Hellmuth Mayer

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Hellmuth Mayer (around 1970)

Gerhard Hellmuth Mayer (born May 1, 1895 in Würzburg , † April 9, 1980 in Kiel ) was a German legal scholar and criminologist .

Origin and career

Hellmuth Mayer was the son of the legal historian Ernst Mayer and his wife Karoline, geb. Koch (1867–1927), former deaconess in Neuendettelsau . His great-grandfather was the classicist sculptor Ernst Mayer . From 1901 to 1905 Hellmuth Mayer attended elementary school in Würzburg and then from autumn 1905 the Königliche Alte Gymnasium , where he graduated from high school in June 1914. He enrolled for the winter semester 1914/15 at the Law Faculty of the Julius-Maximilians-University, but took leave and came forward during the First World War as a volunteer in the 11th Field Artillery Regiment of the Bavarian army in Wurzburg, with whom he at 4 December 1914 came to the Western Front . His unit fought mostly in Flanders .

On May 1, 1916, he was appointed "regular" non-commissioned officer and was deployed on the Eastern Front in what is now Belarus . From the spring of 1917 he was again on the Western Front in Flanders and Artois . On September 18, 1918, Mayer was made a lieutenant .

After the troops had been properly returned to Bavaria, Mayer was released on December 7, 1918 and was then active in the Epp Freikorps from February to October 1919 and involved in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic from May 1 to 3, 1919.

In the Weimar Republic , Mayer studied law at the University of Würzburg , where he passed the first state examination in law in 1920 with distinction. After legal clerkship and work as a court assessor, the second state examination followed in 1923. In 1921 Mayer was for a work on "Breeding Violence and Criminal Justice" Ph.D. been ( Summa cum laude ) . On January 1, 1924 he was admitted to the bar in Würzburg, which he stayed until April 1, 1930.

In 1924, as a lawyer, he was the defender of the Hitler trial defendant Friedrich Weber , head of the federal Oberland , to whom Mayer had been an inactive member until the march on the Feldherrnhalle, in which he did not participate.

His habilitation on the subject of "The court judge's penalty order" took place on August 17, 1928 at the University of Erlangen , where he then taught as a private lecturer. In the winter semester of 1929/30 Mayer took over a professorship at the University of Frankfurt am Main and was then appointed to the chair of criminal law at the University of Rostock in the summer semester of 1930 .

From 1924 to 1930 Mayer was a member of the DNVP and passionately campaigned for a federal constitution and the restoration of the monarchy in Bavaria in public speeches . Above all, Hellmuth Mayer drew attention to himself through his scientific work (commentary on judgments) and with his book on the facts of infidelity to be clarified in civil proceedings in property crimes .

Professor in Rostock and officer in World War II

Before accepting the Rostock professorship, Mayer came into contact with the Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht , to whom he felt bound by his oath . When asked whether he should take the required oath on the Weimar Imperial Constitution , he received the answer that he was best suited to be a professor and should take and keep the oath.

In 1931 Mayer married Charlotte, born in Rostock. Keding (1909-2002), with whom he had two daughters and two sons.

During his time as a full professor in Rostock, Mayer published one of his main works, The Criminal Law of the German People (1936) . The book was discussed two years later by the National Socialist criminal lawyer Friedrich Schaffstein in the ZStW and characterized as an "idiosyncratic work", which is nevertheless attested to having "one of the first places in criminal law literature of recent years."

In the “ Third Reich ” Mayer took part in military exercises in the 12th artillery regiment in 1935 and 1936 and was promoted to captain of the reserve. At the end of August 1939 he was drafted into the 12th Artillery Regiment and took part in the attack on Poland as the battery chief . In the following years he worked simultaneously at the University of Rostock and as a clerk for the personal concerns of soldiers in the staff of the substitute division 192. In addition, he was also a judge- martial at times and lecturer in military courses in Norway .

post war period

In April 1945 Mayer came back to his family in Rostock or Kühlungsborn . Here, on his 50th birthday, May 1, 1945, he witnessed the invasion of the Soviet Army .

