Werner Maihofer

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Werner Maihofer (1974)

Werner Maihofer (born October 20, 1918 in Konstanz , † October 6, 2009 in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe ) was a German legal scholar , especially criminal lawyer and legal philosopher , as well as a politician ( FDP ). He was Federal Minister for Special Tasks from 1972 to 1974 and Federal Minister of the Interior from 1974 to 1978 .

Life

Werner Maihofer was born as the son of the administrative director of a Konstanz clinic. He completed his school education in Constance and changed from elementary school to the Constance Graf Zeppelin Oberrealschule. In his youth Maihofer was a figure skater , in 1936 he was a member of the Olympic squad . After graduating from the former Graf Zeppelin-Oberrealschule, today's Konstanz Alexander-von-Humboldt-Gymnasium . In 1937 he did his Reich labor and military service and then took part in the Second World War as a soldier (most recently first lieutenant ) until 1945 .

From 1946 to 1950 graduated Werner Maihofer, funded by the studienstiftung (SddV) from 1948, studying law at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg and was established in 1950 with the work , the concept of action in crime system to Dr. jur. PhD . In 1953 he completed his habilitation with the text Law and Being and was appointed professor in Saarbrücken in 1955.

Teaching

From 1955 to 1969, Werner Maihofer held the chair for legal and social philosophy, criminal law and criminal procedure law at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken as a full professor . During this time he also headed the Institute for Legal and Social Philosophy at the university. He was involved in the establishment of a working group that developed alternatives to the previous steps in the reform of criminal law for the Criminal Law Committee. In addition, he worked on a reform of the higher education law, as an initiative draft of the FDP / DPS. From 1967 to 1969 he was the rector of Saarland University. In 1970 he accepted the professorship for criminal law, criminal procedural law, legal sociology , legal theory, legal and social philosophy at Bielefeld University . In addition to his teaching post, he was director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research .

After resigning from his political office, Werner Maihofer returned to the chair at Bielefeld University in October 1978. From 1980 to 1982 he was President of the German National Academic Foundation, then from 1982 to 1988 President of the European University Institute in San Domenico di Fiesole (near Florence , Italy ). He also held an honorary professorship at the University of Konstanz . He was temporarily a member of the board of trustees of the Wolf-Erich-Kellner Memorial Foundation . From 1973 to 1996 he was a member, at times deputy chairman, of the board of trustees of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation . From 1971 to 1981 he was one of the publishers of the magazine liberal on behalf of the foundation .

politics

Maihofer had been a member of the FDP since 1969. As chairman of the FDP program commission from 1970 he was one of the fathers of the Freiburg theses . From 1970 to 1978 he was also a member of the Presidium of the FDP. Maihofer was a member of the FDP's program commission from 1994 to 1996 and shaped the Wiesbaden program , the party's second basic program . On behalf of the Naumann Foundation, he published the magazine " liberal " from 1971 . From 1973 to 1996 he was a member, temporarily deputy chairman, of the board of trustees of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. Immediately after the 1972 federal election , Werner Maihofer was a member of the German Bundestag .

On December 15, 1972, he was appointed Federal Minister for Special Tasks in the Federal Government led by Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt . After Brandt's resignation, he joined the Federal Government headed by Helmut Schmidt on May 16, 1974 as Federal Minister of the Interior; the previous Minister of the Interior, Hans-Dietrich Genscher , moved to the head of the Foreign Office . Initially, it was not easy for Werner Maihofer to step out of the shadow of his predecessor. But even after the federal election in 1976, he retained the office. His tenure was overshadowed by the terrorist activities of the Red Army Faction Group (RAF). This mainly concerned the assassinations of the Federal Public Prosecutor Siegfried Buback (1920–1977) on April 7, 1977, the banker Jürgen Ponto (1923–1977) on July 30, 1977 and the employer president Hanns Martin Schleyer (1915–1977) on April 18 , 1977 . October 1977. In addition, in the course of the manhunt for the murderers, he was involved in the Traube eavesdropping affair and other illegal activities of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution . When these illegality became known to the public, he came under heavy fire and also lost the backing of his party for condoning these practices. On June 6, 1978 he resigned from his office. He pointed out that he was responsible for a wanted maneuver during the kidnapping of Hanns Martin Schleyer in the so-called German autumn of 1977. He did not run for the Bundestag again. During his tenure as minister he belonged to three cabinets ( Brandt II , Schmidt I and Schmidt II ).

family

In 1942 he married Margrit Schiele. The marriage resulted in five daughters. In the last years of his life he lived in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe and later in Überlingen on Lake Constance . He was a music lover and played the violin and viola.

