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Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), born in Plettenberg, Sauerland, was one of twentieth-century Germany's most influential minds. A distinguished constitutional jurist who taught law in Bonn (1922–28), Berlin (1928–45) and Cologne (1933), his counsel was sought by right-wing politicians during the Weimar Republic. His authoritarian views helped consolidate Hindenburg's presidential regime in 1930. Expressing those same authoritarian views, he publicly defended the legitimacy of the Nazi revolution in March 1933, and then joined the party weeks later. As a constitutional adviser to Göring, he was rewarded with important official appointments. In 1936, after suffering persecution at the hands of the SS, he was forced to resign, but retained his academic privileges. After the war, he was jailed for a year as a security threat by the US military authorities, and later detained as a possible defendant by the Nuremberg tribunal. After his release in 1947, he refused to sign a de-Nazification certificate, claiming that he had drunk the Nazi bacillus, but had not been infected. Schmitt was not allowed to teach but continued to exercise a lasting influence within Germany's conservative circles. In comfortable retirement (a group of entrepreneurs set up a special account, called Academia Moralis, on his behalf), he endeavoured to clear his intellectual work from charges of anti-Semitism and doctrinaire complicity with the Nazis.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230501676_9

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