Radbruch, Gustav

(1878-1949)

   professor and Justice Minister; one of Germany's renowned constitutional theorists. Born to a wealthy middle-class family in Lübeck, he published poetry while still in Gymnasium, but studied law at the behest of his father. He completed a doctorate in 1902 at Berlin* and his Habilitation in 1903 at Heidelberg, where he remained for ten years as Privatdozent, forming friendships with Max Weber* and Hermann Kantorow-icz* while generating a legal philosophy grounded in neo-Kantianism. His early writings, Einführung in die Rechtswissenschaft (Introduction to the study of law, 1910) and Grundzüge der Rechtsphilosophie (Principles of legal philosophy, 1914), underscored his view of the law as an organic system allowing for choice and development; they also established his reputation. He was appointed aus-serordentlicher Professor at Königsberg in 1914, but was at the front by 1916. After declining an officer's commission in 1917, he became a pacifist. He con-summated a long interest in socialism by joining the SPD in 1918.

   In 1919 Radbruch became Professor of Criminal Law at Kiel. He won praise for opposing the Kapp* Putsch and was elected to the Reichstag* in June 1920. The only lawyer in the SPD faction, he formed a close friendship with Friedrich Ebert.* As Justice Minister in the cabinets of Joseph Wirth* (1921-1922) and Gustav Stresemann* (1923), he worked to revise the criminal-law code (Straf-gesetzbuch). Although he established juvenile courts, his efforts to abolish the death penalty and institute criminal rehabilitation foundered on conservative op-position in the Reichstag.

   Radbruch drafted the Law for the Protection of the Republic* in 1922 (he later lamented that even with his law, justice* was "blind in the right eye"). Discouraged by the multiple crises in the autumn of 1923, but especially by Berlin's handling of the leftist uprising in Saxony,* he resigned from Strese-mann's cabinet in November and chose not to run for reelection in 1924. Having returned to Kiel, he accepted appointment to Heidelberg in 1926. On 28 April 1933 he was the first academic removed from his office by the NSDAP. Fol-lowing the Third Reich, he was instrumental in reestablishing Heidelberg's law faculty.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Eyck, History of the Weimar Republic, vol. 1; Arthur Kaufmann, Gustav Radbruch; Stachura, Political Leaders.