Hans Kutscher

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Hans Friedrich Otto Kutscher (born December 14, 1911 in Hamburg ; † August 24, 1993 in Bad Herrenalb ) was a German legal scholar , judge of the Federal Constitutional Court and President of the European Court of Justice .

Life

Legal education, early years of employment and military service

The Hamburg-born coachman grew up in an upper-class family. His father Max Kutscher was the director of an insurance company, his mother Margaretha, née Wohlers, came from Altona . He first attended secondary school in Hamburg-Hamm . After the family moved, he moved to the Rheingau-Realgymnasium in Berlin-Friedenau , where he graduated from high school in 1931. He then studied law and political science at the Universities of Graz , Freiburg and Berlin . His lecturers included Martin Wolff , Ernst Heymann , Rudolf Smend , Hans Peters and Erik Wolf . During his time in Freiburg he made the acquaintance of Hans Schneider and Wilhelm Grewe , who also studied there. From this a lifelong friendship developed. Kutscher passed his first state examination in March 1935 at the Supreme Court .

Shortly afterwards he became Ernst Forsthoff's assistant at the Institute for Public Law in Hamburg. Wilhelm Grewe, who was also employed there in this position, had recommended him for the assistant position. Both followed Forsthoff a year later as faculty assistants at the University of Königsberg . Kutscher received his doctorate there in 1937 on "Expropriation: A Contribution to the Doctrine of Expropriation and Property". In particular, he worked out the feature of misappropriation as a criterion for the demarcation of expropriation and social ties, which is now widely recognized. The dissertation was published a year later as the first and only volume in the series "Königsberg Legal Research". In March 1939 he passed his second state examination.

In the same year he took up a position as an assessor in the Reich Ministry of Economics . Here he served as an unskilled worker in the department for cartel issues and fundamental issues of economic administrative law and was promoted to government councilor in 1942. However, he was barely able to do the job, as he was called up for military service a few months after the outbreak of World War II . He was assigned to an infantry regiment and rose to the rank of captain of the reserve in the military. In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the French , from which he was released in March 1946.

Worked in administration after the Second World War

After the war he found a job in the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of the Interior of Württemberg-Baden . Most recently he held the post of government director here. He also married Irmgard Becker, née Schröder, in 1946, with whom he had been friends for a long time and whose first husband Walter Becker had a fatal accident in the last days of the war. A native of Bremen Becker was in America as the daughter of an Englishwoman and a German who in New York to North German Lloyd , who grew up represented. She brought two daughters into the marriage.

In June 1951 he was seconded to the Foreign Office for six months to take part in the negotiations on the replacement of the Occupation Statute. Wilhelm Grewe, who headed the German delegation, had asked him to do so. In 1952, Kutscher published a comment on the Bonn treaty , which was the result of the negotiations, to which Grewe contributed the preface. In December 1951 he was appointed Secretary of the Legal Committee of the Federal Council. Later he also held the position of managing director of the mediation committee . In March 1952 he was promoted to Ministerial Counselor. An essay from this period is in which he defended the Federal Council's practice of broadly extending the approval requirement for laws.

Judge at the Federal Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice

In 1955 he was elected judge of the Federal Constitutional Court by the Federal Council at the suggestion of the SPD . He was a member of the first senate until the end of the term of office of his retired predecessor Wilhelm Ellinghaus . Since this remained less than a year, a new election was necessary as early as 1956. He was re-elected by the Federal Council and has now taken over from Georg Fröhlich's judge in the second Senate. In the history of the Federal Constitutional Court, this was the only case of an immediate change of the Senate.

In addition to his judicial duties, Kutscher was now also active in the academic field. From 1959 to 1964 he taught at the Administration and Business Academy in Karlsruhe . From 1961 to 1965 he was a lecturer in constitutional law and administrative law , in particular commercial administrative law, at the Fridericiana University of Technology . From 1965 he taught at the University of Heidelberg as an honorary professor for constitutional law. He was also a member of the Baden-Württemberg State Justice Examination Office for ten years .

