Heinrich Gehrke (judge)

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Heinrich Gehrke (born October 14, 1939 in Berlin ) is a German lawyer and former judge . He worked as a judge at the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court , where, through his work as presiding judge, he appeared in a series of lawsuits that received particular public attention. His judgments, reasons and comments have been discussed controversially in the media on several occasions. Since his retirement he has appeared repeatedly on talk shows on German television.

Life

Childhood

Heinrich Gehrke was born as the son of a commercial artist and an architect shortly after the beginning of the Second World War . At the time, the young family lived in Steinstücke on the southern outskirts of Berlin.

school

He started school in September 1945. During the Berlin blockade , he and his younger brother were evacuated to Westerland on the North Sea island of Sylt for a period of ten months under the classification “starving Berlin child” .

In 1951, his family decided to move to western Germany. Gehrke attended a humanistic high school in Wiesbaden for almost two years. In autumn 1952 his family moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he attended the Helmholtz School , at that time a secondary school. In 1959 he passed his Abitur at the Helmholtz School.

Education

After completing his military service , he studied from 1960 to 1965 at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and at the Free University of Berlin Jura .

Assistantship

In 1965 Gehrke passed his first state examination in Frankfurt am Main . Between 1965 and 1973 he was first Research Fellow and then assistant at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History (MPIeR) in Frankfurt am Main at the Nestor of the Law Faculty, the civil lawyer and legal historian Helmut Coing , who is also his doctor father. His legal clerkship and his second state examination also fell into this phase (1966–1969). The topic of his dissertation "The jurisprudence and consultation literature of Germany until the end of the Old Reich" required the collection of previously unexplored jurisprudence in works that had to be searched for and discovered in old libraries in German-speaking countries.

From 1973 to 1975 he continued to work at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History and developed a number of legal history publications on legislation and jurisdiction . He worked on the “Handbook of Sources and Literature of Modern European Private Law History”.

Judge at the regional court

In 1973 Heinrich Gehrke was able to achieve his professional goal and joined the judicial service of the State of Hesse as a judge at the Frankfurt am Main regional court . In accordance with his conviction, he wanted to contribute to the preservation of the rule of law without being dependent on instructions from a manager or clients. Independence was a maxim in life for him. Under this premise, there is no better job for him than that of a judge, as he once said.

In 1979 he was appointed presiding judge. Initially, the Chamber for Press Matters was assigned to him. He then moved to chair a General Large Criminal Chamber . During this phase, criminal proceedings fell, which received a lot of public attention. The first of these trials in 1980 against editors of the Bild newspaper for dubious methods of obtaining information resulted in a conviction.

Another criminal case based on Kurt Tucholsky's 1931 statement " Soldiers are murderers " led to an acquittal based on the right to freedom of expression, which was also controversially discussed in the Bundestag , but ultimately confirmed by the Federal Constitutional Court . As a result, Gehrke was subjected to a large number of personal abuse and death threats.

After moving to the chair of a commercial criminal chamber, he headed the criminal proceedings against the "construction lion" Jürgen Schneider .

“ He's tough and smart and can't be fooled by anyone. "

- Jürgen Schneider on Heinrich Gehrke

From 1998, as head of the jury court, he had to negotiate cases such as the murder trial against Monika Böttcher, divorced Weimar or the so-called "OPEC trial" against the former terrorists Hans-Joachim Klein and Rudolf Schindler .

pension

Even after his retirement in 2004, Gehrke repeatedly took a stand on current issues in the context of the legal system.

Heinrich Gehrke is married to a doctor, both have two daughters who work as lawyers.

Radio and television

After his retirement, Heinrich Gehrke was frequently asked about various issues relating to the legal system and invited to discussion groups.

Fonts

  • The jurisprudence and consultation literature of Germany until the end of the Old Empire. Dissertation, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main 1972.
  • The private law decision-making literature in Germany: Characteristics and bibliography of the case law and consilium collections from the 16th to the beginning of the 19th century Vittorio Klostermann, 1974, ISBN 3-465-01083-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The man for the spectacular. Der Spiegel, December 22, 1999.
  2. ^ Matthias Hannemann: faz.net early review: "Beckmann" The wounds are tearing open. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 20, 2012, accessed on February 6, 2016 (ISSN 0174-4909).
  3. ^ Association of Former Helmholtz Students: VEH-Info 93 from March 2004, p. 4–7 ( Memento from January 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (Interview by Hans Thiel with Heinrich Gehrke) on: hhsabi77.de (PDF file, 242 kB )
  4. ^ Image judgment: Hard warning. Die Zeit, January 16, 1981.
  5. ↑ The Objectionable. Der Spiegel, January 26, 1981.
  6. ↑ Frankfurt's man for severe cases. Der Spiegel, February 19, 2001.
  7. ↑ Excerpts from the first day of the trial against the real estate speculator Jürgen Schneider. Die Zeit, July 4th 1997.
  8. ↑ There is no excuse for that. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 9, 2009.
  9. ↑ Heinrich Gehrke, the intolerant judge in the third Weimar murder trial: "Then I just don't want to know". Berliner Zeitung, December 9, 1999.
  10. ↑ A judge who looks beyond the limits of his profession. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 20, 2004.
  11. ^ Right extremes and their victims. Der Spiegel, May 28, 2008.
  12. ↑ The system has not proven itself. Frankfurter Rundschau, June 18, 2008.
  13. ^ Second class acquittal. Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 1, 2011.
  14. ↑ The trial of Anders Behring Breivik - is there a just punishment for a mass murderer? ARD talk show "Beckmann", April 19, 2012 ( Memento from April 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Gehrke, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and former judge
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin