Max Rheinstein

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Max Rheinstein (born July 5, 1899 in Kreuznach , † July 9, 1977 in Schwarzach im Pongau ) was a German-American lawyer .

Life

Germany

Max Rheinstein was the only son from the second marriage of the wine merchant Ferdinand Rheinsteins (1842–1904) with Rosalie Bernheim (1858–1928), the daughter of a legal consultant. After the death of the father, the mother moved back to Munich with her son in 1904 . Rheinstein spent his formative years in Bavaria. The "royal Bavarian high school student" passed the Abitur at the humanistic Wittelsbacher Gymnasium in 1917 (according to another source notabitur 1918). Then he was a soldier in World War I from May (other source June) 1917. The end of the war in November 1918 he experienced with the "Mixed Bavarian Mountain Brigade No. 2" (according to another source with the replacement division of the first Bavarian field artillery regiment). In the winter semester of 1918/19 he began his law studies in Munich , where he still heard Max Weber . In the spring of 1919 he fought against the Soviet Republic . On April 30, 1919 he joined - as he himself said in 1933 - "spontaneously" a resident army and participated in the assault on the War Ministry . Then he guarded the prisoners in the assembly point set up there and stepped on the 3rd / 4th. May time volunteer company of Regensburg Detachments Schaaf, a volunteer corps , as a fighter against Bolshevism (statement of 1933) in which "in the following days the districts rechts der Isar (...) systematically cleaned" . Contrary to the customs of the time, Rheinstein stayed in Munich for the entire duration of his studies. In 1920 he was employed as a "bookkeeper" at Rabel's Institute for Comparative Law . In 1922 he passed his first state examination and then became an assistant to Ernst Rabel . In 1923 he joined the "Working Group of Republican Students" , an association close to the SPD. The SPD even stepped Rheinstein at the 1928th He received his doctorate in 1924 summa cum laude . After the second state examination in 1925, he followed Rabel in 1926 as a research assistant at the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign and International Private Law in Berlin, where he was in charge of the institute's library. In 1929 he married Lilly Abele, a librarian at the sister institute for foreign public law and international law . In May 1930 son John was born, who later was a chemist (according to another source a physicist) at MIT in Cambridge (Mass.) . In 1931 he completed his habilitation at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . He received the venia legendi for German and foreign civil law. Rheinstein's career in Germany broke off in 1933.

It is true that Rheinstein was treated as an exceptional case under the Professional Civil Service Act because he had participated in the suppression of the Soviet Republic. Therefore, he was not immediately released in April 1933. Before that, however, he drew the conclusions from his Jewish origins and his political activities for the SPD by applying to the Berlin representative of the Rockefeller Foundation for a scholarship in early February 1933 , which was granted to him for one year at the end of June. At the beginning of 1934 Rheinstein gave up the institute position.

United States

Rheinstein arrived in New York on September 20, 1933 and began working at Columbia University's Law School the next day . There worked with Elliott E. Cheatham and supported Karl Llewellyn with lectures. He spent the second half of the scholarship from mid to late 1934 at Harvard Law School . There he met Roscoe Pound and Joseph Beale . The foundation extended the scholarship for a further two academic years. In 1935, with the help of Harry A. Bigelow, he came to the University of Chicago Law School as a visiting professor. In 1936 he received the newly established Max Pam Chair for Comparative Law ( "Max Pam Professor of American and Foreign Law and Professor of Political Science" ). First he was an “assistant” , then an “associate” (1937) then a “full professor” (1942; according to another source 1940). He taught there until his retirement in 1968 and was the founder of comparative civil law in the USA as a method and subject. In 1938 Rheinstein became a member of the American Law Institute . In 1940 he became an American citizen. In 1943/44 he was visiting professor in Puerto Rico to advise the university on the reorganization of teaching. In 1945 he was visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin . After the end of World War II, Rheinstein returned to Germany in autumn 1945 as a member of the Legal Division of the American military government and worked in a department of the Allied Control Council in Berlin . There he was responsible for German law. After returning to the USA, he initiated an exchange program for lawyers from both continents, which was the forerunner of today's LL. M. programs. In 1948 he was visiting professor in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan . Other visiting professorships were: 1950 Louisiana State University , 1951 and 1954 Frankfurt am Main, 1955 Cambridge University , 1961 University of Tokyo , 1964 Université Libre de Bruxelles and 1968 University of Munich. After retiring in 1968, he initially stayed in Chicago . In 1976 he moved to Palo Alto , California for health reasons . Because of his persistently poor health, he regularly visited Bad Gastein im Pongau (Austria) in summer . During one of these visits he died in a clinic in Schwarzach-St.Veit. His grave is in his hometown of Munich.

