Preußisches Obertribunal

The , abbreviated (), was between 1703 and 1879 either the sole or one of the supreme courts of the Kingdom of Prussia. The court played a significant role in shaping Prussia's legal system and had major influence on the administration of justice in the kingdom.

The court was founded by Frederick I in 1703 as the (Superior Court of Appeals in Berlin) and underwent several reorganizations. In 1748, it was disestablished and integrated into the Kammergericht, where it became the Kammergericht's fourth senate. In 1782, the tribunal was separated from that court and named (Secret Supreme Tribunal). In the wake of the German revolutions of 1848–1849, it was renamed to (Supreme Tribunal), before it was disestablished in 1879 and succeeded by the Reichsgericht, which became the sole supreme court of the German Empire.

History

(1703–1748)

The (Superior Court of Appeals in Berlin) was founded in 1703 by Frederick I, after the Prussian king had obtained a limited . The , which Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I had granted on 16 December 1702, allowed Prussia to establish a supreme court, whose decisions could not be appealed to the two supreme courts of the Holy Roman Empire – the and the Aulic Council. The was limited to cases involving not more than 2,500  gold guilders. The court, at least initially, had local jurisdiction for the Prussian provinces of Farther Pomerania, the Duchy of Magdeburg, the ' (a ), the Duchy of Cleves, the County of Mark and the . In 1716, the court was merged with , which had responsibilities for Meurs, Lingen und Teklenburg.

With an order () dated 18 May 1748, the was abolished together with all other superior courts in Berlin, except the (Secret Judicial Council), and the (Ravensburg Court of Appeal) with the goal of forming a single supreme judicial institution for the whole of Prussia.

Fourth senate of the (1748–1782)

Under the date 31 May 1746, the Prussian king obtained an unlimited (a ) for Prussia from Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. This resulted in the establishment of a new supreme court in 1748, which at first remained unnamed. This court consisted of four senates (panels), the first three senates being mainly built out of the former (Chamber Court), while the fourth was chiefly formed out of the former . Quickly, the first three senates became again known as the , while the superior forth senate emerged as the .

In 1772, the fourth senate was renamed to (Secret Supreme Tribunal). At this time, only two supreme courts of Prussia remained, the Secret Supreme Tribunal and the (the East Prussian Tribunal at Königsberg), which, however, was soon – probably in 1774 – subordinated to the '.

(Secret Supreme Tribunal) (1782–1852)

Sole Prussian supreme court (1782–1815)

On 30 November 1782, the was separated from the . The was subordinated to the and the gained local jurisdiction for the whole of Prussia. The continued its duties with three senates: the (the criminal deputation), the (the court of appeal for the ''Kurmark'') and the (the court of appeal for the four high courts of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, i.e. the of the Kammergericht, the , the ntil 1789and the ). The Secret Supreme Tribunal thereby became the supreme Prussian court of appeal in the third instance and heard appeals against decisions by the of the Kammergericht and the other high courts of the Prussian provinces. The Secret Supreme Tribunal was directly subordinate to the Prussian Department of Justice or, from 1808 onwards, to the Prussian Ministry of Justice.

One of Prussia's supreme courts (1815–1849)

Due to the Congress of Vienna, Prussia made huge territorial gains in 1815. Prussia now consisted no longer of one unified area of law, but three: the area of French law in the Left Bank of the Rhine and the Duchy of Berg, the area of the ''ius commune'' in New Western Pomerania and and the Prussian law region in the rest of Prussia. This legal fragmentation resulted in the formation of new supreme appellate courts in Prussia, thus ending the supremacy of the Tribunal.

At this time, five Prussian supreme courts existed:
# the (Rhenish Court of Appeal and Cassation) – competent for the area of French law,
# the (Berlin Court of Appeal) – competent for the -area of the right bank of the Rhine-territory of the '' Regierungsbezirk Koblenz'',
# the (Court of Appeal at Greifswald) – competent for the -area of New Western Pomerania,
# the (High Court of Appeal at Posen) – competent for the Prussian law-area of the Province of Posen and
# the – competent for all other Prussian law-territories of the kingdom.

