Otto Koellreutter

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Otto Koellreutter (26 November 1883 – 23 February 1972) was a German legal scholar and professor.

Biography

Otto Koellreutter was born in Freiburg im Breisgau. He studied law at the universities of Rome, Grenoble, Berlin, and Freiburg after attending a humanistic high school. In 1905, he became a legal intern before earning his doctorate in 1908 with the thesis Richter und Master: Ein Beitrag zur Würdigung des englischen Zivilprozesses ("Judge and Master: A Contribution to the Appreciation of English Civil Procedure") at the University of Freiburg. A year later he was appointed Assessor. Also at the University of Freiburg, he then habilitated in 1912 with a study on Verwaltungsrecht und Verwaltungsrechtsprechung im modernen England ("Administrative Law and Administrative Jurisprudence in Modern England").[1]

During World War I, Koellreuter served on the Western Front in Field Artillery Regiment 80 and was awarded, among other decorations,[2] the Iron Cross 1th Class, the Order of the Zähringer Lion, and the Military Karl-Friedrich Merit Order.

After the war, Koellreutter became an associate professor in Freiburg (1918) and then in Halle (1920).[3] He was appointed full professor of constitutional and administrative law there in the same year. In 1921, he followed a call to the University of Jena[4]; from 1923 he also served as a part-time judge at the Thuringian Higher Administrative Court.[5]

During the Weimar Republic, Koellreutter was critical of the democratic system and especially the party state, and advocated strengthening the power of the Reich President. From 1921 to 1926, he was a member of the Steel Helmet league, and from 1928 to 1930 he belonged to the DVP.[6]

The Reichstag elections of September 14, 1930, led Koellreutter as a sympathizer "to the side of National Socialism." On the occasion of the election results, which brought an increase in the NSDAP's share of the vote from 2.6 to 18.3%, Koellreutter wrote: The elections contained "the revolt of the younger generation in particular [...] against a system that knows no idea of the state and whose probation has increasingly failed in practice." He endorsed Rudolf Smend's view that the "Eastern Jews" were "by their very nature unsuited to an integrating function [in Germany]" and furthermore criticized the admission of their immigration as opening up "wide possibility" for the "political and economic exploitation of the German people." However, Koellreutter still showed a partial distance from National Socialism. In the summer of 1932, Koellreutter was one of the signatories of an appeal by university professors to vote for the NSDAP in the upcoming Reichstag elections.[7]

On May 1, 1933, Koellreutter was admitted as member to the NSDAP.[8] He was also a member of the SA Reserve II and several other subsidiary organizations of the NSDAP.[9] Koellreutter himself, however — in the context of his competition with Carl Schmitt — stated to have been an NSDAP member as early as mid-April 1933. Koellreutter and Schmitt were leading players in the National Socialist discussion of the party's self-designation as a constitutional state (Koellreutter was clearly in favor; Schmitt at times considered abandoning the term).

During the National Socialist era, Koellreutter become one of the leading teachers of constitutional law in Germany. In 1933, he received a chair in Munich and became dean there. Likewise, he became a member of the Academy for German Law. In 1934, as a "theoretician of the Führer state," according to Ernst Klee's assessment,[10] he published the treatise Der deutsche Führerstaat ("The German Führer State") and in 1936 a Grundriß der allgemeinen Staatslehre. In it he wrote: "The national constitutional state as a volk life order builds on the people, whose preservation in its racial stock [...] is the basis of every political and cultural upward development."[11]

After a stay in Japan from 1938 to 1939, Koellreutter published several treatises on the japanese state structure and political development.[12] It was not until the last years of World War II that his attitude toward the National Socialist regime became more critical,[13] not least because an uncle by marriage had been deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Since Koellreutter turned to the Viennese Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach for this reason in 1944, there were investigations against Koellreutter, in the context of which he had to make a statement.[14]

After the end of World War II, Koellreutter was initially removed from office in 1945 on the instructions of the American military government.[15] In 1946, 13 of his works written during the National Socialist era were included in the list of literature to be censored by the SBZ. In 1948, three additional works by Koellreutter were added to the list: Der Sinn der Reichstagswahlen vom 14. Sept. 1930 und die Aufgaben der deutschen Staatslehre (1930), Volk und Staat in der Verfassungskrise (1933), and Die Gestaltung der deutschen politischen Einheit (1934). In 1952, the GDR regime also baned Führung und Verwaltung (1938), Deutsches Verwaltungsrecht (1938), and Das politische Gesicht Japans (1943).

