Otto Eger

Otto Eger (born October 19, 1877 in Darmstadt , † April 11, 1949 in Gießen ) was a German legal scholar . As a professor at the University of Giessen (1918–1946) he trained several generations of lawyers. As an avowed nationalist , he sympathized with National Socialism and acted accordingly.

life and work

Otto Eger, son of the linguist Gustav Eger (1827-1894), studied law at the universities of Göttingen , Berlin and Gießen from 1895 , where he passed the legal traineeship in 1898. During his studies in Gießen in 1896 he became a member of the student association Academic Society Das Kloster . He then entered the legal preparatory service and, at the same time, wrote his doctoral thesis with Gerhard Alexander Leist on the private law topic "Representation in property acquisition". The bar exam was Eger in 1903 with honors.

After Eger was employed as a faculty assistant at the University of Gießen in 1905, he turned to legal history in his research. Under the influence of GA Leist and Ludwig Mitteis , he mainly dealt with legal papyrology . With the text on the Egyptian land registry in Roman times (1909) he completed his habilitation in 1909 in Leipzig at Mitteis.

As early as 1910, Eger was appointed full professor of Roman law at the University of Basel . In 1914 he was the rector of the university. Shortly thereafter, he interrupted his activity because he was a German and reserve officer in the First World War . In 1916 Eger returned to Basel after being unable to work at the front due to a serious illness. During the war he was offered a position at the University of Prague , which he refused.

In September 1917 Eger received a call from his Giessen alma mater , which he accepted on April 1, 1918. In Gießen he worked until the end of his life; he refused a call to Koenigsberg (1920).

After the end of the First World War, the university was in a difficult social and economic situation. Eger endeavored to improve this through his involvement in academic self-administration. In 1921 he was the first chairman of the "Gießener Studentenhilfe eV", the later "Studentenwerk Gießen", which met the urgent needs of the time. In 1931 the first students were able to move into a building built in 1929 on Leihgesterner Weg. The building of the Giessen student union, which is now a listed building and which still houses a dormitory and a cafeteria, was later named after Otto Eger.

He was rector of the university twice, in 1923/1924 and 1930/1931.

Eger's scientific work took a back seat to his other duties. He was less concerned with Roman law than with the law in force, to which he also dedicated his rectorate speeches. Due to his involvement in various civil and right-wing associations, he was more active as an organizer and mediator than as a researcher.

As a radical nationalist, he was hostile to the Weimar Republic . Shortly after the First World War, he founded a company of temporary volunteers in Giessen who wanted to join the Kapp Putsch in 1920 , but did not get involved after it was suppressed. At this time, Eger campaigned for the rector of the University of Marburg to ensure that the Mechterstädt murders would be trivialized by the Marburg student corps. For a long time, Eger worked as a local contact for the Escherich organization , which supported persecuted putschists. He also appeared as a keynote speaker at the celebration of the founding of the Reich at the University of Giessen, which he used for revanchist propaganda.

Eger's attitude towards National Socialism was that of a revanchist opportunist. In addition to his involvement in reactionary associations, he became a member of National Socialist organizations such as the NS-Volkswohlfahrt , the NS-Rechtswahrerbund and the NSDAP (from 1941). He also appeared in civil and academic associations as a staunch supporter of the regime. For example, as chairman of the Gießen Concert Association, on the occasion of its 150th anniversary in 1942 , he praised the rulers with all the propaganda slogans. Among the legal dissertations that Eger supervised during the Nazi era, there are some that are entirely in the service of the regime and serve the Nazi injustice justice.

In the 1930s, Eger devoted his research to legal history. In addition, from 1935 he was in charge of the William G. Kerckhoff Foundation in Bad Nauheim. From 1939 onwards, biliary disease often prevented him from teaching.

The Second World War and the collapse of the Nazi regime brought Eger some setbacks. His two sons died in the war. From 1945 Eger became more involved in the university administration. However, its main task was to liquidate the university, which had been closed by the occupiers. He died after a long illness at the age of 71.

After his death, his attitude and activity were veiled under the National Socialists. In an obituary at that time, his student Friedrich Weber only states: "The developments at the German universities since 1933 caused him to withdraw more and more from his positions in the university and in the student union." Regime gone. Eger's statements at that time, his commitment to the ideology of those in power and his promotion and supervision of National Socialist doctoral theses contradict this assumption.

Against this background, there were several initiatives to rename the Otto Eger Home, the first in 1989. From 2009 to 2012, a student working group tried to do this. In December 2015, the board of directors of the student union finally decided to rename the building to Mildred-Harnack-Fish -Haus after the resistance fighter against the Nazi regime.

Fonts (selection)

• Representation in the acquisition of ownership of movable property . Giessen 1900 (dissertation)
• On the Egyptian land registry in Roman times . Leipzig / Berlin 1909 (habilitation thesis). Reprinted in Aalen 1966
• Legal history of the New Testament . Basel 1919 (Rector's speech)
• From today's and future German civil law . Giessen 1923 (Rector's speech)
• Law and Economic Power . Giessen 1931
• The law of the German cartels . Berlin 1932
• Report on the 1st public Kerckhoff lecture of the William G. Kerckhoff Foundation on July 23, 1935 in the Kerckhoff Institute in Bad Nauheim . Bad Nauheim 1935

literature

• Friedrich Weber: In memoriam Otto Eger . In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History. Romance Department . 167, pp. 623-627 (1950)
• Friedrich Weber:  Eger, Otto. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 327 ( digitized version ).
• Jörg-Peter Jatho, Gerd Simon: Giessen historian in the Third Reich . Giessen 2008
• Reimann, Bruno W .: Another political mentor - Otto Eger, Professor of Law, founder of the Giessen student corps. In: Reimann, Bruno W.:Avantgarden of Fascism. Student body and strong connections at the University of Giessen 1918–1937. Frankfurt a. M. u. a. 2007
• Reimann, Bruno W .: The Otto Eger Black Book. Giessen: Cento Verlag 2013

Web links

Wikisource: Otto Eger  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by Otto Eger in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Black Ring. Membership directory. Darmstadt 1930, p. 22.
2. ↑ https://www.giessener-allgemeine.de/giessen/warum-otto-eger-heim-umbenannt-wird-12061241.html
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Bruno W. Reimann: Otto Eger, the legal interpreter and Nazi professor ( Memento of May 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on September 5, 2012)
4. ↑ Bruno W. Reimann: The Upper Hessian History Association, Otto Eger and the clean historical image of a region ( Memento from July 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on September 5, 2012)
5. ↑ ^{a b} Bruno W. Reimann: Nazi dissertations under the professor of law Otto Eger ( Memento from July 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on September 5, 2012)
6. ^ Weber (1951) 626.
7. ↑ What is behind the new name for the former Otto Eger Home. In: giessener-allgemeine.de. December 14, 2015, accessed December 14, 2015 .