Honors

From 1961 he was an honorary professor at the Facolté Internationale at the University of Strasbourg , and from 1962 at the University of Freiburg . He received an honorary doctorate from Stockholm 1956, Basel 1960, Leuven 1964, FU Brussels 1965, Aix-Marseille 1968. In 1953 he was decorated with the Ordre des Palmes Académiques and awarded him the Federal Cross of Merit. He was an honorary member of the German Society for Comparative Law and since 1968 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Works (selection)

  • Disruption of free employment through illegal influencing of third parties (conspirancy, interference with business or occupation, inducing breach of contract). A study from English law. Diss. 1925; Partial print in RheinZ 14 (1926), p. 60ff.
  • The structure of the contractual obligation in Anglo-American law. Habil. Berlin Leipzig 1932 (reprint 1996).
  • Marriage Stability, Divorce, and the Law. Chicago 1972, ISBN 978-0226717739 .
    • The Law of Divorce and the Problem of Marriage Stability. Vanderbilt Law Review 9 (1956), pp. 633ff.
    • Trends in Marriage and Divorce Law of Western Countries. Law and Contemporary Problems, Volume 18 (1953), pp. 3ff.
  • Cases and Other Materials on the Law of Decedents' Estates. Indianapolis 1947.
  • Introduction to comparative law. 1st edition Munich 1974, 2nd edition Munich 1987.
  • (Ed. By Hans G. Reader): Collected writings. Two volumes, Tübingen 1979.

translator

On law in economy and society. Translation of Max Weber's Economy and Society . Cambridge (Mass.) 1954.

editor

Chief editor of the International encyclopedia of comparative law . Volume IV.

Festschrift

literature

  • Oliver Lepsius:  Rheinstein, Max. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 493 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Hans G. Readers: Farewell to Max Rheinstein , JZ Volume 32 (1977), p. 613ff.
  • Reinhard Rürup , Michael Schüring: Fates and Careers. Memorial book for the researchers expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society by the National Socialists (Series History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism, Volume 14), Göttingen 2008, pp. 305ff. ( ISBN 978-3-89244-797-9 )
  • Ulrich Drobnig : Max Rheinstein (1899–1977). In: Stefan Grundmann , Michael Kloepfer, Christoph G. Paulus, Rainer Schröder, Gerhard Werle (Eds.): Festschrift 200 Years of the Law Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin. Past, present and future. Berlin, New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-89949-629-1 , pp. 627ff.
  • Nadine Rinck: Max Rheinstein - Life and Work (Studies in Law, Volume 262), Hamburg 2011, 452 pages ( ISBN 978-3-8300-5366-8 )
  • Mary Ann Glendon: "The Influence of Max Rheinstein on American Law", in: The influence of German emigrants on the legal development in the USA and in Germany , ed. v. Marcus Lutter, Tübingen, 1993, pp. 171-182. ISBN 3-16-146080-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Reinhard Rürup, Michael Schüring: Fates and Careers. Memorial book for the researchers expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society by the National Socialists (Series History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism, Volume 14), Göttingen 2008, p. 305ff.
  2. ^ Rüdiger Hachtmann : Science management in the "Third Reich". History of the general administration of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Volume II. Göttingen 2007. P. 377f. and memorial book, p. 175
  3. born 1901