Theo Rasehorn

Theo Rasehorn's grave in the old cemetery in Bonn.

Theo Rasehorn (born October 26, 1918 in Lüdenscheid ; † January 16, 2016 ) was a German judge , legal sociologist and writer .

Live and act

The Dr. jur. Rasehorn worked from 1951 to 1983 as a judge at the regional court in Bonn and at the higher regional courts in Cologne and Frankfurt, most recently as presiding judge at the higher regional court in Frankfurt am Main . Since 1974 he has been co-editor with Frank Benseler and Udo Reifner of the series of publications Democracy and the Rule of Law. He was the author of numerous books and publications critical of the judiciary and published under the pseudonym Xaver Berra or X. Berra .

Rasehorn appeared for the first time in 1959 with the article "Justice in the Nazi Twilight" in the left- wing Catholic magazine Werkhefte , with which he turned "against the efforts of the Association of Judges to downplay the activities of judges during the Nazi era". In the following years he worked on the Justice Action Committee, on the federal board of the Working Group of Social Democratic Lawyers (1974–1982) and in the context of the judges' advice and the magazine Betrays Justiz (for these from 1985 to 1997 under the name Xaver Berra as a regular columnist). A collaboration in the field of legal sociology also linked him with Dieter Strempel, who was then head of the “Legal Facts Research” department in the Federal Ministry of Justice . From 1989 to 1995 he was a member of the spokesperson for the legal sociology section of the German Society for Sociology , which did not prevent him from being apostrophized as an "amateur sociologist ".

honors and awards

• Marie Juchacz plaque of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO) (1989)
• Arnold Freymuth Prize of the Arnold Freymuth Society (2000)

Fonts (selection)

• Empirical legal sociology: memorial for Wolfgang Kaupen (co-editor with Dieter Strempel), Nomos-Verlag Baden-Baden, 2002, ISBN 978-3-7890-7956-6 .
• The judge between tradition and everyday life: alternative sociology of justice . Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag 1989, ISBN 3-7890-1771-X .
• The fall of German left-wing bourgeois culture: described from the lives of Jewish lawyers . Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag 1988, ISBN 3-7890-1584-9 .
• Judicial criticism in the Weimar Republic. The example of the magazine “Die Justiz” . Frankfurt / New York: Campus Verlag 1985, ISBN 3-593-33546-8
• The judiciary between the authoritarian state and democracy. An empirical contribution to the sociology of German legal lawyers . Neuwied a. Rh .: Luchterhand 1971 (with Wolfgang Kaupen).
• In the paragraph tower. A pamphlet on the de-ideologization of justice (under the pseudonym Xaver Berra), 2nd edition 1967, Hermann Luchterhand Verlag GmbH, Berlin / Neuwied, without ISBN.

literature

• Guido Kirchhoff: Theo Rasehorn 90 . In: About Justice 2008, 405.
• Theo Rasehorn: Memories of an old judge . In: Relates to Justice 2005, 150.
• Frank Benseler : On the presentation of the Arnold Freymuth Prize to Theo Rasehorn . In: Yearbook of contemporary legal history, Vol. 2, 229.
• Theo Rasehorn: Review of an atypical judge's life . In: Law and Politics 1998, 148.
• Hans-Ernst Böttcher: Hommage à Theo . In: Betrifft Justiz 1988, 325.
• Obituary by Heribert Prantl in the Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 36 from 13./14. February 2016, p. 7.
• Helmut Kramer : Obituary (PDF) on justizgeschichte-aktuell.de

Web links

• Literature by and about Theo Rasehorn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Appreciation of the Hamburg judges' association on the 80th birthday

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary notice Theo Rasehorn , FAZ , January 23, 2016
2. ^ Law and Politics 1998, 148, 150.
3. ^ Law and Politics 1998, 148, 151.
4. ↑ Theo Rasehorn award ceremony ( memento of the original from January 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO), accessed on January 23, 2016