Otto Depenheuer

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Otto Depenheuer (born July 22, 1953 in Cologne ) is a German legal scholar . He is professor for public law , general political theory and legal philosophy at the law faculty of the University of Cologne .

person

Otto Depenheuer went to school in Cologne and Bad Homburg vor der Höhe and graduated from high school in 1973 , after which he did his military service with the 5th Medical Battalion in Rennerod . This was followed by studying law at the University of Bonn , the first state examination in law in 1979 and the second state examination in 1983.

From 1979 to 1981 he worked as an editorial assistant for Kurt Jeserich and completed his legal clerkship in the district of the Cologne Higher Regional Court . From 1980 he also worked at the chair for public law for Josef Isensee and received his doctorate in 1985 on state financing and planning in the hospital sector . In 1988 the wording appeared as a limit. Theses on a topos of the constitutional interpretation . In 1991 he completed his habilitation thesis Solidarity in the Constitutional State. Foundation of a normative theory of distribution , which was funded by the German Research Foundation. It was not published until 2007, almost 20 years later, as a books on demand publication. Already during the habilitation process, Depenheuer was criticized for using right-wing basic concepts and thought patterns and at the same time giving the right spectrum a justification with the work - a criticism that was continued in a very similar way to the monograph Self-Assertion of the Rule of Law , which was also published in 2007 ( see below), which Wolfgang Schäuble recommended reading during his time as Federal Minister of the Interior.

In 1993 he took over the chair for public law and legal philosophy at the University of Mannheim from Gerd Roellecke , where he was dean of the law faculty in the winter semester 1996/1997 and in the summer semester 1997 . In 1999 he accepted a professorship for general political theory, public law and legal philosophy and became director of the seminar for state philosophy and legal policy at the University of Cologne , which had previously been headed by Martin Kriele . Depenheuer is the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung's liaison professor in Cologne .

activities

Depenheuer's teaching and research interests focus on state theory and state law , legal and state philosophy , legal theory and constitutional history, as well as the analysis of current legal policy issues. The focus of his academic work is on property law , security law and the structural requirements of social security .

Depenheuer is vice-president of the Görres-Gesellschaft and chairman of the scientific advisory board of the German Property Foundation as well as a member of the board of trustees of the Society for Legal Policy, the scientific advisory board of the Essen Talks and the board of directors of the Institute for Historical Anthropology .

He is the editor of the Property Library , co-editor of the legal and political science publications of the Görres Society , the treatises on state church law , the German-Turkish forum for constitutional law and the Schönburg Talks .

Depenheuer has been a workstream leader and legal expert at the Agency for the Modernization of Ukraine (AMU), which has set itself the goal of supporting Ukraine in its further development , since May 2015 .

Positions

property

Integrity and protection of property as a fundamental bastion for freedom against all forms of legal marginalization and political questioning is one of the main concerns of Depenheuer (Library of Property) .

social insurance

Since his dissertation on state planning and financing in the hospital sector, Depenheuer has been advocating an organization of health security that is more oriented towards the autonomy and self-determination of citizens.

Social justice

Since his habilitation thesis, Depenheuer has repeatedly addressed the structural requirements of social justice (solidarity in the free constitutional state) . In all its forms, this requires more than goodwill and pure morality, but is based on fundamental legal decisions that must be openly named and democratically legitimized (not all people become brothers) .

Security policy

Depenheuer caused a sensation with his book Self-assertion of the rule of law , published in 2007 . Against the background of the Federal Constitutional Court's decision on the Aviation Security Act, he pleads for a taboo-free reflection on the fundamentals of successful free-democratic statehood in the age of the terrorist threat. In doing so, he resolutely opposes demonizing the necessities of state self-assertion a priori or letting it be done subcutaneously by the democratic legislature and public opinion. Which loss of freedom a free society is willing to accept for its self-assertion or whether it decides to give up for the sake of its constitutional integrity must be decided in open discourse. This position in particular is highly controversial in politics, science and the media.

Depenheuer's opponents accuse him, in particular, of a "pleasure in an emergency" and the reference to Carl Schmitt . His critics also problematize his understanding of the state, which would stand against the Enlightenment understanding of statehood insofar as it would give the state more value than the individual citizen deserves. Depenheuer thinks that there is an obligation of the citizen to sacrifice himself for the community (so-called citizen sacrifice ). He writes this when he z. B. criticizes: “Modern welfare societies cannot give reasons for why their citizens should sacrifice their lives for abstract ideals instead of the individual pursuit of happiness .” Or demands: “In a [...] tragic decision-making situation, the righteous citizen can only achieve his dignity in this find that he subordinates his interests to the interests of others or the common good, up to and including the sacrifice of his life. "

He is also accused of inaccurate source work. He takes statements by the Federal Constitutional Court and the ethnologist René Girard out of context in order to make them useful for his argumentation. He cites the latter e.g. B. clearly against his intention in Das Bürgeropfer im Rechtsstaat (p. 60).

Limits of Rationality

Time and again Depenheuer's writings revolve around the role of rational reason in legal discourse. The idea of ​​the state as an expression of modern rationalism, which, based on the individual, designs the state and constitution on the drawing board of reason, requires relativizing skepticism for reasons of reason. In humor man recovers from the unreasonable demands of rationality; and the more intense the rational demands, the stronger the need for compensatory humor. Depenheuer advocates inconsistentism: "It can be sensible not to be sensible to the last." State form of freedom, tolerance and distance, of skeptical pragmatism instead of rational perfectionism, of relativism against ideological absolutism, of the informal clique against totalitarianism.

