Ernst Forsthoff (13 September 1902, in

Laar Laar () is a community in the district of Grafschaft Bentheim in Lower Saxony. The community’s name comes from the Old Dutch for “glade in the woods”. Geography Location Laar lies northwest of Nordhorn on the German-Dutch border. It belong ...

– 13 August 1974, in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

) was a German scholar of

constitutional law Constitutional law is a body of law which defines the role, powers, and structure of different entities within a State (polity), state, namely, the executive (government), executive, the parliament or legislature, and the judiciary; as well as th ...

and a leading theorist of

administrative law Administrative law is the division of law that governs the activities of government agency, executive branch agencies of Forms of government, government. Administrative law concerns executive branch rule making (executive branch rules are gener ...

Life

Forsthoff, the son of pastor , was called to teach law at the

Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Goethe University (german: link=no, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) is a university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealt ...

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

1933, at the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...

in 1935, at the

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Königsberg Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was named ...

in 1936 and at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

in 1942. There he was forbidden to exercise his teaching post by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

until 1943, when he was called to the

University of Heidelberg } Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...

. After the war, he was dismissed from governmental service by order of the American military government, but was able to resume teaching in 1952. Forsthoff was a leading author of the

Constitution of Cyprus The Constitution of Cyprus is a document, ratified on August 16, 1960, that serves as the Supreme Law of the Republic of Cyprus (Suprema Lex Cypri) defining the system of government of the Cypriot Republc and the civil liberties for the Cypriot ci ...

and was president of the

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from 1960 to 1963.

Thought

In the 1930s, Forsthoff was among the jurists such as

Carl Schmitt Carl Schmitt (; 11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, political theorist, and prominent member of the Nazi Party. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. A conservative theorist, he is noted as a ...

, Karl Larenz, and who endeavoured to legitimise the

Nazi regime Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

through their writings. Forsthoff's 1933 paper ''Der totale Staat'' (The Total State) advocated a broad understanding of the ''

Führerprinzip The (; German for 'leader principle') prescribed the fundamental basis of political authority in the Government of Nazi Germany. This principle can be most succinctly understood to mean that "the Führer's word is above all written law" and t ...

'' as an exclusive and unlimited power of command over all subjects of the state. He himself was unwilling to submit fully to the Nazi state, however, and fell in disfavour with the authorities during the war. In a seminal 1938 paper, he coined the term ''Daseinsvorsorge'', introducing the concept of

public services A public service is any Service (economics), service intended to address specific needs pertaining to the aggregate members of a community. Public services are available to people within a government jurisdiction as provided directly through pub ...

to German legal thinking. After the war, although now supporting the democratic ''

Rechtsstaat ''Rechtsstaat'' (lit. "state of law"; "legal state") is a doctrine in continental European legal thinking, originating in Dutch and German jurisprudence. It can be translated into English as "rule of law", alternatively "legal state", state of ...

'' (which he understood as opposed to the '' Sozialstaat'' advocated by the Left), Forsthoff continued to support a powerful state subject to only limited judicial constraints and rejected the notion of constitutional rights as a normative framework of society. Forsthoff was among the few postwar European scholars who maintained adherence to the philosophy of strict

legal positivism Legal positivism (as understood in the Anglosphere) is a school of thought of analytical jurisprudence developed largely by legal philosophers during the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Jeremy Bentham and John Austin. While Bentham and Austin de ...

. His influential textbook ''Lehrbuch des Verwaltungsrechts'' (1950) also emphasized the comprehensive responsibility of the state for society, preferring to focus on the functioning of government rather than on its possible failure.

Partial bibliography

* ''Der totale Staat'', Hamburg 1933. * ''Deutsche Geschichte seit 1918 in Dokumenten'', 1st ed. Leipzig 1935, 2nd ed. 1938, 3rd ed. 1943. *''Die Verwaltung als Leistungsträger,

Kohlhammer Verlag W. Kohlhammer Verlag GmbH, or Kohlhammer Verlag, is a German publishing house headquartered in Stuttgart. History Kohlhammer Verlag was founded in Stuttgart on 30 April 1866 by . Kohlhammer had taken over the businesses of his late father-in-law ...

Stuttgart-Berlin, 1938'' * ''Verfassungsprobleme des Sozialstaates'', Münster 1954. * als Herausgeber: ''Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Sozialstaatlichkeit'', Darmstadt 1968. * ''Der Staat der Industriegesellschaft'', München 1971. * ''Lehrbuch des Verwaltungsrechts. Bd. I: Allgemeiner Teil'', München, 1st ed. 1950, 10th ed. 1973.

References

* Meinel, Florian: ''Der Jurist in der industriellen Gesellschaft: Ernst Forsthoff und seine Zeit''. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2011; . *

Life

Thought

Partial bibliography

References

Further reading