nuremberg Higher Regional Court, while maintaining the exemption from the regional justice service. After the dissolution of the first commission on the Civil Code, Schmitt devoted himself entirely to his work as President of the Higher Regional Court in Nuremberg. When Bavaria wanted to propose Schmitt as a representative for the second commission for the drafting of the BGB in 1890, Schmitt refused for official and personal reasons. Schmitt remained President of the Higher Regional Court in Nuremberg and became President of the Supreme Bavarian Regional Court on September 1, 1891, with the title “Excellence”. On October 1, 1897, he was appointed lifelong Imperial Councilor of the Crown of Bavaria .

For his services, Schmitt was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown by Prince Regent Luitpold in 1889 . Associated with this was the elevation to the personal nobility and he was allowed to call himself Ritter von Schmitt after his entry in the nobility register . In 1899 he received the Grand Commander's Cross for this medal.

At his own request he was given permanent retirement on October 16, 1899. Schmitt died on August 25, 1908 in Ebern near Bamberg.

literature

  • Werner Schubert:  Schmitt, Gottfried von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 234 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Hans-Georg Mertens: The emergence of the provisions of the BGB on legal succession and the right to a compulsory portion. Berlin 1970.
  • Winfried Jagemann: The presidents of the Bavarian Supreme Court. In: Gerhard Herbst (Ed.): The Bavarian Supreme Regional Court. Munich 1993, p. 189.
  • von Henle: " Reichsrat Ritter von Schmitt † . “ Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung. Volume 13 (1908), col. 1015.
  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 5: R – S. Winter, Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-8253-1256-9 , pp. 282-284.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Court and State Manual of the Kingdom of Bavaria 1890. R. Oldenbourg Verlag. Munich 1890. p. 21.
personal data
SURNAME Schmitt, Gottfried
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmitt, Gottfried Ritter von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Hofheim in Lower Franconia
DATE OF DEATH August 25, 1908
Place of death Boars