Higher Regional Court of Cologne

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Court building on Reichenspergerplatz
Higher Regional Court of Cologne (03) .jpg

The Cologne Higher Regional Court is one of the three higher regional courts in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia . Around 120 judges and around 250 other judicial employees work here.

Seat and District of the Court

The court has its seat in Cologne-Neustadt-Nord , Reichenspergerplatz 1 (50670 Cologne). The judicial district includes the administrative district of Cologne . More than four million people live in it. The district includes the three regional courts of Aachen, Cologne and Bonn with a total of 23 local courts. At the Higher Regional Court are 12,801 lawyers and general counsel attorneys admitted (as at 1st January 2018).

history

Courthouse in 1910

The Higher Regional Court of Cologne (OLG Cologne) emerged from the " Rhenish Court of Appeal in Cologne ", which Friedrich Wilhelm III. by cabinet order of June 21, 1819 with initially 26 judges. Heinrich Gottfried Wilhelm Daniels (1819–1827) became the first president . Like all higher regional courts in Germany, the Cologne Higher Regional Court was established by the Courts Constitution Act (GVG) of January 27, 1877. The current authority designation "Higher Regional Court" can be traced back to the Reich judicial laws that came into force on October 1, 1879. The former “Appellhof” in Cologne, after which - due to its location at the time - Appellhofplatz in Cologne's old town is still named, was the central court of appeal in the Prussian Rhine Province . He had an important position among the Prussian courts, because his district comprised the major part of the Prussian provinces Kleve - Jülich  - Berg and Niederrhein as well as Saarbrücken . The only exception was a part assigned to the Westphalian court organization with the districts of Rees , Essen and Duisburg . At that time, French law was applied in the Rhineland during and after the French era , namely the five Napoleonic codes ( Code civil ). This only changed on January 1, 1900 when the Civil Code came into force . In order to relieve the Cologne Higher Regional Court, the district court districts of Düsseldorf, Elberfeld and Kleve were transferred to the newly formed Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court in September 1906 .

In October 1911, the Cologne Higher Regional Court moved into a new judicial building on Reichenspergerplatz in Cologne's Neustadt-Nord. After the First World War , the Cologne Higher Regional Court district was again reduced to include the Saarbrücken Regional Court district. Because the Saar referendum of January 13, 1935 brought the Saar area back to Germany as a federal state, whereby the Saarbrücken regional court district fell to the Zweibrücken Higher Regional Court on January 1, 1938 . With the beginning of the Third Reich, the rule of law was largely abandoned, especially in criminal law. The storming of the courthouse on Reichenspergerplatz, which the SA and SS undertook on March 31, 1933, to arrest all Jewish or even “Jewish-looking” lawyers and transport them to the police headquarters in open garbage trucks was symbolic of this . The bombing raids on April 20/21, 1944 and from October 13, 1944 also hit the OLG Cologne. On December 1, 1944, the incumbent OLG President confirmed that only 50 of the 400 or so rooms of the OLG were still usable after the air raids, while the justice building on Appellhofplatz was largely destroyed. On January 10, 1946, the members of the Cologne Higher Regional Court met in the provisionally prepared meeting room of the criminal senate to reopen their court. The "Supreme Court for the British Zone " was established in March 1948 and existed until September 1950. It was a supreme court established by the British occupation authorities for the British occupation zone, which was responsible for this as a review instance. It had its seat in room 301 of today's OLG and was dissolved when the Federal Court of Justice was founded . The Supreme Court was the only court of its kind in the three western zones of occupation and tried more than 550 cases with over 1,000 defendants exclusively for Nazi crimes.

The Koblenz Regional Court , founded in November 1946, took over the Koblenz and Trier regional courts from Cologne . The Cologne Higher Regional Court kept the district courts of Cologne, Bonn and Aachen. From then until April 1981, the Cologne civil justice system was concentrated on Reichenspergerplatz and the criminal justice system on Appellhofplatz.

Today the OLG Cologne has 121 judges (35 of them female judges). According to § 116 GVG, the OLG has civil and criminal panels . The Senates are the so-called Arbitration Bodies of the Higher Regional Courts. The OLG Cologne has 28 civil senates (8 of which are also entrusted with family matters), including a senate with agricultural matters and one with inland waterway matters. There is also a senate for building land matters, for notary matters and for antitrust law. Criminal matters are dealt with by two criminal senates, which are also senates for fines. With almost 95,000 new entries, the OLG Cologne ranks 6th among all 24 German OLGs.

