Concordat chair

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A concordat chair is a chair at a state university that is not located in a theological faculty , but the Catholic Church has the right to object to its appointment .

Concordat chairs exist in Germany primarily at universities in Bavaria and Freiburg . The basis for this state church law peculiarity are agreements in concordats . Through the concordat chairs, the Catholic Church in Bavaria is to be given a say, especially with regard to teaching relevant to education at universities. In 2013 the Bavarian bishops declared that they would no longer exercise the right of veto in the future.

Similarly, there are chairs in Bonn and Mainz that involve the Catholic Church, even if this is not regulated by a concordat but by other contracts.

Situation in Bavaria

The Concordat with Bavaria was signed as early as 1924, but has been repeatedly changed since then. In the version valid today it says on the appointment of chairs in theological faculties (§ 2 Art. 5):

"Professors and other persons who are entitled to independent teaching are only appointed by the state in the theological departments mentioned in § 1 if the responsible diocesan bishop has not raised a reminder about the candidate."

Regarding the concordat chairs it says (§ 5 Art. 3):

“At the universities of Augsburg, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität), Passau, Regensburg and Würzburg as well as at the University of Bamberg, in a department responsible for educational studies, the state maintains a chair for philosophy, for social sciences and for Pedagogy, against the holder of which no reminder can be raised with regard to their Catholic-Church standpoint. Section 2 applies accordingly to the occupation. "

Accordingly, there are three concordat chairs each at seven Bavarian universities (not in Bayreuth and at the Technical University of Munich).

According to the Bavarian State Government, the concordat chairs in Bavaria are occupied by the following professors (as of 2009):

Since the universities usually take the ideas of the Catholic Church into consideration when selecting candidates, according to Daniel Gotthardt, the bishop's right of veto is rarely used in practice. The last time a Protestant candidate was appointed to a philosophy professorship in Bamberg was prevented in 2006 by the objection of the Archbishop of Bamberg. In 2013, the bishops declared a waiver of their right of veto.

It is true that the right of examination of the Catholic Church does not necessarily determine the denomination of the staff when filling the chairs - however, with Clemens Kauffmann there is currently only one Protestant on a concordat chair.

Situation outside of Bavaria

Mainz

In Mainz there are two comparable chairs for history and philosophy based on the state church law agreement between the Bishop of Mainz and the Higher Government President of Hesse-Palatinate on the Catholic-Theological Faculty of the University of Mainz from 1946.

Occupations:

Bonn

There were also two comparable chairs in Bonn, also for philosophy and history. According to information from the university, the denomination last played a role for Konrad Repgen when the history chair was filled . The legal basis here is an agreement when the university was founded in 1818 by the Prussian king Friedrich-Wilhelm III., Whose name the university also bears. So the Church's say in these chairs is almost 200 years old. In the new constitution of Bonn University of 1991, the concordat chairs were no longer included; it can therefore be assumed that they will not be filled again. In September 1990 Anton Schindling, who was the first to succeed Repgen, refused to accept the chair.

Freiburg

The bathing concordat of 1932 guarantees two concordat chairs (philosophy and history) in Freiburg. They were established because attending philosophical and historical lectures is a prerequisite for a theological degree. The final protocol on Art. IX states:

“With regard to the philosophical-theological training required in Art. VII, the Baden state will ensure that there is a professorship for philosophy and history at the University of Freiburg, each with a personality who is responsible for the proper training of the Theology students. "

Occupations:

Düsseldorf, Cologne and Münster

Contrary to popular information, there are currently no concordat chairs in Düsseldorf , Cologne and Münster .

controversy

The constitutional admissibility of concordat chairs is controversial, although legal actions against it have always failed. Critics criticize two things about the establishment of the Concordat chairs. On the one hand, there is a violation of the separation of church and state because concordat chairs, unlike theological faculties, are not constitutionally required. In addition, the preference for the Catholic Church is a violation of the parity principle. On the other hand, the right of non-Catholic chair applicants to equal access to public office is violated: Art. 33 paragraph 3 GG: “The enjoyment of civil and civic rights, admission to public office and the rights acquired in the public service are independent of religious beliefs . Nobody should suffer any disadvantage from their affiliation or non-affiliation to a creed or a worldview. ”The Federal Constitutional Court has not yet had to take a position on the compatibility with the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany .

