Heinrich Mitteis

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Heinrich Mitteis (born November 26, 1889 in Prague , † July 23, 1952 in Munich ) was a German legal scholar . He is considered one of the most important legal historians of the 20th century.

Live and act

Heinrich Mitteis was born in Prague in 1889 as the son of the legal historian Ludwig Mitteis . He developed a strong interest in music and attended the humanistic St. Thomas School in Leipzig . He had a close friendship with the later Thomaskantor Karl Straube . From the winter semester of 1908/1909 he studied law with Karl Binding , Otto Mayer , Rudolph Sohm and Adolf Wach at the University of Leipzig and from 1909/1910 with Heinrich Brunner , Karl Zeumer and Otto von Gierke at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . In 1913 he was awarded the “ summa cum laude ” work in Leipzig. Legal consequences of default in performance in the sales contract according to Dutch sources from the Middle Ages for Dr. jur. PhD . He interrupted his legal clerkship from 1913 to 1914 for further training in legal history with Ulrich Stutz and Hans Schreuer (1866–1931) at the University of Bonn .

Mitteis was a soldier from 1915 to 1918, was wounded several times and was awarded ( Albrechts Order 2nd Class with Swords and Iron Cross 2nd Class). In 1919 he completed his habilitation in German legal history and private law at the University of Halle . He also took on a teaching position at the Polytechnic in Köthen . As early as 1920, Mitteis was commissioned to hold lectures at the University of Cologne , where he became full professor for German legal history and civil law in 1921. In 1924 he followed a call to Heidelberg to succeed Hans Fehr . Mitteis became a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (1925), the Société d 'histoire du droit (1931) and the Academy for German Law (1933).

In 1933 his highly acclaimed depiction of feudal law and state power appeared . In the same year he lost his position as dean because he took a stand against the denigration of Jewish colleagues in the National Socialist press and criticized the rector of Heidelberg University. Although Mitteis did not join the NSDAP , in 1934 he was appointed to the chair for German private law, German civil law, commercial and bill of exchange law and German legal history at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . Because of his critical attitude towards National Socialism, Mitteis was exposed to open attacks from the National Socialist student leadership. In one lecture there was even a fight between Nazi students and Mitteis' pupils. Mitteis had to cancel lectures on the instructions of the rector. On April 1, 1935, he accepted a position as successor to Hans von Voltelini (1862-1938) at the University of Vienna . In 1938, Mitteis only escaped protective custody because his family was friends with the wife of Alfred Jodl , who was then head of the Wehrmacht leadership office. After the annexation of Austria , Mitteis was suspended from all offices and transferred to the University of Rostock . There he taught from January 1940 to March 1946 as the successor to Wilhelm Ebel as a full professor of civil law, German private law, German legal history and church law. In 1947 he moved to Berlin as a full professor. In December 1947 he was offered a professorship at the University of Munich, and one in Zurich in 1952 . After the war, Mitteis was accepted into the Austrian Academy of Sciences (1945), the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (1946), the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (1947) and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1949).

Mitteis was probably the most important legal historian of the 20th century. In 1927 he founded the German Legal Historians' Day with Leopold Wenger . He linked legal history, political history and intellectual history. His book Lehnrecht und Staatsgewalt , based on extensive source studies in German and French archives, corrected numerous ideas about the constitution of medieval society. Mitteis tried in the differences in the national development of Germany and France with differences in feudal law to explain: Because it west of the Rhine no Leihezwang have given the French kings were home falling fief to increase the Domaine royal used, the core of the French central government have formed . These theses are "meanwhile essentially refuted". Nevertheless, they were "important for the history of research into fiefs and vassals [...]: they were the first to give a strong impetus for a more detailed study of feudalism in the late medieval empire".

In the work The State of the High Middle Ages , first published in 1940 , he dealt with the basics of a comparative constitutional history of Europe. He published study books on legal history and private law. In 1947 he became editor of the magazine of the Savigny Foundation for legal history . From 1950 until his death, Mitteis was President of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

In 1954, Heinrich-Mitteis-Gasse in Vienna- Floridsdorf (21st district) was named after him.

Fonts

  • Political processes of the early Middle Ages in Germany and France . Meeting reports of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences , Phil.-hist. Class, born 1926/27, treatise 3, Carl Winters University Bookstore, Heidelberg (1927).
  • Feudal Law and State Power - Investigations into the Medieval Constitutional History (1933).
  • Outline of the Austrian Copyright Law (1936).
  • The State of the High Middle Ages (1940).
  • Legal history and the problem of historical continuity . Treatises of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Philosophical-historical class. Born 1947 No. 1. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1947.
  • German Legal History (1949).
  • German private law (1950).
  • The Legal Idea in History (1957).

literature

Necrologist

  • Obituary Fritz Rörig, Heinrich Mitteis, Albert Brackmann, Erich von Guttenberg. In: German Archive for Research into the Middle Ages , Vol. 10 (1953), pp. 311–312 ( digitized version )
  • Karl S. Bader: Heinrich Mitteis. In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History , Vol. 70 (1953), pp. IX – XXXII
  • Hermann Conrad: Heinrich Mitteis. In: Historisches Jahrbuch , Vol. 73 (1954), pp. 506–508.
  • Otto von Zwiedineck-Südhorst: Heinrich Mitteis, November 26th, 1889– July 23rd, 1952. In: Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Yearbook 1952 ( online )

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Klaus-Peter Schroeder : A university for lawyers and by lawyers. The Heidelberg Faculty of Law in the 19th and 20th centuries . Tübingen 2010, p. 422.
  2. ↑ Helmut Heiber : University under the swastika. Part II: The Surrender of the High Schools. The year 1933 and its themes, Vol. 2, Munich 1994, pp. 288ff.
  3. ^ Michael Grüttner : Students in the Third Reich. Paderborn 1995, pp. 255ff.
  4. ↑ Hans-Henning Kortüm: Medieval constitutional history under the spell of legal history between the wars - Heinrich Mitteis and Otto Brunner. In: Jürgen Dendorfer, Roman Deutinger (ed.): The feudal system in the high Middle Ages. Research constructs - source findings - relevance to interpretation. Ostfildern 2010, pp. 57–78, here: p. 57.
  5. ↑ Steffen Patzold : The fiefdom. Munich 2012, pp. 99-102.
predecessor Office successor
Walther Meissner President of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
1950 to 1952 		Richard Wagner
personal data
SURNAME Mitteis, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German legal historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1952
Place of death Munich