Hans Wehberg

Hans Wehberg (born December 15, 1885 in Düsseldorf , † May 30, 1962 in Geneva ) was a German teacher of international law and pacifist . Together with Walther Schücking, he was the founder of pacifist international law . From 1924 until his death Wehberg was the editor of the journal Die Friedens-Warte .

biography

Hans Wehberg was born in Düsseldorf. His father was the doctor Heinrich Wehberg . His life story is that of an international lawyer who is connected in a moving and dramatic way to an epoch of contemporary history of profound changes in international law. His time was marked by attempts to build an organ for general peacekeeping, the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907. After the catastrophes of World War II, an organization with great powers, the United Nations, rose from the ruins. The International Court of Justice was also installed. A new development of human rights was under way and was underlined by the Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. During this time of upheaval in international law and the uncertain global political situation, Hans Wehberg developed from a student to a recognized university lecturer and academic author, to a renowned spokesman for constructive pacifism. Hans Wehberg was general secretary of the Institut de Droit international , has also been the editor of the Friedens-Warte since 1924 and presented a wealth of valuable material to science, politics and journalism. Above all, he campaigned for the outlawing of war and the peaceful settlement of disputes, including the content of his lectures at the Geneva Institute, Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales , where he lectured from 1928. Together with his friend Walther Schücking, Hans Wehberg published a large-scale commentary that turned out to be an important highlight in the assessment of the League of Nations statutes.

The ideas and efforts for the enforcement of the legal and order concept or the overcoming of violence through the law in international relations runs as a leitmotif through his entire biography. Hans Wehberg died in Geneva on May 30, 1962. Wehberg's library, set up in the Institute for Public Law at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, was acquired from the estate with funds from the Volkswagen Foundation on the initiative of Professors Werner von Simson and Joseph H. Kaiser . Wehberg's teaching activity at the University of Freiburg cannot be proven.

During his studies, Wehberg became a member of the Marchia Bonn fraternity .

International law work

In Hans Wehberg's bibliography of international law, a focus on martial law and the League of Nations can be clearly seen, more precisely the vision of overcoming violence through the law. It is typical of his works that, as a lawyer, he deals with the scientific-systematic and positive-legal foregrounds of international law and includes other disciplines such as sociology and ethics.

Commentary on the Statute of the League of Nations

One of his main works is the commentary on the League of Nations, written with Walther Schücking (1875–1935), the first edition of which appeared in 1921 and was the first scientific literature on this topic. In 1931 the third edition appeared for the first time in two volumes. The first volume appeared a year before the second, because Wehberg and Schücking wanted to await the results of the disarmament conference and the harmonization of the Kellogg Pact and the League of Nations statute. These results then fell thematically into the second part, which begins with Art. In the first volume, Articles 1-7 are commented on over the last 200 of around 550 pages, before the actual commentary, Wehberg and Schücking put a kind of textbook on the League of Nations, the development of its legal nature, its basic ideas, the peace treaties and the training of the League of Nations .

"Forbid war"

At the same time as the revision for the third edition of the Commentary on the League of Nations Statute, Wehberg gave a lecture on the outlawing of war in the League of Nations at the Hague Academy of International Law. The book for this lecture was published in German in 1930 and an English translation a little later. First, he goes into the historical background in detail, the League of Nations statutes and their relationship to the war are examined in more detail, and the Kellogg Pact , the Locarno Pact and the Geneva Protocol are discussed in more detail. In the basic discussions, the second chapter, one can see the following main theses of Wehberg, which also influence his other publications - especially in the journal Friedens-Warte:

1. War as a means of settling disputes must be banned completely.
2. The sole ban on war is not enough: the most important means of implementation is radical disarmament at the same time and in the same way for all the powers of the League of Nations.
3. The division into "good and bad" wars is difficult. The occupation of foreign national territory is already part of the war. The defensive war is one of the most significant problems because, on the one hand, it is difficult to determine who is actually attacking, and on the other hand, the task of an organized federation is precisely to resolve conflicts peacefully. The war of sanctions started by the international community is even more controversial.

