Herbert Kraus (legal scholar)

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Herbert Hermann Otto Kraus (born January 2, 1884 in Rostock as Herbert Hermann Otto Krause , † March 15, 1965 in Göttingen ) was a German international lawyer. He was the founding director of the Institute for International Law at the Georg-August University in Göttingen . Due to his opposition to National Socialism , he was forcibly retired from 1937 to 1945.

Life

Herbert Kraus, born as the son of the mathematician and university professor (Johann) Martin Krause and his wife Johanna Eleonore Elisabeth, geb. Maschke, was baptized on February 3rd, 1884 in Rostock. Effective November 7, 1907, Herbert Krause shortened his family name to Kraus .

After graduating from the Kreuzschule in Dresden in 1903, Herbert Kraus first studied history, art history and philosophy in Heidelberg , then law in Leipzig and Berlin . In 1907 he received his doctorate in Berlin with a dissertation on criminal law supervised by Franz von Liszt . After completing his legal clerkship in the royal Saxon judicial service, he passed the Second State Examination in 1911 . During a subsequent study visit to Columbia University in New York City and Harvard University , he completed his habilitation thesis "The Monroe Doctrine and its Relationship to American Diplomacy and International Law". During the winter of 1913/1914 he studied at the Sorbonne in Paris . In the summer of 1914 he completed his habilitation at the University of Leipzig.

During the First World War Kraus was employed in the civil administration in the occupied General Government of Belgium . From 1917 to 1919 he worked in the legal department of the Foreign Office and took part in the negotiations on the Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the Peace Treaty of Versailles .

Academic career 1919–1937

After working as a private lecturer in Leipzig in 1919, he worked as an associate professor from 1920 and from 1923 as a full professor at the Albertus University in Königsberg . In 1924 he was one of the founders of the Königsberg Scholar Society . During his teaching activity in Königsberg, constitutional and international law issues were in the foreground. In the summer of 1927 he taught at the Hague Academy for International Law (again in 1934); he also taught in 1924 as part of summer programs in Chicago and Philadelphia . He also made several lecture tours to Switzerland and the USA.

In 1928 he accepted a call to the Georg August University of Göttingen, where in 1930 he set up an independent seminar for international law and diplomacy, the forerunner of the later Institute for International Law at the Georg August University of Göttingen. His students there included u. a. the resister Adam von Trott zu Solz . Kraus was a member of the German State Party (DStP).

Forced retirement 1937–1945

After the seizure of power , Kraus found himself exposed to Nazi hostility as early as the spring of 1933, after the publication of his work “The Crisis of Intergovernmental Thinking”. In this pamphlet he spoke out in favor of certain ethical and moral principles and minimum standards being binding. He criticized the Versailles peace treaty, but at the same time indirectly called Adolf Hitler a “fool” (Kraus: “Anyone who proclaims the millennial Reich today, for today, is a fool; and a statesman who does not correctly use the time factor in his calculations , fundamentally misjudges his task and is unfaithful to his oath. "in:" The crisis of intergovernmental thinking "). In the following years he also criticized Carl Schmitt's understanding of international law . After strong hostility, Kraus was relieved of his office in 1937, retired and banned from publication. Ulrich Scheuner became his successor in 1940 .

Kraus initially undertook commissioned work for Columbia University in 1937/1938 and subsequently worked on a textbook on international law and a monograph on Georg Friedrich von Martens , but the manuscripts of this work were destroyed during the air raids on Dresden on February 12 and 13, 1945.

Post-war period 1945–1965

In 1945 he was reinstated as a professor in Göttingen. However, he did not resume teaching until 1947, because from 1945 to 1947 he was one of the defenders of Hjalmar Schacht , former Reichsbank President and Reich Economics Minister under Hitler, in the Nuremberg trial of the major war criminals . Back in Göttingen, he devoted himself to the reconstruction of the Institute for International Law and dealt with questions of occupation law and international law issues with regard to the eastern territories of the German Empire . He was chairman of the Federal Government's expert committee on the 1951 Mining Union Treaty.

In 1951 he took over the presidency of the Göttingen working group , the working group of East German scientists. In 1952 Kraus was the chairman of a disciplinary committee at the Georg-August University of Göttingen, which punished a student for beating the length of a semester as part of the so-called Göttingen scale process . The Corps Saxonia Göttingen awarded him the corps loop in 1955.

