¹ Vor dem Gesetz, (Before the Law) originally titled Legende von dem Türhüter (“Legend of the Doorkeeper) was first published in 1915. (A translation of vor dem Gesetz by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, can be found in the following website: https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/beforethelaw.htm) While this parable is also told to Josef K., the main protagonist of The Trial, by a priest who is also the prison chaplain, it was published originally twice without any reference to The Trial. Kafka's diary entry of 13 December 1914 disclosed his wish (to Max Brod) to publish it as a part of The Trial. Arguably, this parable seems to represent Kafka's view of the human condition in general. (See Harmut Binder, Parable as Problem: Formal Aspects of Kafka's Before the Law, 10 Journal of the Kafka Society of America 26 (1986). For more on Kafka's relationship to the tangibility of the law see Jacques Derrida and Gil Anidjar, Acts of Religion (2002), at 172; Erwin R Steinberg, Kafka's Before the Law–A Reflection of Fear of Marriage: And Corroborating Language Patterns in the Diaries, 13 Journal of Modern Literature 129 (1986).Google Scholar

² While a Mann vom Lande might refer to a rural simpleton, or “am-ha'aretz“ in Hebrew, the protagonists in both stories, The Trial and Before the Law are extremely Kafkaesque in their characteristics. This refers to the impossible and absurd, the irresolvable paradoxes that are destined to remain a permanent feature of Kafka's figures. Given that “Kafka's fiction describes a fundamentally post-enlightened world in which the circumscription of a finite, digestible body of knowledge has become impossible… an additional meaning of the word ‘Kafkaesque’ can also be the impenetrability of meaning as such, the inability to gain an overview, the absence of stable definitions – the hallmark of what has come to be called the ‘postmodern condition'.” See A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia (Richard T. Gray et al., eds, 2005), xliv, 288–289.Google Scholar

³ Clearly, this story is far from being simple or even resolved by Josef K.'s own interpretation based on the concepts of justice and injustice. The reader is purposely left with many unsolved questions. For instance, what are these nameless protagonists meant to signify? Why was the Mann vom Lande deferred admittance, especially if these gates were made especially for him? What is the law and why is it gated? More specifically, what does the law mean here for both protagonists (Josef K. and the Mann vom Lande), the reader but also to Franz Kafka himself?Google Scholar

⁴ John Sandford, Kafka as Myth-Maker: Some Approaches to ‘Vor dem Gesetz', 29 German Life and Letters (1975), at 137. An interesting interpretation of Kafka's understanding of the law in general and this story more specifically is the way Slavoj Žižek distinguishes between the Jouissance (enjoyment) in Jewish legal traditions versus the Christian ones. Žižek uses Kafka's narratives of the law to argue that in the Jewish tradition the enjoyment of the law originates from the “‘senseless’ detailed hairsplitting which, in precise contrast to the Western tradition of metaphorical-gnositc reading, undermines the obvious meaning not by endeavoring to discern beneath it layers of ‘deeper’ analogical meanings, but by insisting on a too-close, too literal reading (‘the man from the country was never ordered to come there in the first place.')” See Slavoj Žižek, The Plague of Fantasies (1997), 47–48.Google Scholar

⁵ This is made clearer in the “Cathedral” in the parable “Before the Law.” See also Walter Herbert Sokel, The Myth of Power and the Self: Essays on Franz Kafka (2002), 54–55.Google Scholar

⁶ The difference between this “search for God through law” and the universalistic aspirations inherent to law in general is discussed in further detail in Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World: The Contribution of 20^th Century Jewish German Speaking Scholars Hans Kelsen, Hans J. Morgenthau, Hersch Lauterpacht and Erich Kaufmann to International Law (2010, forthcoming).Google Scholar

