Johannes Limnäus

Johannes Limnäus

Johannes Limnäus , also Johannes Limnaeus , actually Johann Wirn , (born January 5, 1592 in Jena , † May 13, 1665 in Ansbach ) was a German constitutional lawyer and imperial journalist .

The name Limnäus is a pseudonym : "Wirn" means pond , ancient Greek limne .

Life

Johannes Limnäus was born in Jena in 1592. His father Georg Limnäus came from a Swiss family and was a professor of mathematics at the University of Jena . John Limnäus studied in Jena Law . One of his teachers was Dominicus Arumäus from the Netherlands , the "progenitor of publicists", whose appointment to the Saxon-Weimar University of Jena is seen as the beginning of German constitutional law.

From 1612 Johannes Limnäus lived in Altdorf . 1617 he accompanied the Nuremberg patrician Löffelholz and Imhof on a trip to Italy and France, where he stayed for two years, to England and the Netherlands. From 1620 Johannes Limnäus was a professor at the University of Altdorf . In 1622 he received a professorship in Jena. In 1623 he was briefly an auditor for Lieutenant General Duke Wilhelm von Sachsen-Weimar . Afterwards he was court master at the Chancellor of Kulmbach and became educator of the Hereditary Prince and later Margrave Friedrich von Brandenburg-Anspach .

From 1623 to 1630 he made several trips as a student companion, from 1631 Johannes Limnäus was the educator (study inspector, inspector morum) of the brothers of Margrave Friedrich von Brandenburg-Anspach. In 1632 he accompanied Prince Albrecht and his brother Christian on their cavalier tour to France spared the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War . The journey went via Blois , Orléans , Saumur and Angers , where Johannes Limnäus spent the prince's academic year at Angers University . In 1636 he returned home via Paris .

Then he was Chancellor and Privy Councilor of the Margraves of Anspach and represented Anspach in the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia .

Johannes Limnäus died on May 13, 1665 in Ansbach near Nuremberg and is buried in the Ansbach collegiate church.

Services

Johannes Limnäus is one of the founders of that German constitutional law that was no longer based on Roman law , but on the rules and constitutional practice of the German Empire ( Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation ). Compared to the previous Roman legal approaches, he is considered a representative of a historical-realistic school.

Dual sovereignty according to Limnaeus

State authority:	assigned:
maiestas realis	(People or) totality of the imperial estates
maiestas personalis	Emperors & Imperial Estates

Johannes Limnäus was the most resolute in advocating the distinction between real and personal majesty . To put it simply, this describes a distinction between the bearer of sovereignty and the bearer of delegated state power. The owner of the “real majesty”, the sovereignty , is with him the state community (represented by the imperial estates), which decides on the form of government and thereby assigns the “personal majesty”. Johannes Limnäus dealt with the division of state power between emperor , electors and other imperial estates and the elements of the imperial constitution from aristocracy and monarchy . He criticized the view that the emperor alone had "majesty" (sovereignty), but was less radical in this than his contemporary Hippolithus de Lapide , who saw a solution to this question in the complete expulsion of the Habsburgs from the German Empire.

The publications of constitutional law of this time are summarized as Reich journalism . This scientific discipline broke away from Roman (civil) law in the 16th and 17th centuries, which until then had dominated jurisprudence. In addition to Limnäus Benedict Carpzov , Samuel von Pufendorf , Theodor (Dietrich) Reinkingk u. a.

In contrast to Jean Bodin , who saw the form of the community as an absolutist and centralist monarchy and the ruler as the bearer of majesty or sovereignty ( monarchical principle ), Johannes Limnäus carried on the thoughts of Johannes Althusius , who in these contexts (state- ) The people and thus the sovereignty of the people gave priority. The German imperial estates , which as representatives of the "people" would have had a stronger position vis-à-vis the emperor, took up Limnäus' ideas.

Johannes Limnäus is considered to be one of the opinion leaders on the political and legal system of the Treaty of Westphalian Peace, in whose design the imperial estates (in contrast to the original plan of Frederick III to negotiate alone with Sweden, France etc.) The development of the German imperial constitution after the Peace of Westphalia to a mixed constitution in which monarchical and aristocratic elements were present was not least due to his work.

Johannes Limnäus wrote the sentence “Das Röm. Reich is called Heilges Reich because it is ordained, confirmed and preserved by the Holy Spirit until the honorable times. ” This sentence is one of the proofs that the questions of the imperial constitution and its difficulties cannot be separated from the religious disputes of the time were.