In Bavarian denazification proceedings, Koellreutter was initially classified by a preliminary review board in Group III ("weakly implicated"). Since he refused to accept the two-year probationary period imposed on him and a monetary atonement (which was to be considered already paid off due to the removal from office), a political trial ensued in which Koellreutter was now sentenced to five years in a labor camp, among other things, as the main culprit. As a result, he was imprisoned in June 1947 and released after 13 months — due to an appeal by Koellreutter, which eventually led to a classification in Group IV (fellow traveler). In the following year (1949), Koellreutter's dismissal from office was also reversed and he was transferred to normal retirement with pay — because of the age limit he had reached in the meantime; finally in 1952 his formal retirement also followed.

From 1950, Koellreutter published again,[16] including essays on professional civil service, administrative law, and two books on constitutional law. He also commented on decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court. The essays appeared primarily in the educational journal Der Jurist,[17] but also in respected journals such as Deutsches Verwaltungsblatt, Die öffentliche Verwaltung, and Zeitschrift für Politik.[18]

Koellreutter became involved as an expert witness for the GB/BHE party, and as a litigation representative for the Allgemeiner Beamtenschutzbund against denazification regulations and described the Bavarian Spruchkammern as "contaminated by communism."[19]

In the scholarly literature, Koellreutter's postwar writings were largely received favorably; Theodor Maunz praised Koellreutter's "heart-refreshing clarity". Only since the 1980s have critical voices increasingly been found.[20]

See also

Works

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  • Verwaltungsrecht und Verwaltungsrechtsprechung im modernen England (1912)
  • Das parlamentarische System in den deutschen Landesverfassungen (1921)
  • Die Staatslehre Oswald Spenglers (1924)
  • Die politischen Parteien im modernen Staate (1926)
  • Der deutsche Staat als Bundesstaat und als Parteienstaat (1927)
  • Integrationslehre und Reichsreform (1929)
  • Der Sinn der Reichstagswahlen vom 14. September 1930 und die Aufgaben der deutschen Staatslehre (1930)
  • Der englische Staat der Gegenwart und das britische Weltreich (1930)
  • Parteien und Verfassung im heutigen Deutschland (1932)
  • Der nationale Rechtsstaat (1932)
  • Vom Sinn und Wesen der nationalen Revolution (1933)
  • Volk und Staat in der Verfassungskrise (1933)
  • Grundriss der allgemeinen Staatslehre (1933)
  • Die nationale Revolution und die Reichsreform (1933)
  • Die Gestaltung der deutschen politischen Einheit (1934)
  • Der deutsche Führerstaat (1934)
  • Zur Entwicklung der deutschen Reichseinheit (1935)
  • Volk und Staat in der Weltanschauung des Nationalsozialismus (1935)
  • Grundfragen des völkischen und staatlichen Lebens im deutschen Volksstaate (1935)
  • Deutsches Verfassungsrecht (1935)
  • Der Aufbau des deutschen Führerstaates (1937)
  • Führung und Verwaltung (1938)
  • Das politische Gesicht Japans (1940)
  • Der heutige Staatsaufbau Japans (1941)
  • Japaner (1943)
  • Deutsches Staatsrecht (1953)
  • Das Wesen der Spruchkammern und der durch sie durchgeführten Entnazifizierung (1954)
  • Über Schuld und Aufgabe der geistigen Führungsschicht im deutschen politischen Leben der Gegenwart (1955)
  • Staatslehre im Umriss (1955)
  • Grundfragen des Verwaltungsrechts (1955)

Notes

  1. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 5.
  2. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 7.
  3. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 10–11.
  4. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 11.
  5. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 11.
  6. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 13.
  7. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 13.
  8. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 71.
  9. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 72.
  10. ↑ Klee 2005, 325.
  11. ↑ Klee 2005, 325.
  12. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 126–30.
  13. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 110, 170.
  14. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 75.
  15. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 76.
  16. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 186, 194–95.
  17. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 137.
  18. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 194.
  19. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 144–48.
  20. ↑ Schmidt 1995, 174–80.

References

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External links

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