Court hierarchy

The OLG stands between the Regional Court and the Federal Court of Justice in the structure of the courts , and between the District Court and the Federal Court of Justice in family and child cases . In criminal matters that are within the jurisdiction of the federal government , it acts as a "lower federal court" in organ lending . The Cologne Higher Regional Court is the appeal , complaint or revision instance in the ordinary jurisdiction . The court holder is the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Like every higher regional court, the higher regional court of Cologne is superordinate to the Federal Court of Justice . The regional courts of Aachen , Bonn and Cologne are subordinate with the local courts subordinate to these courts . These district courts include the central dunning court responsible for the Cologne Higher Regional Court , the Euskirchen District Court .

The Cologne Higher Regional Court has special jurisdiction to act as one of the two higher Rhine navigation courts responsible in the German area of ​​the Rhine (the other is the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court ).

Famous official and famous trials

Johann Conrad Adenauer (the father of Konrad Adenauer ) initially worked here from July 1873 in the middle civil servant career as an appeal court secretary and made it up to the chancellery in 1883 (until 1906). Son Konrad Adenauer was an assistant judge at the Cologne Regional Court between December 1905 and March 1906, in order to be able to transfer to a vacant position as a notary in the country more quickly.

The OLG Cologne often had to deal with spectacular regional disputes. This included the cases about Kölsch beer . The Küppers Kölsch brewery was sued in the first instance in 1962 before the Cologne Regional Court and in a court settlement on December 18, 1964, the Cologne Higher Regional Court obliged not to use the name "Küppers-Kölsch" without clearly indicating its Cologne brewery. In November 1968 it decided that "Kölsch" was a generic and denomination of origin. The BGH, as the court of appeal, overturned this ruling, referred the proceedings back to the OLG in May 1970 and ordered it to make determinations as to whether the "designation 'Kölsch" is still taken today as an indication of origin and to which region of origin it is after Traffic opinion. ”In October 1980 the OLG Cologne ruled in a legal dispute about the brewing location of Kölsch. Kölsch is not only a generic name, but also a geographical designation of origin.

The publisher M. DuMont Schauberg , which represents the Cologne tabloid newspaper EXPRESS , sued the free daily 20 Minuten in the Cologne newspaper war in February 2000 for unfair competition , which was confirmed both by the Cologne Higher Regional Court (judgment of May 1, 2001) and later by the Federal Court of Justice (judgment of May 20, 2001). November 2003) was rejected because free commuter newspapers such as “20 Minuten”, like established daily newspapers, are protected by the basic right of freedom of the press and this takes precedence over the law against unfair competition as long as no existence-threatening effects are proven.

The Cartel Senate of the OLG Cologne decided on April 11, 2014 in the so-called “ gold bear dispute” between the confectionery manufacturers Haribo and Lindt & Sprüngli that the overall impression of the “chocolate teddy” is not made up of shape and color alone and that it does not damage its reputation present. Because of a “cross-over collision” between the word mark and the three-dimensional design, the case is of fundamental importance, so that a revision was approved by the BGH. The latter decided that Lindt was neither infringing Haribo's gold bear brands nor was it an improper imitation of its fruit gum products.

The President of the Higher Regional Court was Margarete Gräfin von Schwerin , who was introduced to her office on January 23, 2017 , until she retired on December 31, 2019 . Her predecessor was Peter Kamp (2014 to 2016), whose predecessor was Johannes Riedel (2005 to 2014). The office of President of the Higher Regional Court is currently vacant due to a competitor lawsuit.

building

Staircase of the OLG Cologne

Excavation work for the new courthouse began on October 10, 1907. It replaced the justice building on Appellhofplatz , which is named after the Court of Appeal and which today houses the Cologne Finance and Administrative Court . The plans were made by the Prussian construction officer Paul Thoemer . At the request of Kaiser Wilhelm II , a tower was added to the design, which was destroyed in World War II. At the time of the inauguration, the courthouse was the largest in Germany and had the most modern equipment. The new palatial courthouse devoured construction costs of 5.6 million marks and was opened on October 7, 1911. Renovation and renovation work took place on Reichenspergerplatz from 1980. In 1991 the renovation of the main staircase was completed.

