A History of Public Law in Germany 1914–1945

Abstract

This book opens with the First World War, analyses the highly creative years of the Weimar Republic, and recounts the decline of German public law that began in 1933 and extended to the downfall of the Third Reich. The book examines the dialectic of scholarship and politics against the background of long-term developments in industrial societies, the rise of the interventionist state, the shift of state law and administrative law theory, and the emergence of new disciplines (tax law, social law, labour law, business administration law). The book examines the doctrine of state law and administrative law during the First World War and the impact of the Weimar Constitution and of the Versailles Treaty on the discipline is discussed. Here the famous ‘quarrel of direction’ that occurred in the field of state law doctrine (1926–9) played a central role. But equally important was the development of state law and administrative law theory, administrative doctrine, and the jurisprudence of international law. Part two of the book is devoted to the impact of National Socialism. The displacement of Jewish scholars, the change of direction in the professional journals, and the shutdown of the Association of State Law Teachers form one aspect of the story. The other aspect is manifested in the erosion of public law. The book tackles questions about the co-responsibility of scholars for the Holocaust, and the reasons why academic teachers of public law were all but absent in the opposition to the Nazi regime.

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“…Michael Stolleis has drawn attention to the '"shift towards administrative law" that set in quickly after 1933'. 85 In large part, that shift was connected to the '"settling of the constitutional question" and the functional loss of state law doctrine' that accompanied the rise of Hitler and the 'establishment of the Fuhrer state'. 86 During the Weimar Republic, conservative State law theorists had argued that institutions such as parliament were no longer able properly to represent the will of the people.…”

Theorizing the Political in Germany, 1890—1945: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Franz Neumann1

“…At the centre of Myers' argument stands the somewhat unsurprising claim that the social worth and self-perception of the new middle and upper-middle classes in nineteenth-century Germany were directly connected to their economic success after the Napoleonic Wars and that the centrality of Bildung to their world-view was dependent on the coupling of economic and cultural capital (15). Myers then seeks to 'trace a breakdown or loss of faith in many Bildungsbürger's identity structure to cope with the new and changing socioeconomic demands of the second half of the nineteenth century' (16). Steiner's anthroposophic movement and Weber's sociology, so he claims, not only responded to this development but sought to rehabilitate the ideal of German neo-humanism in the period between 1900 and the Weimar Republic.…”

The Distorted Jurisprudential Discourse of Nazi Law: Uncovering the ‘Rupture Thesis’ in the Anglo-American Legal Academy

“…While some historiographical studies about Nazi law are cited, therefore, it does not make use of primary sources of Nazi law for this purpose. It is not possible within the scope of this article to provide a thorough account of the Nazi legal system, although some recent legal historical studies have contributed to developing such an account, including placing it within a broader temporal frame [43][44][45][46][47]. It is also not possible within the scope of this article to provide a comprehensive analysis of the representation of Nazi law within Anglo-American jurisprudential discourse.…”