Max Ernst Mayer

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Max Ernst Mayer (born July 2, 1875 in Mannheim , † June 25, 1923 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German criminal lawyer and legal philosopher .

Life

Max Mayer, son of the Mannheim tobacco manufacturer Emil Mayer (1848–1910) and Johanna Goldschmidt (1853–1937) from Kassel , came from a wealthy Mannheim notable family of Jewish descent, but was himself baptized as a Protestant. After graduating from school in Mannheim, he first studied from 1893 three years at the universities of Leipzig, Heidelberg and Berlin, the subjects of literary history, art history and philosophy. In 1896 he returned to Heidelberg out of love for philosophy, where he received his doctorate in philosophy that same year under Kuno Fischer with a work about the Kant student Sigismund Beck . Shortly thereafter, Mayer switched to studying law and political science at the Kaiser Wilhelm University of Strasbourg in Alsace , which was founded shortly after the establishment of the Empire in 1872 . Interrupted by a one-semester stay in Munich, Mayer also obtained his legal doctorate in Strasbourg (1898) with a treatise on the criminal law concept of causality. In 1900 he completed his habilitation with Fritz van Calker on "The culpable act and its types in criminal law".

It was not until 1910 that Mayer received the post of non-regular extraordinary professor in Strasbourg, after he had already been awarded the title of professor in 1906. It was not until 1919 that Mayer was appointed to a full professorship in Frankfurt am Main. His financial independence enabled him to do further research while waiting. After his work on general criminal doctrine - in addition to the already mentioned writings, especially with his controversially discussed norm-theoretical treatise "Legal norms and cultural norms" (1903) - he dealt, among other things, with military criminal law, which he had learned through his teacher van Calker. In addition, Mayer made a name for himself through his involvement in the overall reform of criminal law: first in 1906 through his collaboration in the "Comparative Representation of German and Foreign Law" under his teacher van Calker; four years later, in 1910, at the “critical discussion of the preliminary draft 1909” under Franz von Liszt and Paul Felix Aschrott . In 1915 his textbook appeared on the general part of criminal law , which forms the conclusion of his criminal law work and at the same time brings them together and emphasizes them.

The war year 1916 was the turning point in his academic career: Mayer resigned his post in Strasbourg and went to the German-occupied Vilna , at that time the seat of the German military administration, where he worked as a military prosecutor until the end of the war. After the end of the war he returned to Mannheim, where in early 1919 he was offered a position at the young foundation university in Frankfurt am Main. Mayer was the successor of the Liszt student Ernst Delaquis on his extraordinary position. In November of the same year, nineteen years after his habilitation in Strasbourg, this was followed by the long-awaited appointment as full professor for the subjects of criminal law, criminal process and legal philosophy alongside Berthold Freudenthal , as the second criminal lawyer alongside Mayer and first dean of the faculty. Mayer's house on Mendelssohnstrasse, located in the upmarket Westend adjacent to the university, was considered a “place of noble hospitality”. Mayer, who was one of the few who owned an automobile with a chauffeur, led the life of a bachelor and “gentleman scholar” (Kantorowicz). He was also involved in the university administration, was dean of his faculty in 1920/21 and - suspiciously eyed by his colleague Freudenthal - hopes for the rector's office, which was thwarted by his untimely death. The only major publication from his time in Frankfurt and at the same time Mayer's last independent publication is the “Philosophy of Law”, with the appearance of which in 1922 he fulfilled a long-awaited dream. Max Ernst Mayer died in Frankfurt on June 25, 1923 at the age of 48.

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Mayer's independent academic work (Habilitation 1900) fell into the eventful first quarter of the 20th century. The criminal law scholarship of this time is still completely under the spell of the school dispute between the "classic" ( Karl Binding ) and the "modern" criminal law school ( Franz von Liszt ), which since the eighties of the 19th century the criminal law discussion about the meaning and purpose of criminal law and punishment dominated. Shortly after the turn of the century, at the instigation of the Reich Justice Office, extensive efforts were made to reform the entire criminal law and criminal procedure law, which rekindled the initially settled confrontation and gave it additional political explosiveness.

It starts with the Comparative Presentation of German and Foreign Law , an encyclopedic work on comparative law, in which almost all criminal law studies - including Mayer - participate. Gustav Radbruch , who is three years younger than him , is also involved , with whom he not only shares his love for the "sister subjects of criminal law and legal philosophy" (Kantorowicz), but is also in regular private contact. Together with Radbruch and Emil Lask of the same age , Mayer becomes one of the main representatives of the southwest German school of neo-Kantianism in legal philosophy , a philosophy of value and culture that goes back to Kant ( Wilhelm Windelband , Heinrich Rickert ), which around the turn of the century both legal philosophy and jurisprudence from the clutches of Legitimate positivism and general legal theory liberated and their rebirth as scientific disciplines favored.

The starting point for methodical emancipation - also against the triumphant advance of the natural sciences - is the distinction between natural and cultural sciences. These do not differ according to their subject, but methodically: while the natural sciences teach whatever is, i.e. proceed in a generalizing manner ( nomothetic sciences), the cultural sciences proceed in an individualizing manner: they teach what once was ( idiographic sciences). Since the individualizing cultural scientist cannot turn to any random event, he has to make a selection, in other words: he has to evaluate. This also applies to jurisprudence, which has its own methodological significance as a cultural science due to its relation to purposes, values ​​and ideas. The value-related method had a particular influence in the field of criminal law dogmatics, which under its influence at the beginning of the 20th century freed itself from the value-free causal-scientific approach and switched to value-related normative-teleological concept formation.

source

The present text is largely based on an authorized excerpt from the essay by S. Ziemann, cf. literature

literature

  • Winfried Hassemer : Max Ernst Mayer (1875–1923) , in: Bernhard Diestelkamp / Michael Stolleis (eds.): Lawyers at the University of Frankfurt am Main , Baden-Baden 1989, pp. 84–93.
  • Sascha Ziemann: Max Ernst Mayer (1875–1923). Materials for a biography , in: Jahrbuch der Juristische Zeitgeschichte , Vol. 4, 2002/2003, pp. 395–425.

Works (selection)

  • The relationship between Sigismund Beck and Kant, Philosophical Dissertation Heidelberg, October 30, 1896, C. Winter's University Bookshop: Heidelberg 1896. 52 pp.
  • The causal link between action and success in criminal law. A legal-philosophical study, law and political science dissertation Strasbourg from December 18, 1898, Verlag JHE Heitz: Strasbourg 1898, 151 pp.
  • The culpable act and its types in criminal law. Three definitions of terms, Verlag Hirschfeld: Leipzig 1901; Habilitation thesis Strasbourg 1900; 201 pp.
  • Legal norms and cultural norms, Verlag Schletter: Breslau 1903 (Ernst Beling, Strafrechtliche Abhandlungen, H. 50) 136 p .; Translation into Spanish by José Luis Guzmán Dálbora: Normas jurídicas y normas de cultura, Ed. Hammurabi: Buenos Aires 2000, 173 pp.
  • German military criminal law. (2 vol.), Vol. I general part, vol. II special part, both volumes Verlag Göschen: Leipzig 1907.
  • The general part of German criminal law. Textbook, 1st edition. Winter publishing house: Heidelberg 1915; 2nd unaltered edition 1923, 552 pp.
  • Philosophy of Law, 1st edition Julius Springer: Berlin 1922; 2nd unaltered edition 1926; 3rd edition 1933.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Leopold Ladenburg : Family tree of the Ladenburg family , page 15, Verlag J. Ph. Walther, Mannheim 1882.

Web links