Rudolf von Seckendorff

Daniel August Hubert Rudolf Freiherr von Seckendorff-Gutend (born November 22, 1844 in Cologne , † September 23, 1932 in Leipzig ) was a German lawyer .

Life

Rudolf von Seckendorff was the son of the later Attorney General August Heinrich von Seckendorff . In 1856 he moved because of his father's transfer to the Prussian Higher Tribunal from Cologne to Berlin.

After graduating from high school in 1862, he studied law at the University of Berlin until November 1865. After a few interruptions (military service, participation in the Franco-German War from 1870–1871 ) he became assessor at the end of 1871 . His first activity led him to the district court of Duisburg . From 1872 to 1879 he was a prosecutor at the Imperial district court in Metz (in the time of the German Empire belonging Alsace-Lorraine ).

From 1879 to 1899 he worked in the Reich Justice Office and worked there with his later predecessors in the office of Reich Court President Otto von Oehlschläger and Karl Gutbrod . As part of this activity, Seckendorff represented the German Reich twice at the Hague international private law conferences and was a collaborator in the civil procedure amendment of 1898. In the Reich Justice Office he worked on the areas of copyright, procedural law, constitutional and international law and international private law. The preoccupation with the questions of copyright led to his part-time appointment as a permanent member of the patent office.

From 1899 worked as Undersecretary in the Prussian State Ministry . Soon afterwards he was given the part-time position as a member of the Imperial Disciplinary Court in Leipzig, which mainly consisted of members of the Imperial Court.

On June 18, 1905, he took up his post as President of the Reich Court . He described his understanding of office as follows: "In my opinion, it is one of the most beautiful tasks of the Supreme Court to make room for an application of the law in accordance with the general legal conception, provided that this is at all compatible with its wording and intent."

On October 25, 1905, the Reichsgericht decided the controversy for the succession to the throne in favor of the future Prince Leopold IV zur Lippe-Biesterfeld through the IV and VII civil senates chaired by Rudolf von Seckendorff . Decisive for this decision was the equal descent of the Lippe-Biesterfeld line, the recognition of their right to succession to the throne by a law of the state of Lippe-Detmold of October 17, 1896 and by a decision of an arbitration court chaired by King Albert of Saxony from June 22, 1897 and the equal marriage of the parents of the future prince.

On October 10, 1908, the Court of Honor in legal matters, chaired by the President of the Reich Court of Justice von Seckendorff, refused to exclude the lawyer Karl Liebknecht from the legal profession on October 12, 1907 because of his conviction for preparing for high treason by the Reich Court. The reason given was, among other things, that the Reichsgericht had already denied that the accused had dishonor in this sentence.

Because of his legal merits, the University of Leipzig awarded von Seckendorff an honorary doctorate in 1907 . For the same reason, but also as an honor for his services to the good relationship between the city of Leipzig and the Imperial Court, the city of Leipzig granted him honorary citizenship in 1916 .

On January 1, 1920 he left office.

literature

• Article written anonymously about the appointment of Rudolf von Seckendorff as President of the Reich Court, published in the Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung (DJZ) 1905, Sp. 537 .
• Rudolf Freiherrn Seckendorff in memory - Speeches at the memorial service in the Reichsgericht Leipzig on November 22, 1932, published by FA Brockhaus in Leipzig in 1932. The three memorial speeches printed there were given by Erwin Bumke , President of the Reichsgericht at the time , Lord Mayor of the City of Leipzig Carl Goerdeler and Prof. Paul Koschaker as dean of the Leipzig Faculty of Law.
• Anonymous obituary regarding Freiherr von Seckendorff in DJZ 1932, page 1276
• Kai Müller, The Guardian of the Right: The Position of the Imperial Court in the German Empire 1879-1918, 1st edition Nomos-Verlag Baden-Baden, 1997 (dissertation), pages 122-124

About the arbitration ruling of the Imperial Court of October 25, 1905 in the Lippe succession dispute:

• DJZ 1906, pages 61–63

About the judgment announced by Rudolf Freiherr von Seckendorff on October 10, 1908 in the court of honor proceedings against the lawyer Karl Liebknecht:

• Official collection of decisions of the Court of Honor for Legal Matters at the Reichsgericht (EGH), Volume 14, pages 81–84
• Newspaper Vorwärts of October 13, 1908, page 2

• Thomas Henne:  Seckendorff, Rudolf Freiherr von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 121 f. ( Digitized version ).