In 1953 he retired , which Kraus was able to successfully postpone until he was 70, with reference to his temporary compulsory retirement. Georg Erler followed him to the chair.

Herbert Kraus received the Great Cross of Merit in 1957 and the Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1964 .

family

Kraus was married to the American sculptor Katherine Thayer Hobson-Kraus (1889–1982) since 1911. She left Germany in November 1935; they divorced in 1939 and married Diether Thimme in Athens in 1939 . Kraus' second marriage to Mathilde Nagel has two sons.

Awards

Fonts

  • The Monroe Doctrine in its Relationship to American Diplomacy and International Law. J. Guttentag, Berlin 1913.
  • Interest and interstate order. In: Niemeyers Zeitschrift für Internationales Recht , Vol. 49 (1934), pp. 22-65.
  • Carl Schmitt, National Socialism and International Law. In: Niemeyers Zeitschrift für Internationales Recht , Vol. 50 (1935), pp. 151-161.
  • The moral theological and historical reports and judgment submitted in the Braunschweig Remer trial. Girardet, Hamburg 1953.
  • International issues of the present. International law, ethics of states, international politics. Selected small writings (= The Göttingen Working Group. Vol. 281). Holzner, Würzburg 1963.

literature

  • Frank Halfmann: A "planting place for the best National Socialist legal scholars". The legal department of the Law and Political Science Faculty. In: Heinrich Becker et al. (Ed.): The University of Göttingen under National Socialism. The suppressed chapter of its 250-year history. KG Saur, Munich et al. 1987, ISBN 3-598-10676-9 .
  • Hans Jaeger:  Kraus, Herbert. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 682 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 2: G-K. Arranged by Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X .
  • Hans Kruse and Hans-Günther Seraphim (editors): Man and State in Law and History. Festschrift for Herbert Kraus on the completion of his 70th year of life, offered by friends, students and employees. Published by the Göttingen working group. Holzner, Kitzingen 1954.
  • Heiko Meiertöns: An International Lawyer in Democracy and Dictatorship - Re-Introducing Herbert Kraus. In: EJIL , Vol. 25 (2014), pp. 255–286. ( online )
  • Dietrich Rauschning : Herbert Kraus (1884–1965). In: Dietrich Rauschning, Donata von Nereé (ed.): The Albertus University of Königsberg and its professors. On the occasion of the founding of the Albertus University 450 years ago (= yearbook of the Albertus University in Königsberg. Vol. 29; = The Göttingen Working Group. Vol. 451). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-428-08546-9 , pp. 371-382.
  • Anikó Szabó: eviction, return, reparation. Göttingen university professor in the shadow of National Socialism, with biographical documentation of the dismissed and persecuted university professors: University of Göttingen - TH Braunschweig - TH Hannover - University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Wallstein , Göttingen 2000, ISBN 978-3-89244-381-0 (= publications of the working group History of Lower Saxony (after 1945), Volume 15) (also dissertation , University of Hanover , 1998), pp. 152–157 ( online ) .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Church register Rostock ( St. Johannes ), birth and baptism entry No. 17/1884. The independent parish of St. Johannes was closed in 1833, and from then on the parish of St. Nicolai also provided for it.
  2. ↑ "According to a notification from the Rostock registry office on January 2nd, 1908, the Saxon State Ministry of Dresden on November 7th, 1907 determined that the surname of the child listed under N 17: Kraus should be written." (Margin note in the church book of St. Johannes, Heiraten, Tote u Christening 1802-1893 , p. 164, accessed on ancestry.com on May 10, 2020)
  3. ↑ inteurlaw.uni-goettingen.de ( Memento from November 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 45, 896.
  5. ^ Heiko Meiertöns: An International Lawyer in Democracy and Dictatorship - Re-Introducing Herbert Kraus. In: The European Journal of International Law. Vol. 25. No. 1, 2014, pp. 255–286, here p. 277, footnote 205, doi: 10.1093 / ejil / chu002 .
personal data
SURNAME Kraus, Herbert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kraus, Herbert Hermann Otto (full name); Krause, Herbert (former name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German international lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH January 2, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 1965
Place of death Goettingen