Hans Welzel

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Hans Welzel (born March 25, 1904 in Artern , † May 5, 1977 in Andernach ) was a German criminal lawyer and legal philosopher.

Life

Welzel studied law from 1923 to 1927 at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg . With a doctoral thesis on Samuel Pufendorf , he was promoted to Dr. iur. PhD. In 1935 he completed his habilitation at the University of Cologne on naturalism and the philosophy of values ​​in criminal law . A year later he was appointed professor at the Georg-August University in Göttingen . During the time of National Socialism , he championed National Socialist theses, which he later justified by never having been a supporter of National Socialism and having only represented these points of view out of fear for his professional existence. Welzel welcomed the softening of the prohibition of analogy and the reference to the healthy public feeling by means of the 1935 reformulated § 2 of the Criminal Code (StGB). Regarding Section 2 of the RStGB, he wrote that the basic idea of ​​Section 2 of the RStGB would grow with the people's legal awareness and would be shaped by the act of the legislature; “Both forces shape the law”.

In 1945/46 he was dean of the law and political science faculty in Göttingen . At their meeting on January 7, 1946, he paid tribute to private lawyer Hans Tägert, who died shortly before the end of the war . In 1951 he described a well-known thought experiment with the switchman case , which is also known as the trolley problem . The Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn appointed him to their chair for criminal law professorship in 1952 . In 1962 Welzel became rector there . His inaugural address dealt with "Truth and Limits of Natural Law".

Welzel became known for the justification of the final doctrine of action in criminal law. According to the final doctrine of action, which Welzel based on the idea of the individual's free will , intent as the knowledge and willingness of the realization of the facts is no longer to be regarded as a component of guilt, but rather to be understood as a prerequisite for the mere realization of the facts due to the meaningfulness and purposefulness of the human action . This view was made possible by the prevailing guilt theory, which saw intent as an element of guilt, but the awareness of the illegality of one's own action (awareness of injustice) no longer as an element of intent (dolus malus), but as an independent element of guilt in addition to intent.

As a result, after the final doctrine of action, only the element of (potential) awareness of wrongdoing remains as the core component of personal reproach, guilt. An important part of German criminal law studies has followed this structure of crimes with modifications.

The final doctrine of action founded by Welzel was also received abroad, so that Welzel is one of the most famous German criminal law scholars.

Since 1959 he was a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences .

Works

  • Naturalism and Philosophy of Value in Criminal Law , 1936
  • Textbook of German criminal law (from 1940; last, 11th edition 1969)
  • About the final theory of action - a dispute with its critics , 1949
  • Natural law and material justice , 1951
  • The new picture of the criminal justice system , 1951

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dissertation: The Natural Law Doctrine of Samuel Pufendorf .
  2. ^ Letter to Tägert's widow dated January 12, 1946
  3. ↑ Rector's speeches (HKM)
personal data
SURNAME Welzel, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German legal scholar , legal philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Artern
DATE OF DEATH May 5th 1977
Place of death Then after