State and Churches

Finally, Depenheuer addresses the role of the Christian people's churches in the age of decreasing religious ties, the de-Christianization of society with the simultaneous establishment of Islamic faiths. In particular, he warns against a self- secularization of the churches and advocates that they invest their energy in the proclamation of their religious message instead of marginalizing themselves by participating in the general political discourse into an association among associations.

Artistic resume

His church music training in the diocese of Limburg (B-exam) followed further organ studies, until 1973 with Rosalinde Haas in Frankfurt am Main , until 1976 with André Fleury and Jean Langlais in Paris . In 1986 he received the Diplôme de Concert at the Schola Cantorum Paris in the class of Marie-Louise Langlais-Jacquet . Since 1975 he has been working regularly at the Bonn Minster Basilica and at the St. Elisabeth Church in Bonn. More than 300 concerts at home and abroad followed (including in Notre-Dame de Paris , St. Clotilde in Paris, the Dormition Church in Jerusalem , St. John the Evangelist in New York City , the Christ Church in Mannheim, the Marktkirche in Halle an der Saale , St. Leonhard in Frankfurt am Main, but especially in the Bonn Minster Basilica and St. Elisabeth Church) as well as radio recordings for Südwestfunk . Particularly noteworthy are the cyclical performance of the entire organ work by Charles-Marie Widor in the winter months of 1982/83 as well as the complete liturgical and concert performance of the organ cycle L'Orgue Mystique by Charles Tournemire 1996-1999.

Works

As an author

Monographs
as co-editor
Articles (selection)
  • Integration by constitution? On the identity concept of constitutional patriotism . In: Johannes C. Papalekas (Ed.): National identity in the cultural field of tension. Nation, constitution, migration . Signum-Verlag, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-85436-189-0 , pp. 43-53.
  • Citizen responsibility in a democratic constitutional state . In: VVDStRL , Vol. 55 (1996), ISBN 3-11-015221-5 , pp. 90-127.
  • The constitutional defense mandate of the Bundeswehr. Basic questions of the external deployment of German armed forces . In: DVBl. 1997, pp. 685-688.
  • Truth or peace? The fundamentalist challenge of the modern state . In: Fundamentalism as a challenge for the state, church and society . Aschendorff Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-402-04364-5 (Essen Conversations on State and Church, Vol. 33), pp. 5-35.
  • Between state sovereignty and human rights. Basic questions of state immigration policy . In: Mahulena Hofmann, Herbert Küpper (eds.): Continuity and New Beginning, State and Law in Europe at the Beginning of the 21st Century, Festschrift for Georg Brunner . Nomos Verlag , Baden-Baden 2001, ISBN 3-7890-7262-1 , pp. 46-61.
  • Fundamental rights and conservatism . In: Detlef Merten, Hans-Jürgen Papier (ed.): Handbook of Fundamental Rights in Germany and Europe . Vol. 1, Verlag Müller, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-8114-3330-X , § 11, pp. 441-476.
  • The public office . In: Josef Isensee, Paul Kirchhof (ed.): Handbook of the constitutional law of the Federal Republic of Germany, Vol. 3 . 3. Edition. Verlag Müller, Heidelberg, 2005, ISBN 3-8114-3302-4 , § 36, pp. 87-130.
  • Politics out of Christian responsibility. State philosophical considerations . In: Dieter Althaus u. a. (Ed.): Courage, Hope, Confidence. Festschrift for Bernhard Vogel . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2007, ISBN 978-3-506-76481-2 , pp. 27-38.
  • The civil sacrifice in the rule of law . In the S. (Ed.): State in the Word - Festschrift for Josef Isensee . CF Müller, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-8114-5362-9 , pp. 43-60.
  • Stroke of genius "defensive democracy". A sixty year success story . In: The Political Opinion 460 (2008), pp. 15-18.

As editor

Since 1989 Depenheuer has also published numerous organ editions, including the entire organ works by Camille Saint-Saëns and all of the organ sonatas by Gustav Merkel . More recently he has also presented organ arrangements of instrumental works, including A. Ottorino Respighi (Antiche Danze e Arie), Gabriel Fauré (currently 2 volumes), Théodore Dubois and Charles-Marie Widor .

Overview of the editions published by Butz-Verlag, Bonn:

  1. Transcriptions from the sacred vocal works .
  2. Transcriptions from the instrumental works .

literature

  • Philipp Thiée: The sacrifice should create community . In: New criminal policy. Issue 2/2008, p. 60.
  • Rainer Maria Kiesow: Sacrificed: Depenheuer . In: myops . Issue 2 (2008), p. 14 ff.
  • Horst Heinrich Jakobs: People's comrades . In: myops . Issue 8 (2010), p. 4ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Horst Heinrich Jakobs, in: myops 8/2010, pp. 4 to 11.
  2. ↑ See Schäuble's night reading , Die Zeit, No. 33 of August 9, 2007, p. 7.
  3. ↑ AMU team starts program work . APA-OTS Original Text Service, May 13, 2015.
  4. ↑ Otto Depenheuer: The citizen victim in the rule of law , in: Ders. (Ed.): State in Word - Festschrift for Josef Isensee , Heidelberg 2007, 43 (50).
  5. ↑ Otto Depenheuer: The citizen victim in the rule of law , in: Ders. (Ed.): State in the Word - Festschrift for Josef Isensee , Heidelberg 2007, 43 (57).
personal data
SURNAME Depenheuer, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German legal philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne