Heinrich Triepel

Carl Heinrich Triepel (12 February 1868 – 23 November 1946) was a German jurist. He founded the Association of German Teachers of Constitutional Law and is considered one of the most important scholars of constitutional and international law in the 20th century.

Biography

Heinrich Triepel was born in Leipzig, the son of Gustav Adolf Triepel, an authorized signatory and partner in an export business in Paris, and his Swiss wife Mathilde Marie Henriette (née Kurz). His brother was Hermann Triepel, who later became an anatomist. He married Maria Sophia Ebers, a daughter of the Egyptologist and writer Georg Ebers, in 1894. Triepel attended Teichmann's private school and graduated from the humanistic St. Thomas School in Leipzig in 1886.

Triepel first studied law and cameralistics at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg. In 1886 he was accepted into the Corps Suevia Freiburg, from which, however, he was expelled in 1934. He listened to Gustav Friedrich Eugen Rümelin, Karl von Amira and Heinrich Rosin. As an inactivist, he transferred to Leipzig University, where Adolph Schmidt, Rudolph Sohm, Adolf Wach, Emil Albert Friedberg, Bernhard Windscheid, and Wilhelm Roscher taught. In 1890, he completed his studies with the First State Examination. With a doctoral thesis under Karl Binding, he was awarded the Dr. iur. utr. degree in 1891. From 1890 to 1894, he worked as a legal trainee at the Leipzig District Court and the Leipzig Regional Court. He was an assessor with the notary Heinrich Erler in Leipzig. In 1894, he passed the Second State Law Examination.

In 1893, Triepel habilitated in constitutional, international and administrative law and became a private lecturer in constitutional law at the Leipzig Law Faculty. At the same time, from 1896 to 1897, he was a court assessor and assistant judge at the Leipzig District Court. In 1899, he became a professor in Leipzig. In 1900, he went to the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen as professor of public law, succeeding Gerhard Anschütz. He was awarded a doctorate in political science and in 1909 moved to the chair of constitutional law, administrative law, canon law and international law at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel. At the same time he taught for the deposed Moritz Liepmann at the German Imperial Naval Academy. Among his students in Kiel was Prince Adalbert of Prussia.

In 1913, Triepel accepted a call to the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin to teach constitutional, administrative and ecclesiastical law. In a controversy over the appointment of Walther Schücking to Berlin, he clashed with the center politician Matthias Erzberger. In March 1935, he was made emeritus professor. He remained at the Law Institute there until the institute's work was interrupted by the war at the end of 1944. In 1923, he lectured at the Hague Academy of International Law and in 1928 lectured at the General Assembly of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science in Munich. In 1928, he was appointed by the Reich government to the Constitutional Committee of the Conference of the Länder. From 1931, he was chairman of the Standing Deputation of the German Lawyers' Conference.

Triepel was a member of the German Alpine Club. From 1891, he was a member of the Imperial Yacht Club in Kiel. From 1910 to 1920, he was a member of the Institute of International Law. In 1915, together with Albert Einstein, Max Weber and Ludwig Quidde, among others, he was a signatory of one of the then widespread "intellectual petitions", which in this case advocated a peace of understanding and rejected the annexation or incorporation of politically independent peoples accustomed to independence, as the Seeberg Address published three weeks earlier had called for in favor of a victorious peace. In 1917, he signed the "Declaration against the Reichstag Majority," which supported a peace of understanding. Until 1918, he was a member of the German Reich Party. In 1919, he joined the German National People's Party. In 1930, he resigned from the party on account of Alfred Hugenberg's policies.

Almost completely blind after a failed eye operation in 1945, Triepel last lived in his summer house at the foot of the Zugspitze, where he died at the end of 1946.

Legacy

One of Triepel's most significant life achievements was the founding of the Association of German Teachers of Constitutional Law in 1921/22. The basic idea was to create a forum for joint consultation and mutual exchange under the conditions of the post-war period and the new constitutional situation. Until 1932, the association met annually at different locations and also took up decidedly topical issues, such as the question of federalism under the new constitution or the dictatorial powers of the Reich President. From 1932 onward, the association initially continued formally, but in 1938 it was dissolved and not re-established until 1949, mainly on the initiative of Walter Jellinek. Triepel rejected National Socialism and opposed the Gleichschaltung of the Constitutional Law Teachers Association. The high point of Triepel's academic career was his year as rector in 1926/1927. Frequently quoted were the words with which he handed over the ostentatious rector's coat to his successor: "This coat is heavy, and that's good, you can't hang it to the wind so easily."

Triepel wrote numerous works on constitutional and international law, which had a formative impact on the contemporary and current understanding of law. He is considered the founder of the dualistic doctrine in international law. From 1901, he edited the Quellensammlung zum Staats-, Verwaltungs- und Völkerrecht ("Collection of sources on constitutional, administrative and international law").

Works

• Das Interregnum (1892)
• Die neuesten Fortschritte auf dem Gebiete des Kriegsrechts (1894)
• Völkerrecht und Landesrecht (1899)
• Unitarismus und Föderalismus im Deutschen Reiche (1907)
• Die Zukunft des Völkerrechts (1916)
• Die Reichsaufsicht (1917)
• Die Freiheit der Meere und der künftige Friedensschluß (1917)
• Virtuelle Staatsangehörigkeit (1921)
• Streitigkeiten zwischen Reich und Ländern (1923)
• Völkerrecht (ca. 1924)
• Les rapports entre le droit interne et le droit international (1925)
• Der Föderalismus und die Revision der Weimarer Reichsverfassung (ca. 1925)
• Staatsrecht und Politik (1926)
• Die Staatsverfassung und die politischen Parteien (1928)
• Wesen und Entwicklung der Staatsgerichtsbarkeit (1929)
• Die Staatsverfassung und die politischen Parteien (1930)
• Internationale Wasserläufe (1931)
• Die Hegemonie (1938)
• Delegation und Mandat im öffentlichen Recht (1942)
• Vom Stil des Rechts (1947)

External links

• Works by Heinrich Triepel at German National Library
• Works by Heinrich Triepel at Gallica