Hermann Heller (lawyer)

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Hermann Heller (born July 17, 1891 in Teschen , † November 5, 1933 in Madrid ) was a German lawyer of Jewish descent and constitutional law teacher . He taught at the Universities of Kiel , Leipzig , Berlin and Frankfurt am Main . In his writing, Heller shaped the rule of law or dictatorship? from 1930 the concept of the social constitutional state .

Life

Heller spent his school days up to the sixth grade at the KK Albrechts-Gymnasium in Teschen; In 1908 he moved to the Kronprinz-Rudolf-Gymnasium in Friedek , where he graduated from high school in 1910.

After graduating from high school, Heller studied law and political science at the universities of Kiel (from the winter semester 1912/13), Vienna (summer semester 1913), Innsbruck and Graz (winter semester 1913/14) . During the First World War he participated as a war volunteer in an artillery regiment of the Austrian army, whereupon he suffered a heart condition at the front in 1915. He passed his doctoral examination on December 18, 1915 during an army leave at the University of Graz. He then continued his military service in the military judiciary until the end of the war.

After the end of the First World War, Heller began working on his habilitation thesis in Leipzig , which he completed in Kiel in 1919. Heller was a supporter of the republic and joined the SPD in 1920. During the Kapp Putsch he tried to mediate between the parties together with Gustav Radbruch in Kiel and was imprisoned with him by the military. On March 16, 1920 he received his habilitation with the venia legendi for legal philosophy, political theory and constitutional law. He also married Gertrud Falke in Kiel. In 1921 he first moved back to Leipzig, where he was re- qualified at the Faculty of Law . From 1922 to 1924 he headed the Leipzig People's Education Office. But in 1926 he left Leipzig again and worked as a consultant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Berlin. In 1928 he was appointed associate professor for public law at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin; at the same time he taught at the German University of Politics .

In early 1928, Heller had a brief liaison with the writer Elisabeth Langgässer . On January 1, 1929, she gave birth to their daughter Cordelia .

In 1932, Heller was appointed full professor for public law at the University of Frankfurt .

The faculty there already put up considerable resistance to Heller's appointment. In 1933, Heller finally evaded the National Socialists by not returning to Germany after a lecture period in Great Britain, but instead accepting an invitation from the Spanish Minister of Education to teach as a visiting professor at the University of Madrid . On September 11th of that year he was dismissed from the German civil service due to the law to restore the civil service.

On November 5th of that year Heller died in Madrid from a heart condition that he had contracted during the First World War.

Act

Heller was one of the few representatives in his field who unreservedly supported the democratic principle of the Weimar Republic . Carl Schmitt is considered one of Heller's antipodes . The dispute between Heller and Schmitt, which after initially expressing mutual admiration in letters, became more and more intense from 1928, culminated in 1932 in the " Prussia versus Reich " trial , in which Heller represented the SPD parliamentary group and Schmitt was one of the representatives of the Reich.

In 1922, Heller was one of 43 founding members of the Association of German Constitutional Law Teachers and a member of the Hofgeismar Circle , which advocated a nationally-minded social democracy .

Heller's main work is his book “Staatslehre”, on which he feverishly wrote until his early death. He still failed to finish the manuscript. After his death, Gerhart Niemeyer completed the manuscript as far as possible on the basis of the available documents until it was ready for printing. With the help of Rudolf Sebald Steinmetz and Wilhelm Adrian Bonger, the work was published in 1934 by the Dutch publisher AW Sijthoff's Uitgeversmaatschappij in Leiden . Heller's doctrine of the state, which renounced both positivism and idealism , is considered an important work for the establishment of political science in Germany after the Second World War. Ernst Fraenkel and Wolfgang Abendroth were among the first recipients . Today, Heller is sometimes referred to as the "father of political science in Germany".

With the end of the AW Sijthoff publishing house in the early 1970s, the remainder of the fifth edition of Hellers Staatslehre was continued by the Mohr publishing house . The current (July 2007) edition is the sixth edition from 1983.

Work (excerpt)

A list of Heller's publications was compiled by Hans Rädle in Politische Vierteljahresschrift 8 (1967), pp. 314–322.

  • Europe and Fascism , 2., change. Ed., 159 pages, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1931.
  • Hegel and the national power state idea in Germany. A contribution to political intellectual history , VI, 210 pp., Leipzig: BG Teubner, 1921.
  • The political circles of ideas of the present (= everyone's library: Department of Law and Political Science , Vol. 6), 156 p., Breslau: Ferdinand Hirt, 1926.
  • Rule of law or dictatorship? (= Law and State in Past and Present. Vol. 68.), 26 p., Tübingen: JCB Mohr, 1930.
  • Socialism and Nation , 102 pp., Berlin: Arbeiterjugend.-Verlag, 1925; 2nd edition, 105 pages, Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt, 1931.
  • The sovereignty. A contribution to the theory of constitutional and international law , 177 pp., Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927.
  • Staatslehre , XVI, 298 S., Leiden: Sijthoff, 1934 (6th, edited edition, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1983, ISBN 3-16-644693-1 ).

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Hermann Heller  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Wilfried Fiedler : The reality of the state as human effectiveness (see web links ).
  2. ↑ Cf. on this and the following Wilfried Fiedler: Material Rechtsstaat and social homogeneity , in: JZ 1984, p. 202;
    also Wilfried Fiedler: The reality of the state as human activity .
  3. ↑ Frankfurter Personenlexikon. Retrieved April 25, 2019.
  4. ^ Arthur Kaufmann : Gustav Radbruch Complete Edition. Volume 18: Letters II: 1919-1949 , Heidelberg: Müller, 1995, ISBN 978-3811447943 .
  5. ↑ Werner Korthaase: Total enemy, total war, total state? Hermann Heller's political and state theory of dialogue and balance of interests . In: Eun Kim (Ed.): Active serenity. Festschrift for Heinrich Beck on his 70th birthday . Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999, ISBN 3-631-35064-3 , pp. 563-590, especially pp. 567-576.
  6. ↑ See Christoph Müller, in: Hermann Heller: Staatslehre , Vorwort, SV
personal data
SURNAME Heller, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and constitutional lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Teschen
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1933
Place of death Madrid