His remarks scourged his colleagues in the legal profession, who dealt primarily with Roman law and only dealt with constitutional law at the universities pragmatically, if at all, as pure-bred donkeys and dental technicians. The fact that his remarks were later just as little delicately described by Pufendorf as a boring and silly pamphlet that you don't need to worry about is also due to the style of the time, but does not change the fact that Johannes Limnäus was one of the pioneers of German constitutional law .

In his work on the electoral surrenders of German emperors, Johannes Limnäus dealt with the treaties that were concluded for the election of a ruler and his government. In practice, the election capitulations had the function of a “Basic Law” of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.

His activities made him widely known and earned him nicknames such as "Patriarch of constitutional law" and "oraculum in iure publico".

Works

Catalog of works by Herbert Jaumann : Handbuch Gelehrtenkultur.

• Dissertatio de lege regia. 1617
• Jus publicum Imperii Romano-Germanici libri IX. 3 volumes. First edition Strasbourg 1629–1634.
• Dissertatio apologetica de statu imperii Romano-Germanici . Onolzbach (Ansbach) 1643.
• Capitulationes imperatorum et regum Romano-Germanorum Caroli V. Ferdinandi I Maximiliani II. Rudolphi II. Matthiae . Ferdinandi II. Ferdinandi III. cum annotamentis Johannis Limnaei. Strasbourg (Argentorati), Typis & sumtibus Friderici Spoor. 1651.
• Notitia regni Franciae. 2 volumes. Strasbourg 1655.

literature

• Siegfried Hänle:  Limnaeus, Johannes . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1883, p. 658 f.
• Rudolf Hoke : The theory of the Reichsstaatsrechtslehre of Johannes Limnaeus: a contribution to the history of German constitutional law in the 17th century. Investigations into German state and legal history (post-doctoral thesis at Saarbrücken University). New episode Volume 9. Aalen 1968, DNB 457019794 .
• Rudolf Hoke: Johannes Limnaeus. In: Notker Hammerstein, Hasso Hofmann , Rudolf Hoke, Michael Stolleis a. a .: State thinkers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Reich journalism, politics, natural law. Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-7875-5264-2 , pp. 100-118.
• Herbert Jaumann : Handbook of scholarly culture in the early modern period . Volume 1. Bio-bibliographical repertory. Berlin / New York 2004, ISBN 3-11-016069-2 , p. 409.
• Bernd Roeck:  Limnaeus, Johannes. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , pp. 567-569 ( digitized version ).
• Michael Stolleis : History of Public Law in Germany. Volume I. 1600-1800. Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-32913-6 , pp. 150-153, 221-224.
• Friedrich Weber:  Note on Johann Limnäus in: Bogislaw Philipp von Chemnitz . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 114 f.

Web links

Commons : Johannes Limnäus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Limnaeus or Lymnaeus, Johannes  - Article in Zedler's Universal Lexicon (1738)

• Literature by and about Johannes Limnäus in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Johannes Limnäus in VD 17 .

Remarks

1. ↑ Grimm, German Dictionary, Volume 28 Weh-Wend, column 687, line 42 to column 696, line 17.
2. ^ Raimund J. Weber: Review  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of the work of Manfred Friedrich: History of German constitutional law. Writings on constitutional history. Volume 50. Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-09114-0 . In: Inform , 3 (2002), No. 2. (March 16, 2008).  
3. ↑ ADB page 658 and biography  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Albrecht von Brandenburg-Ansbach, referred to there as "Albrecht V the Righteous".  
4. ↑ Michael Frisch: The Edict of Restitution of Emperor Ferdinand II of March 6, 1629. Tübingen 1993, ISBN 3-16-146000-6 , p. 112.
5. ^ Christian Starck : The democratic constitutional state: shape, foundations, threats. Tübingen 1995, ISBN 3-16-146442-7 , p. 345.
6. ^ Heinrich de Wall , Michael Germann : Civil liberty and Christian responsibility: Festschrift for Christoph Link on the 70th birthday. Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-16-148099-6 , p. 657.
7. ↑ ^{a b} Marcel Senn in Forum Historiae Iuris. First European internet journal for legal history: Review of the work of Alois Riklin: Power sharing. History of the mixed constitution. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2006, ISBN 3-534-18774-1 .