Winfried Hassemer

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Winfried Hassemer (born February 17, 1940 in Gau-Algesheim ; † January 9, 2014 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German criminal law scholar and Vice President of the Federal Constitutional Court .

family

Winfried Hassemer's father was interned in Osthofen concentration camp for almost three weeks in 1933 and was not allowed to study law during the Nazi era. Hassemer cites this as one of the reasons why he and his two brothers Volker Hassemer and Raimund Hassemer decided to study law.

He was married to Kristiane Weber-Hassemer , presiding judge of a criminal senate at the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main and a member of the German Ethics Council , which she chaired from 2005 to 2008. The legal scholar and constitutional judge Michael Hassemer is his son.

Life

After graduating from the Stefan-George-Gymnasium in Bingen , Hassemer studied law at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , the University of Geneva and the University of Saarland . He was a scholarship holder of the Cusanuswerk Episcopal Study Fund and spokesman for the Catholic student community in Heidelberg.

After passing the 1st state examination, he was initially a research assistant to Arthur Kaufmann at the Institute for Legal and Social Philosophy at Saarland University from 1964 to 1969 . In 1967 he was in Saarbruecken with a thesis on offense and type: Investigations into criminal hermeneutics to doctor of law doctorate . After completing his legal preparatory service, Hassemer passed the second state examination in 1970. In 1972 his habilitation followed with a thesis on the theory and sociology of crime: approaches to a practice-oriented doctrine of legal interests .

In 1973 he received a call to a professorship for legal theory , sociology of law , criminal law and criminal procedure law at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . From 1991 to 1996 Hassemer also succeeded Spiros Simitis as the State Commissioner for Data Protection for the State of Hesse .

In May 1996 he was appointed judge of the Federal Constitutional Court, of which he was a member of the second senate. From April 2002 until his retirement in May 2008, Hassemer was Chairman of the Second Senate and Vice-President of the Federal Constitutional Court.

Winfried Hassemer was admitted to the bar on October 2, 2008 and worked for a criminal defense law firm in Frankfurt am Main. He was ombudsman for Schufa and in the compliance program for Daimler AG .

Winfried Hassemer died on January 9, 2014 after a long illness in Frankfurt am Main.

Constitutional judge

At the suggestion of the SPD, Hassemer was elected by the Federal Council to succeed Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde in the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court and was a member of the court from May 3, 1996 to May 7, 2008, and as Chairman of the Second Senate since April 10, 2002 and Vice-President of the Federal Constitutional Court (in February 2008 he had reached the age limit of 68 years, but remained in office until his successor Andreas Vosskuhle was appointed on May 7, 2008). Hassemer was the first criminal law professor in the history of the Federal Constitutional Court to be elected constitutional judge. His department in the court included criminal law and criminal procedure law, and at times also state church law . He played a key role in the judgment on house searches in cases of imminent danger and the decision to use GPS to monitor suspected criminals via satellite . In 2003 he announced the decision to terminate the NPD ban proceedings . In 2005 he chaired the negotiations on the dissolution of the Bundestag in 2005 and the early election of the Bundestag. His last official act before leaving court was the pronouncement of the verdict on the use of Awacs aircraft during the Iraq war in 2003. Hassemer gave his only special opinion in 2008 on the ruling on the prohibition of incest because he considered the criminality of sibling incest to be unconstitutional.

Act

Hassemer's central themes already became clear in his habilitation thesis from 1972, which fell in “the most lively time of the then new, undogmatic, domination and society-critical criminology”. In particular, he put the importance of knowledge of the social sciences for criminal law up for discussion and firmly advocated the principle of in dubio pro libertate , which makes general freedom of action the basic norm of the relationship between citizens and the state. According to this, the legislature may only oblige citizens to act or refrain from acting under criminal law if this protects a recognized legal interest and at the same time if the legal interest cannot be equally well protected by other, milder means. However, he went one step further than the established form of freedom of action and wanted to take into account that criminal law would have to withdraw even if the protection of the legal interest caused damage in any other way that was disproportionately high compared to the damage to the protected good. Hassemer took this position in the context of the termination of pregnancy ; other fields for this principle could be the drug laws or “the fatal tendency of the legislature to declare all possible political goals and interests to be“ legal interests ”in order to then“ protect them ”under criminal law ' allow."

Hassemer always recognized the role of the state as a peacemaker and guarantor of legal security; social control was indispensable for him; informal social control, however, is uncontrollable and easily leads to abuse of power.

As data protection officer and constitutional judge, he advocated the informational self-determination of the population and urged a critical attitude towards the increased data processing in modern society, including the state.

“It's really not looking good for data protection today. [...] Data protection has a glorious past, a threatened present and an open future "

- Winfried Hassemer, 2007

In 2009, Hassemer caused a sensation and a lot of criticism with the demand that the social context of the perpetrators be taken into account in a mitigating manner in honor killings .

Hassemer's positions as data protection officer were also reflected in his public statements and his decisions as a judge, he was a critic of the political exploitation of the public's irrational security needs:

“Security needs are structurally insatiable. The argument that something may happen tomorrow is no match for the argument. But there has to be a remedy against it, we cannot let ourselves be carried on by a possible threat scenario, we cannot afford to cut off everything that can still be cut off from the fundamental rights. After all, I have the impression that there is a new awareness of data protection and privacy. "

- Winfried Hassemer, 2009

honors and awards

Fonts (selection)

  • Introduction to the basics of criminal law . 2nd, updated edition. C. H. Beck. Munich. 1990. ISBN 3-406-34485-2
  • Why there must be punishment: A plea . Ullstein. Berlin. 2009. ISBN 978-3550087646
  • Forms of Modern Law . Klostermann. Frankfurt am Main. 2007. ISBN 978-3-465-04042-2
  • Together with Arthur Kaufmann, Ulfrid Neumann as editor: Introduction to legal philosophy and legal theory of the present . 8th edition. C. F. Muller. Heidelberg. 2011. ISBN 978-3811496903

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Christian Geyer: Liberal campaigner for civil liberties , FAZ , January 10, 2014
  2. ↑ a b “Heidelberg was a dream for me” , University of Heidelberg, November 14, 2013
  3. ↑ Press release of the BVerfG on Hassemer's departure
  4. ^ Political origins of constitutional judges and decision-making practice in the Federal Republic of Sebastian Knoppik, GRIN Verlag, April 13, 2004 as a master's thesis.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Sebastian Scheerer : Obituary for Winfried Hassemer (1940-2014) . In: Neue Kriminalpolitik , Volume 26, Volume 1 (2014), pp. 3–5.
  6. ↑ Judgment of February 20, 2001, Az. 2 BvR 1444/00.
  7. ^ Judgment of April 12, 2005, Az. 2 BvR 581/01.
  8. ^ Decision of March 18, 2003, Az. 2 BvB 1/01.
  9. ↑ Judgment of May 7, 2008, Az. 2 BvE 1/03.
  10. ^ Judgment of February 26, 2008, Az. 2 BvR 392/07.
  11. ↑ Hassemer sees increasing threat to data protection , ngo-online.de. Retrieved January 11, 2014.
  12. ↑ Ursula Knapp: Winfried Hassemer: Food for thought on "honor murder" . In: Frankfurter Rundschau. May 14, 2009. Retrieved May 26, 2014.
  13. ^ In conversation: Wolfgang Schäuble and Winfried Hassemer. How many security laws does the rule of law survive? . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. March 11, 2009. Retrieved May 26, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Hassemer, Winfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German criminal law scholar, Vice-President of the Federal Constitutional Court
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Gau-Algesheim
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 2014
Place of death Frankfurt am Main