Known judges

  • Heinrich Heimsoeth (1811–1887), President of the Senate of the Rhenish Court of Appeal (1856–1870), President of the Rhine. AppGerH (1870–1879), President of the Higher Regional Court of Cologne (1879–1887), Member of the State Council (1884)
  • Oskar Hamm (1839–1920), Attorney General (1896–1899) and President of the Higher Regional Court of Cologne (1899–1905)
  • Alfred Ludwig Wieruszowski (1857–1945), President of the Senate from 1922 until his retirement on April 1, 1926 and professor at the University of Cologne
  • Wilhelm Marx (1863–1946), 1904–1907 judge at the court, 1907–1921 judge at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court, later President of the Senate at the Superior Court in Berlin and Reich Chancellor (1923–1925, 1926–1928)
  • Alfred Kuttenkeuler (1870–1949) last president before the start of the Nazi judiciary (retired early in 1933)
  • Alexander Bergmann (1878–1965), President of the Cologne Higher Regional Court
  • Hans Walter Goldschmidt (1881–1940), professor at the University of Cologne
  • Werner Korintenberg (1898–1981), President of the Higher Regional Court
  • Wilhelm Köhn (1909–1993), a judge at the court from 1955 to 1967, as a marine judge in 1945, five days after the end of the war, passed the probably last two executed death sentences of the Nazi military justice system against Rainer Beck and Bruno Dörfer
  • Josef Wolffram (1910–2001), President of the Cologne Higher Regional Court from 1962 to 1975
  • Dieter Laum, President from 1984 to 1996
  • Johannes Riedel (* 1949), judge at the court from 1985 to 1994, its president from May 2005 to November 2014
  • Karl-Hermann Zoll , judge at the court from 1989 to 2002, now at the Federal Court of Justice
  • Jens-Peter Kurzwelly (* 1944), judge at the court from 1989 to 1993, later at the Federal Court of Justice
  • Bernhard Kapsa (* 1943) from 1986 to 1992 judge at the court, later at the Federal Court of Justice
  • Gerhart Kreft (* 1939), judge at the court from 1979 to 1988, later at the Federal Court of Justice
  • Egon Schneider (1927–2014), former judge at the Cologne Higher Regional Court, later lawyer, German judicial critic

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Meyer: The justice building on Reichenspergerplatz. Cologne.
  • Dieter Laum (Ed.): Rheinische Justiz. Past and present, 175 years of Cologne Higher Regional Court. Schmidt, Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-504-06013-1 .
  • Verena Berchem: The higher regional court of Cologne in the Weimar Republic. Böhlau, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-412-12203-3 .

Web links

Commons : Higher Regional Court Cologne  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Higher Regional Court of Cologne: judicial district. In: olg-koeln.nrw.de. Retrieved January 29, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Federal Bar Association, www.brak.de: Large membership statistics as of January 1, 2018. (PDF; 37.3 kB) Accessed September 5, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Peter Fuchs (Ed.), Chronicle of the History of the City of Cologne , Volume 2, 1991, p. 229 f.
  4. ↑ Barbara Manthe, Judges in National Socialist Captivity , 2013, p. 118
  5. ↑ today alternately shipping or 1st criminal senate
  6. ↑ Konrad Adenauer / Peter Mensing / Rudolf Morsey / Hans-Peter Schwarz / Stiftung Bundeskanzler-Adenauer-Haus, Adenauer , Volume 9, 2009, p. 423
  7. ^ LG Cologne, judgment 1963, Az .: 24 O 53/62
  8. ^ BGH, judgment of May 22, 1970, Az .: I ZR 125/68
  9. ↑ OLG Cologne, judgment of October 1, 1980, Az .: 6 U 17/77
  10. ^ BGH, judgment of November 20, 2003, Az .: I ZR 151/01
  11. ↑ OLG Cologne, judgment of April 11, 2014, Az .: 6 U 230/12
  12. ^ BGH, judgment of September 23, 2015, Az .: I ZR 105/14 = BGHZ 207, 71
  13. ↑ [1]
  14. ^ Justice Online
  15. ↑ [2]
  16. ↑ Klara van Eyll, Old address books tell , 1993, p. 202
  17. ↑ It is assumed that Rainer Beck and Bruno Dörfer represent the last victims of the Nazi military justice. (Source: Der Spiegel : "In the interest of male breeding" , dated: May 12, 1997; accessed on: September 29, 2019) Cases after that were at least not known, but on the other hand the High Command of the Navy in Meierwik (in the special area Mürwik ) still confirmed Until May 15, 1945 death sentences in northern Germany and Norway, with the subsequent demand to carry them out. (Source: Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 109 f.)
  18. ^ The decline of the rule of law ( Memento from December 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ); in: Humanist Union of September 26, 2006

Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′ 16 ″  N , 6 ° 57 ′ 46 ″  E