In 1833, the pre-eminent position of the within the Prussian legal system was fortified once more: Due to an ordinance dated 14 December 1833, it regained the sole responsibility to decide certain nullity appeals () and appeals on points of law () in civil disputes if the amount of the action in question reached the sum necessary for appeal.

During the , the , however, lost its appellate jurisdiction in certain criminal cases of a political nature by virtue of a Cabinet Order dated 25 April 1835. These cases were reassigned to the , in its capacity as .

(Supreme Tribunal) (1853–1879)

Sole Prussian supreme court again (1853–1867)

The German revolutions of 1848–1849 resulted in the promulgation of the Prussian constitutions of 1848 and 1850 which, among other things, contained programmatic statements about the organisation of the courts (Article 91 of the 1848 constitution and Articles 92 and 116 of the 1850 constitution). Article 92 of the Constitution of 1850 proclaimed:

Before the envisaged unification of the Prussian supreme courts was set into motion, the was first renamed to (State Tribunal) by virtue of an ordinance dated 2 January 1849 to take into account the new principle of publicity (') in German procedural law. Then the unification was brought to life by a law dated 17 March 1852, which in its Section 1 merged the two remaining supreme courts of Prussia, the and the into a new court, again named . The merger of the courts came into effect on 1 January 1853. The other Prussian supreme courts, the , the and the had already been disestablished earlier.

Establishment of a short-lived second Prussian Supreme Court (1876–1874)

After the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, the (Superior Court of Appeals in Berlin) was formed to hear appeals from the new Prussian provinces: Schleswig-Holstein (including Saxe-Lauenburg), Hanover, Hesse-Nassau and the Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont. This new court was short-lived and in 1874 it was merged into the Tribunal.

Decline and abolishment (1870–1879)

In 1870, the was established in Leipzig as a court of the North German Federation and later of the German Empire. As a result, the Prussian Supreme Tribunal lost its final appellate jurisdiction concerning commercial and promissory notes law. After this major loss of appellate jurisdiction, the Prussian Supreme Tribunal was abolished altogether on 30 September 1879, as a direct consequence of the establishment of the , which became the sole supreme court of the German Empire. The establishment of the coincided with the entry into force of the ' (Reich justice laws), which unified major areas of German civil and criminal procedure with the codification of the (Courts Constitution Act), the ''Zivilprozessordnung'' (Civil Procedure Code), the ''Strafprozessordnung'' (Code of Criminal Procedure) and the ' (Insolvency Code).

Collection and publication of decisions

Following a cabinet order dated 19 July 1832, the had to give reasons for all its decisions, but its reasoned decisions generally remained unpublished. This was rectified in 1836 or 1837, when a state publication series for the decisions of the court was installed named (Decisions of the Royal Supreme Tribunal; often abbreviated to ). At first, only private law decisions were published, because the court had no competencies for criminal law, but after it gained the respective subject-matter jurisdiction, decisions concerning criminal law were also published beginning in 1849.

Of its criminal cases, the 1859 ( 42, 36) concerning the interplay of ' and incitement – and factually the accidental murder of a 17 year old student – is especially famous. According to the German legal scholars and , hardly any other decision has influenced the discussion of German criminal law scholarship more than this decision by the Tribunal. The Tribunal decided that the error on the part of the perpetrator regarding the identity of the murder victim () is irrelevant for the criminal liability of the instigator, as the confusion of the victim by the perpetrator is within the limits of what is foreseeable and that the instigator should therefore be punished for incitement to murder.

In the approximately 500 of the court's most important decisions were published. The series had major influence on contemporary Prussian jurisprudence.

Presidents and other important judges

Presidents of the (1703–1748)

Presidents of the fourth senate of the (1748–1778)

Presidents of the (1778–1879)

Other important judges

*
* Karl Friedrich Eichhorn
* Georg Friedrich Puchta
*
* Carl Gottlieb Svarez
* Benedikt Waldeck

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Further reading

*
*
*
*
*
*
*

External links

*
*

Digital versions of the 86 volumes (1837–1879) of ''Entscheidungen des Königlichen Obertribunals'' (Decisions of the Royal Supreme Tribunal)

{{Authority control, state=collapsed

Defunct courts
Legal history of Germany
Former supreme courts
Courts in Germany
Courts and tribunals established in 1703
Courts and tribunals disestablished in 1879