He died on October 6, 2009 in Bad Homburg and was buried in the forest cemetery in Bad Homburg .

Awards

Publications

  • On the meaning of human order , 1956.
  • Natural law as a right to exist , 1963.
  • (Ed.): Natural Law or Legal Positivism , 1966.
  • Rule of Law and Human Dignity , 1968.
  • Ideology and Law , 1969.
  • (Ed.): Concept and essence of law , 1971.
  • (Ed.): Legal theory, preliminary study for basic discussion , 1971.
  • (with Karl-Hermann Flach and Walter Scheel ): The Freiburg theses of the liberals. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1972, ISBN 3-499-11545-X .
  • Liberal self-image today. In: Politics and Culture. Issue 3/1976, p. 3 ff. ISSN  0340-5869 .
  • Edited with Dieter Grimm : Legislative theory and legal policy , Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1988, ISBN 3-531-12012-3 .
  • Edited with Gerhard Sprenger: Practical reason and theories of justice. Göttingen, August 18 to 24, 1991 , Steiner, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-515-06085-5 .

literature

  • Hans Günter Hockerts : On the ethos and pathos of freedom - Werner Maihofer (1918–2009) . In: Bastian Hein, Manfred Kittel and Horst Möller (eds.): Faces of Democracy. Portraits of contemporary German history , Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71512-5 , pp. 245–268.
  • Arthur Kaufmann (Ed.): Rule of Law and Human Dignity. Festschrift for Werner Maihofer on his 70th birthday , Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-465-01849-4 .
  • Stephan Kirste , Gerhard Sprenger (ed.): Human existence and dignity in the rule of law. Results of a colloquium for and with Werner Maihofer on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-8305-1827-3 , with a list of publications (pp. 181–191) and comments by Werner Maihofer.
  • Gunther Hermann Schäfer: Werner Maihofer's legal ontology. Possibilities and limits of a legal philosophy following Martin Heidegger , Tübingen 2004.
  • Frauke Nicola Schulz: Werner Maihofer - in case of doubt for freedom. In: Robert Lorenz, Matthias Micus: Seiteneinsteiger. Unconventional career as a politician in party democracy. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-531-16483-0 , pp. 61-80, doi: 10.1007 / 978-3-531-91569-2_3 .
  • Frauke Nicola Schulz: “When in doubt, for freedom”. Rise and fall of the side entry Werner Maihofer in the FDP (= Göttingen young research. Vol. 7). Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-8382-0111-5 .
  • Klaus Weber: Left liberalism in the Federal Republic around 1969. Business and profiles , Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2012, ISBN 978-3-631-63940-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. IDW : Former Rector of Saarland University Professor Werner Maihofer has died , notification from October 20, 2009, accessed on October 22, 2009.
  2. Klaus Weber: Left-wing liberalism in the Federal Republic around 1969. Business and Profile , Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 2012, p. 40.
  3. Page no longer available , search in web archives: Dieter Löffler: Der Liberale vom Bodensee .@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.suedkurier.de
  4. James G. Carr: Wiretapping in West Germany . In: The American Journal of Comparative Law . 29, No. 4, 1981, ISSN  0002-919X , pp. 607-645, p. 621.
  5. ^ Biography about Werner Maierhofer, Munzinger archive; in: https://www.munzinger.de/document00000013079 .
  6. a b Mourning for Honorary Senator Professor em. Dr. Dr. hc Werner Maihofer , press release of Bielefeld University of October 20, 2009, accessed on October 22, 2009.

Web links

Commons : Werner Maihofer  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files