Wolfgang Seiffert

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Wolfgang Seiffert (born June 18, 1926 in Breslau ; † January 15, 2009 in Hamburg ) was a German lawyer and university professor .

War and FDJ

As the son of a tax auditor, he became a military volunteer in the Navy as a high school student in 1944 and was taken prisoner by the Soviets in 1945. From 1947 to 1948 he attended the Antifa School No. 2041 near Gorki . At the end of 1949 he was released from captivity in the Federal Republic of Germany . There he worked from 1950 to 1953 as a full-time functionary of the socialist FDJ . In 1950 he also became a member of the KPD . He worked as editor-in-chief of the magazine Junge Deutschland published by the FDJ . He was also involved in organizing the Germany meeting of young people in East Berlin in 1950.

jail

When the FDJ was banned in the Federal Republic in 1951, he took over a position as a functionary of the KPD. However, he kept in touch with the Central Council of the FDJ in East Berlin, so that he was arrested on March 16, 1953. He was accused of “ secret bundling ”, endangering the state and “ high treason ”. After two years of pre- trial detention , the Federal Court of Justice sentenced him to four years in prison in June 1955. In March 1956 he managed to escape from prison in Anrath .

Studies and professorship in the GDR

He then went to the GDR , where he made up for the outstanding Abitur exam. In East Berlin he worked in the youth department of the party executive of the KPD. He then became a member of the SED and from 1956 began studying law with the main focus on international law at the Humboldt University (HU), which he completed in 1959. On April 24, 1963, he received his doctorate as Dr. jur. on the subject of the so-called voluntary arbitration in West German labor law as a means of power of the monopolies to disarm the trade unions . He then took up a position as a research assistant at the Institute for Inventors and Copyright at Humboldt University. On January 12, 1967, he completed his habilitation with a thesis on international legal problems of the use of scientific and technical results by third parties , with Gerhard Felge being a co-author.

This was followed by an appointment as a professor with a teaching position at the Institute for Foreign Law and Comparative Law at the German Academy for Political Science and Law in Potsdam-Babelsberg . In 1969 he was pardoned by the Federal President Gustav Heinemann because he still had a remainder of the prison sentence in the criminal record. Since he knew Erich Honecker from his political activities in the FDJ, he became its advisor. Other functions were a member of the Legal Committee of the CMEA , as a judge at the Court of Arbitration at the Chamber of Foreign Trade of the GDR and vice president of the Society of International Law in the GDR .

Relocation to the Federal Republic

From around 1974, when the relationship to the unity of Germany was changed in the constitution of the GDR, he began to have doubts about the goals of the SED in Germany policy. When in 1976 the opportunity arose to hold guest lectures at Kiel University , Erich Honecker gave him permission in December 1977. Seiffert moved to Kiel with his family in February 1978. His membership in the SED ended therewith, whereby he also resigned from all offices in the GDR. In 1980 the title of professor of the GDR and all awards of the GDR were stripped of him. In the following years he campaigned for the unity of Germany in publications and organizations.

In Kiel he headed the Institute for Eastern European Law at the University of Kiel until 1994, after which he was Secretary General of the Center for German Law in Moscow.

Fonts (selection)

  • Bonn emergency laws versus workers' rights: Expert opinion on the question of the effects of Bonn's emergency legislation on the rights of West German workers and their trade unions as well as West German labor law , Berlin 1967
  • The application of GDR law by foreign courts , Potsdam-Babelsberg 1969
  • Economic and legal foundations of international licensing relationships with Gerhard Felge, Potsdam-Babelsberg 1973
  • International license agreements , Potsdam-Babelsberg 1973
  • Questions about the further development of scientific and technical legal protection under the conditions of socialist economic integration: Materials from the International Symposium in Rostock from January 15 to 19, 1973 , Potsdam-Babelsberg 1973
  • Outline of Austrian commercial law , Berlin 1973
  • Socialist Economic Integration: Legal Issues , Berlin 1974
  • Legal issues of external relations of the Council for Mutual Economic Aid (Comecon) , Göttingen 1975
  • The system of legal regulation of socialist economic integration - ground plan , Berlin 1976
  • "Germans" and "GDR citizens": on the issue of citizenship between the two German states , Cologne 1978
  • The GDR Maritime Trade Law , Hamburg 1978
  • The legal system of the COMECON: an introduction to the integration law of COMECON , Baden-Baden 1982
  • Business law of the GDR , Berlin 1982
  • Foreign trade law of the GDR , Berlin 1983
  • Can the Eastern Bloc survive? : the Comecon and the crisis of the socialist economic system , Bergisch Gladbach 1983
  • The SED and the German Question: Analyzes of a Contemporary Witness , Hamburg 1984
  • Business Law of the GDR: Supplementary Volume , Berlin 1985
  • Nation Germany? , Wiesbaden 1985
  • All of Germany: Perspectives on Reunification , Munich 1986
  • Balance sheet, problems and perspectives of the German question: 12 contributions to the German question , Kiel 1986
  • The Germans and Gorbachev: Chances for a Balance of Interest , Erlangen 1989
  • Farewell to the world revolution: the end of Stalinism and the future of Europe , Erlangen 1989
  • The Schalck Papers - GDR Mafia between East and West: the evidence with Norbert Treutwein, Vienna 1991
  • Right to self-determination and German unification: the right to self-determination of a divided nation , Baden-Baden 1992
  • Practical questions of contract drafting with Russia and Ukraine , with Ulrich Zeltel, Heidelberg 1993
  • Recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in Eastern Europe , Munich 1994
  • Vladimir Putin  : Rebirth of a Great Power? , Munich 2000
  • Self-determined: a life in the field of tension between divided Germany and Russian politics , Graz 2006

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Herms:  Seiffert, Wolfgang . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  2. ↑ a b c Gabriele Baumgartner (ed.), Biographical Handbook of the SBZ / GDR 1945/1990, Volume 2, Munich 1997, p. 851
  3. ^ Fy, Wolfgang Seiffert died, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 20, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Seiffert, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 2009
Place of death Hamburg