Editor of the Friedens-Warte 1924–1962

After the death of the editor and newspaper founder Alfred Hermann Fried , a group of international law scholars campaigned in 1923 - Hans Wehberg among them - to revive what was then the mouthpiece of the German peace movement, the journal Die Friedens-Warte . He had been in close contact with the Peace Watch since the Second Hague Peace Conference (from 1907). Wehberg supported the magazine by displaying it in his lecture halls and publishing articles on international law in it. In 1912 he already published an edition on behalf of Fried. The editorship that Hans Wehberg held alone from 1924 until his death in 1962 can be divided into three periods:

• 1924–1928 : The critical examination of the League of Nations is continued and intensified. The share of international law articles in the newspaper continues to increase. Wehberg criticizes the fact that in the League of Nations statutes war is not outlawed and remains recognized as the last political means. In addition, the League of Nations is ineffective without its own police force to maintain peace. With its neutral stance on the publicly discussed question of the admissibility of the military in general, the Peace Watch is losing its opinion leadership in the peace movement. When Wehberg took office at the “Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales” in Geneva (1928), the Friedenswarte tended more and more to become a specialist journal on international law. In addition, with Wehberg's move to Switzerland and the publishing house from there, the way is paved for continued existence in exile during the Second World War.
• 1928–1945 : Until 1933, the Friedens-Warte reported broadly on the German Peace Society and the organization of the peace movement. Since 1931, however, it has not been able to ignore the issues of right-wing parties. On the question of the adequacy of the Versailles Treaty, especially the question of guilt during the First World War, Hans Wehberg takes a middle position. He emphasizes Germany's complicity, but rejects sole guilt. After the peace watchdog was banned in Germany (1936), Wehberg ended his reluctance to report on the National Socialists. Nevertheless, the old edition of the newspaper can no longer be achieved with the ban. During the war, the topics focus on the question of the arbitration role of the League of Nations. Wehberg starts an international round of questions as to whether the League of Nations should be consulted first on interstate disputes (1939).
• 1945–1962 : When a new international community of states was already being formed with the United Nations in the last years of the war , this came into focus in Hans Wehberg's reporting. His criticism is directed against the prominent position of the superpowers in the Security Council ( veto right ) and against the weakness of the institutions within it. Hans Wehberg was also occupied with the UN after 1945. Further topics were the desired German unity, the Nuremberg Trials , later nuclear energy and European unification. On the German magazine market, however, the Friedens-Warte can no longer establish itself at the pre-war level. Contact with the peace movement will not be restored either. Many of the demands made by the Friedens-Warte can also be found in the statutes of the United Nations after the Second World War. With the death of Hans Wehberg in 1962, it looks as if this also meant the end of the pacifist journal.

In 1974 an attempt was made to revitalize the Peace Watchdog. Initially irregularly, at the latest since the German reunification with renewed impetus it appears to this day every three months.

Fonts (selection)

(chronologically)

• The right of booty in land and sea wars, presented with special consideration of the modern development of international trade . Tübingen 1909. (English translation published under the title Capture in war on land and sea, full text )
• Commentary on the Hague “Agreement on the Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes” of October 18, 1907 . Tubingen 1911.
• The problem of an international court of states . Munich / Leipzig 1912.
• The papacy and world peace . Munich / Gladbach 1915.
• As a pacifist in the world war . Leipzig 1919.
• The international restriction of armaments . DVA Stuttgart and Berlin 1919. ( full text ).
• The Limitation of Armaments: A Collection of the Projects Proposed for the Solution of the Problem . Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1921. ( full text )
• The statutes of the League of Nations, commented (in collaboration with Walther Schücking) . Berlin 1921.
• Basic problems of the League of Nations . Berlin 1926.
• Germany and the peace movement, reports, submitted to the parliamentary committee of inquiry of the German Reichstag. The work of the investigative committee of the German National Assembly and the German Reichstag, 1919-1930 . Berlin 1929.
• The outlawing of war. A lecture at the Hague Academy of International Law and at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales (Genève) . Berlin (Vahlen) 1930.
• The struggle to reform the League of Nations (1920 to 1934) . Geneva 1934.
• The project of a Pan-American League of Nations . Athens 1941.
• The organization of the international community after the war. The problem of a true representation of the peoples . In: Die Friedens-Warte 44, 1944, p. 49.
• The American plan for international control of atomic energy. An introduction to the work of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission . In: Die Friedens-Warte 47, 1947, p. 5.
• Ludwig Quidde. A German democrat and champion of international understanding. Introduced and compiled by Hans Wehberg . Offenbach am Main 1948.
• War and Conquest in the Change of International Law . Frankfurt am Main 1953.
• The Geneva Protocol concerns the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Berlin 1927.

literature

• Claudia Denfeld: Hans Wehberg (1885–1962): the organization of the international community. 1st edition Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2008; Zugl .: Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 2007. ISBN 978-3-8329-3798-0 .
• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 6: T-Z. Winter, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-8253-5063-0 , pp. 226-228.
• Peter K. Keiner: Civil pacifism and "new" international law: Hans Wehberg (1885–1962). Freiburg (Breisgau). Legal Faculty, Diss. 1976, http://d-nb.info/760745412 .
• Martin Otto: Wehberg, Hans. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 27, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-428-11208-1 , pp. 552–554 (not yet available online).

Web links

Wikiquote: Hans Wehberg  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Hans Wehberg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of the Friedens-Warte