In 1977 there was a popular lawsuit before the Bavarian Constitutional Court against the amendment to the Concordat Act passed on September 25, 1974. This change required an expansion of the concordat chairs. The lawsuit took three approaches to justifying unconstitutionality. First, the basic right to free, religiously independent access to public offices, anchored in Article 107 Paragraph 4 and Article 116 of the Bavarian Constitution, is restricted. Secondly, the freedom of science guaranteed in Article 107 of the Bavarian Constitution is severely disrupted by the pre-selection of certain candidates and, thirdly, the “historical tradition” of a claim weighs less than a “constitutional reorganization”. The Bavarian Constitutional Court ruled that the expansion of the concordat chairs did not violate the Bavarian constitution and, in its decision of April 11, 1980, invoked that the Bavarian state could corresponding Christian sense is granted, because otherwise a majority would occur by a modest minority. "Therefore, the state may grant the Church" to a certain extent rights of participation or co-determination, which are to ensure a teaching and research offer at the educational science faculties of the universities, that enables students of the two main Christian denominations to later take lessons according to the principles of the Christian denominations in elementary schools. ”A member of the Constitutional Court put forward this opinion, which was represented by the majority of the court chtshofes a special vote in which the concordat chairs were described as not compatible with the Bavarian constitution.

2008 one was in the course of selection procedure , which was about a Practical Philosophy Department at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, several requests for preliminary injunction pending. The applications were rejected by the Ansbach Administrative Court because some of the applicants had not applied for the position. The applicant, who had applied, was told that she could not apply for interim legal protection until the foreseeable appointment of a candidate or the intended appointment of another applicant by way of a competitor lawsuit . The appeal against this decision at the Bavarian Administrative Court was unsuccessful. After the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg prepared the list of appointments for the chair and after it had granted the candidate in second position on the list of appointments, the applicant submitted an application for provisional legal protection on May 28, 2010. In addition, on August 30, 2010, a lawsuit was filed in the main proceedings. In the proceedings for preliminary legal protection, the VG Ansbach prohibited the university from filling the chair on December 13, 2010 pending a decision on the legality of the application process. On April 5, 2011, the university informed the Ansbach Administrative Court that the candidate for appointment, who was in second place on the list of appeal, had refused the appeal made to her. Since the list of appointments was exhausted, the current appointment procedure was canceled. The action for a continuation of the declaratory judgment was dismissed by judgment of July 28, 2011. The university intends to advertise the chair again.

In April 2010, the Greens submitted an application to the Bavarian State Parliament in which they asked the Bavarian State Government to start negotiations with the Catholic Church in order to change the Concordat and thus transfer the Concordat chairs to regular chairs. The application was rejected by the parliamentary groups of the CSU, FDP and the Free Voters and did not receive the necessary majority with the votes of the Greens and SPD.

literature

  • Manfred Baldus : Denominational professorships outside of theology at German state universities. In: Peter Hanau et al. (Ed.): Scientific law in transition. Memorandum for Hartmut Krüger. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-10570-2 , pp. 21-45 ( publications on public law 866).
  • Max Liedtke : Do we still need concordat chairs? In: Educational Science. Vol. 11, 2000, Issue 22, ISSN  0938-5363 , pp. 9-34 ( online ( Memento from September 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive )).
  • Konrad Lotter : The concordat chairs at the Bavarian universities. Reshaping and suppression of philosophy by the Catholic religion. In: contradiction . Issue 45, 2007, pp. 53-66 ( online ).
  • Daniel Gotthardt : Concordat Chairs - The Influence of the Church on Non-Theological Professorships. In: MIZ - materials and information currently. Issue 3/07, ISSN  0170-6748 , ( online )

Web links

Wiktionary: Concordat chair  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bavarian bishops want to forego concordat chairs
  2. ↑ Answer written question from the Green politician Ulrike Gote (PDF; 93 kB)
  3. ↑ Answer of the North Rhine-Westphalian state government to a small request from the Member of Parliament Ralf Michalowsky . Printed matter 15/2138, June 1, 2011, accessed June 8, 2011.
  4. ↑ Az .: Vf. 17-VII-77 BayVerfGerEntsch. Vol. 39, 1980
  5. ↑ BayVerfGerEntsch. Vol. 39, 1980, p. 79
  6. ↑ BayVerfGerEntsch. Vol. 39, 1980, p. 80
  7. ↑ BayVerfGerEntsch. Vol. 39, 1980, pp. 82-87
  8. ↑ Press release: lawsuit against concordat chair. In: bildungsklick.de. GEW Bayern, June 2, 2008, accessed January 24, 2011 .
  9. ^ VGH approves occupation of the concordat chairs. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 102 of May 5, 2009, p. 34.
  10. ↑ Ansbach Administrative Court stops re-filling a concordat chair
  11. ↑ press release press release
  12. ^ Motion by the Greens in the Bavarian State Parliament