Hellmuth Mayer had already been appointed to the chair of criminal law by the University of Kiel in 1944, but received a repeated urgent request from the cultural commissioner there, his Bavarian compatriot Johannes R. Becher , to remain at the University of Rostock in the Soviet zone . As a result of political developments, Mayer went to Kiel in 1947 and, after the currency reform in July 1948, received official permission from the Soviet occupying power to move his family to the west, to Kiel. From 1947 he occupied his chair as a law professor at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel . In academic circles he was nicknamed Anders-Mayer because he often expressed his dissenting opinion and so in numerous entries, e.g. B. in the criminal law commentary Schönke / Schröder , the so-called prevailing opinion, the addition " different: Mayer " was added.

In 1947 by the British military administration to judge on probation (assistant judge) at the Higher Regional Court of Schleswig appointed was Hellmuth Mayer 1952-1965 High Court Judge in the 2nd Criminal Division of the Higher Regional Court of Schleswig.

During the Spiegel affair (1962) Hellmuth Mayer vehemently advocated adherence to the rule of law. For these principles, Mayer was also a staunch critic of preventive detention .

Mayer died on April 9, 1980 in Kiel.

Engagement in the Evangelical Lutheran Church

After the seizure of power of Hitler Mayer was a personal friend Friedrich Brunstäds , the former professor of philosophy at Erlangen and of systematic theology in Rostock . Together with his pupil and doctoral student Eugen Gerstenmaier , the devout Protestant supported the Confessing Church in Mecklenburg since 1935 .

After the Second World War , he held several positions in the Lutheran Schleswig-Holstein State Church , which later became the North Elbian Church . From 1952 to 1954 he was a legal assessor at the church court and then until 1966 a member of the church leadership . At the 11th regional synod in November 1953, Hellmuth Mayer was elected synod , which he remained until 1965.

Fonts (selection)

  • Breeding violence and criminal justice (Leipzig 1922) (dissertation 1921)
  • Infidelity in connection with property crimes (Munich 1926).
  • The Criminal Law of the German People (Stuttgart 1936).
  • Criminal Law (Stuttgart 1953).
  • Criminal law reform for today and tomorrow (Berlin 1962).
  • Contributions to the entire field of criminal law (Berlin 1966).
  • Criminal Law (Stuttgart 1967).
  • The sociable nature of man. Social anthropology from a criminological point of view , criminological research volume 10, (Berlin 1977) ISBN 3-428-03999-8

literature

  • Michael Buddrus and Sigrid Fritzlar: The professors of the University of Rostock in the Third Reich. A biographical lexicon. (Texts and materials on contemporary history; Vol. 16). Saur Verlag, Munich 2007, pp. 274-275, ISBN 978-3-598-11775-6 .
  • Natalie Willsch: Hellmuth Mayer (1895-1980). From defender in the Hitler trial in 1924 to liberal-conservative criminal law scholar. The varied life and work of the Kiel teacher of criminal law (Kieler jurisprudential treatises / NF; Vol. 55). Nomos, Kiel 2008, ISBN 978-3-8329-3562-7 (also dissertation Kiel 2007).
  • Natalie Willsch: The criminal law teacher Hellmuth Mayer (1895-1980) in the Hitler trial, in the Third Reich and in the "SPIEGEL" affair . In: Schleswig-Holstein advertisements . Official Justice Ministerial Gazette, (2010) No. 1, pp. 4–10.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Details of the military career in the Bavarian Main State Archives , and from Willsch: Hellmuth Mayer. P. 24ff.
  2. ↑ Detailed description of the course of the negotiations with Willsch: Helmuth Mayer , pp. 45–58
  3. ↑ Mayer in his farewell lecture on July 20, 1965 at the University of Kiel (typewriter copy PDF in family ownership; 401 kB) also online
  4. ↑ Fritz Rittner , one of his students at the time, reports on Mayer's appearance in the lectures and his attitude here (PDF; 16.2 MB) p. 6th
  5. ^ Friedrich Schaffstein: German literature: Hellmuth Mayer, The criminal law of the German people in ZStW 57 (1938), pp. 609–612
  6. ^ Willsch: Hellmuth Mayer. P. 167f. Refers to two of Mayer's résumés from 1947 and 1961, in which information about his military career is sometimes contradictory.
  7. ^ Obituary in the Kieler Nachrichten of April 11, 1980 p. 12
  8. ^ Archives of the North Elbian Church, evaluated by Willsch: Helmuth Mayer , p. 232f.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Mayer, Hellmuth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mayer, Gerhard Hellmuth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German legal scholar and criminologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1980
Place of death Kiel