Hans Dombois

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans Adolf Dombois (born October 15, 1907 in Berlin ; † June 24, 1997 in Porta Westfalica ) was a Protestant lawyer and canon lawyer who advocated the foundation of ecumenical canon law in legal and theological arguments .

Life

Dombois came from a Huguenot family and was born in Berlin in 1907, where his father was Senate President at the Prussian Higher Administrative Court .

He was confirmed by Karl Bernhard Ritter at the German Cathedral in Berlin and studied law . In Berlin he was involved in the youth movement-reformed association Werwolf . During his legal clerkship in Marburg he experienced the establishment of the Evangelical Michael Brotherhood . Dombois joined the Confessing Church in 1933 and served as a public prosecutor in the judiciary from 1936 to 1952 . This time was interrupted by the Second World War . Dombois was drafted into the artillery in 1939 and returned from captivity in 1947 . In 1947 he became a member of the Evangelical Michael Brotherhood, with whose founder Karl Bernhard Ritter he had been associated since his confirmation days. In 1950 he was in Göttingen at Rudolf Smend to Dr. iur. PhD. In 1952 he resigned from the judicial service and worked as a scientific consultant, initially at the Evangelical Research Academy Christophorusstift in Hemer / Westphalia and from 1958 at the research facility of the Evangelical Study Community (FESt) in Heidelberg . Dombois headed the working group for political questions of the German Evangelical Church Congress from 1950 to 1961 , was a member of the family law commission of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and from 1955 to 1969 chairman of the criminal law commission of the EKD. In 1967 he founded the Canon Law Working Group in Heidelberg, which for years dealt with the draft of a “ Lex Ecclesiae Fundamentalis ” for Catholic Canon Law. It was only in the final phase of editing the Codex Iuris Canonici in 1983 that these considerations were not taken up.

Dombois was a founding member of the International Society for Canon Law and an active member of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches. His brother-in-law was Ernst Schwebel with whom he temporarily lived in Potsdam and who was also active in the Confessing Church.

In 1970 he was awarded an honorary doctorate (Dr. theol. Hc.) By the University of Heidelberg for his work, and in 1987 he was awarded the title of professor by the state of Baden-Württemberg . H. and honored by several commemorative publications .

Focus

Dombois concentrated in his academic work after the Second World War on fundamental questions of canon law . Alongside Johannes Heckel ( Lex Charitatis , 1953), Erik Wolf ( Order of the Church , 1961) and Otto Friedrich ( Introduction to Canon Law , 1961), he became one of the main representatives of Protestant legal theology . Their goal was the theological justification of canon law. In his three-volume main work The Right of Grace. Ecumenical canon law , he looked at canon law across confessional boundaries and historical epochs and tried to systematically establish an ecumenical canon law. He proceeded from the basic assumption that church law has its basis in worship and is thus ultimately to be understood as liturgical law. He could also refer to Karl Barth , who in his church dogmatics also established canon law as ius liturgicum .

Publications (selection)

  • The right of grace. Ecumenical canon law . 3 vol., I: 1961, (2nd edition 1969), II: 1974, III: 1983, Luther-Verlag, Witten.
  • Human rights and the modern state . Origo-Verlag, Zurich 1948.
  • Political jurisdiction. The wrong path of denazification and the question of the protection of the constitution . Verlag Kirche und Mann, Gütersloh 1950.
  • Natural law and Christian existence . Stauda-Verlag, Kassel 1952.
  • Code and Agreement. Questions and tasks of ecumenical theology . Evangelisches Verlagswerk, Stuttgart 1972.

A complete bibliography from Silke Riese: Bibliography Hans Dombois . In: Zeitschrift für Evangelisches Kirchenrecht 32 (1987), pp. 556-570.

literature

Literature on the person

Festschriften

Literature on the work of Hans Dombois

  • Ulrich Scheuner : On the legal theology of Hans Dombois . In: Journal for Protestant Church Law 23 (1978), 1-7.
  • Horst Folkers (Ed.): Approaches to the 'right of grace'. Studies in Canon Law and Theology II , Heidelberg 1990.
  • Manfred Müller-Simon: From legal theology to the theory of canon law. The connection of legal and theological topics in the work of Hans Dombois (= contributions to rational theology, vol. 4). Lang, Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 978-3-631-44673-7 .
  • Severin J. Lederhilger : The "Ius divinum" with Hans Dombois (= Church and Law, Vol. 20). Plöchl, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3901407014 .
  • Reinhold Sebott: right of grace. The contribution of Hans Adolf Dombois to the fundamental canonology . Lang, Frankfurt 2009, ISBN 978-3-631-58718-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Barth: The order of the community . In: Karl Barth: Kirchliche Dogmatik IV , 2, Zurich 1955, 765-824.