In November 1966 he became a member of the administrative court of the Evangelical Church in Baden , from March 1969 he was its deputy chairman. He also worked in the German Society for International Law and was a member of the study commission it established on the immunity of foreign states.

The last stage of Kutscher's judicial career began on October 28, 1970: A few months before the end of his term in office at the Federal Constitutional Court, he was appointed to the European Court of Justice . Here he belonged to the second chamber, whose chairmanship was later given to him. In 1976 he was elected President of the Court of Justice as the first and so far only German. He retired early on October 31, 1980 at his own request. In his farewell speech he, who was a staunch European, lamented the deadlock on the way to a European Union.

After a short illness, he died in 1993 at the age of 81 in Bad Herrenalb, where he and his wife had built a house in 1967.

Honors

literature

  • Hans Kutscher: The expropriation: A contribution to the doctrine of expropriation and property. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1937, self-written curriculum vitae on p. 139.
  • The Federal Constitutional Court: 1951 - 1971. 2nd edition. Müller, Karlsruhe 1971, p. 230.
  • Hans Schneider: Hans Kutscher 65 years. In: Public Administration 1976, pp. 852f.
  • Professor Kutscher new President of the ECJ. In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 1977, p. 481.
  • Wilhelm Grewe: Hans Kutscher. In: Wilhelm Grewe / Hans Rupp / Hans Schneider: European jurisdiction and national constitutional jurisdiction. Festschrift for the 70th birthday of Hans Kutscher. Nomos-Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1981, pp. 9-16.
  • Claus-Dieter Ehlermann : Hans Kutscher †. In: Europarecht 1993, p. 227f.
  • Ulrich Everling : Hans Kutscher †. In: Juristentung 1994, p. 35.
  • Hans Schneider: Hans Kutscher †. In: Archives of Public Law 1994, pp. 158–161.
  • Manfred Zuleeg : Hans Kutscher †. In: Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 1993, p. 3042.
  • Wolfgang Heyde: Hans Kutscher. A grand master of the robe. In: Peter Häberle (Ed.): Yearbook of Public Law of the Present, New Series Volume 48, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2000, pp. 253–262.
  • International Biographical Archive 52/1993 from December 20, 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heyde, Jahrbuch, p. 254.
  2. ^ Grewe, Festschrift, p. 9; Schneider, AöR 1994, p. 158.
  3. ↑ Either in December 1939 (Grewe, Festschrift, p. 10) or in the spring of 1940 (Heyde, Jahrbuch, p. 254).
  4. ↑ In Das Bundesverfassungsgericht: 1951 - 1971, p. 230 , NJW 1977, p. 481 and Zuleeg, NJW 1993, p. 3042 it is expressly mentioned that Kutscher was initially appointed secretary of the legal committee and that he did not work for the mediation committee until later Added to this was. On the other hand, Heyde, Jahrbuch, p. 10 and Schneider, AöR 1994, p. 158f, apparently assume that Kutscher exercised both offices together from the start.
  5. ↑ Deviating from the other sources, the official title in Heyde, Jahrbuch, p. 10 and Schneider, DÖV 1976, p. 85 is “Managing Secretary”.
  6. ^ The Federal Constitutional Court: 1951-1971, p. 230; International Biographical Archive 52/1993 from December 20, 1993.
  7. ^ Public administration 1952, p. 713.
  8. ↑ Heyde, Jahrbuch, p. 260.
  9. ↑ Europarecht 1981, pp. 1–8, especially p. 3 and p. 7f.
personal data
SURNAME Coachman, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Coachman, Hans Friedrich Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, judge of the Federal Constitutional Court and President of the European Court of Justice
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg , Germany
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1993
Place of death Bad Herrenalb , Baden-Württemberg , Germany