⁷ Quoted by Frank Degenhardt from an article by R. Stödter in der Wochenzeitung (Weekly) “Die Zeit” dedicated to Erich Kaufamnn on his 70th birthday on August 21, 1950. (See Frank Degenhardt, Zwischen Machtstaat und Völkerbund. Erich Kaufmann (1880–1972) (2008) at 3.) (Hereinafter Zwischen Machtstaat und Völkerbund)Google Scholar

⁸ For more on Kafka's self-reflective struggles with his racial identity, masculinity and modernity, see Sander L. Gilman, Kafka wept, 1 Modernism/Modernity (1994) 17–37.Google Scholar

⁹ Sarasin describes this as “Eigenlogik,” (intrinsic-logic). Accordingly, all symbols expressed through language and discourse depend on the way the individual “writes himself/herself in”. Through the structures of “objective knowledge” the individual scholar organizes, first and foremost, his/her own personal experiences and perceptions. The subject however, never losses his or her personal identity in these “objective” structures. (See Philip Sarasin, Geschichtswissenschaft und Diskursanalyse (2003) 10–60 at 50. See also Philip Sarasin, Subjekte, Diskurse, Körper. Überlegungen zu einer diskursanalytischen Kulturgeschichte in Kulturgeschichte Heute, 16 (Wolfgang Hardtwig and Hans-Ulrich Wehler eds.) Geschichte und Gesellschaft (A Supplement) (1996) 131–164.)Google Scholar

¹⁰ Speaking of Situationality assumes that the social characteristics of the people involved in each instance determine its outcome at least as much as historically socially based legal principles, rules, doctrines, interpretations etc. “[T]he situation comprises the interplay between the social, biological, cultural, etc. constraints on the human freedom, the effort towards objective justice, and self expression, and the diverse potentials to manage the maximum amount of freedom from these constraints.” (Outi Korhonen, International Law Situated: An Analysis of the Lawyer's Stance Towards Culture, History and Community (2000) at 8.)Google Scholar

¹¹ These conclusive words used by the rapporteur to characterize Erich Kaufmann in 1949 are quoted in Zwischen Machtstaat und Völkerbund, at 1.Google Scholar

¹² Albert S. Lindemann has convincingly pointed to the dichotomous contradiction between the Prussian Junkers and the Jews: while Prussian Jews were overwhelmingly middle-class and liberals who held intellectuals in esteem, the Junkers were known to be suspicious of intellectuals, especially liberal ones; “Junker wealth was based in the land; Jewish wealth lay in commerce, banking and industry. Junker social prestige derived from lineage and ancestry; Jews gained social prestige in German society through personal accomplishment, usually in professional excellence or through wealth accumulated in business. Jewish style was lively, verbal; Junkers were reserved taciturn.” (Albert S. Lindemann, Esau’ Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews (2000), at 112.) Similarly, Lamar Cecil describes the Junkers as follows: “To outsiders, the Prussian nobility appeared arrogant boors, ladies and gentlemen of unrelieved monotony, hopelessly deficient in chic, hostile to intellectuality, but enthralled by genealogical and ceremonial minutiae; jealous, pedantic, quarrelsome, rigidly self-centered and fearfully tiresome…. And no one seemed to them so irremeably bourgeois, so grotesquely alien as the Jews.” This “tightly controlled area by the nobility” was, however, a space where the Jews had distinct ambitions to enter, but only superficially successful in doing so. (Lamar Cecil, Jew and Junker in Imperial Berlin. 20 (1) The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (1975) 47–58) In a nutshell and as Frederic Austin Ogg expressed it: “if Prussia ruled Germany, the Junkers ruled Prussia, and through it the Empire itself.” See Frederic A. Ogg, The Government of Europe (1920) at 681.Google Scholar

¹³ Evidence for this desire is detected mostly from Kaufmann's military record mentioned in more detail below. For more on Kaufmann's “closeted” Jewish background see Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6.Google Scholar

¹⁴ To identify Kaufmann as a “Vernuftrepublikaner” Degenhardt relies on Rennert, Klaus, Die „Geisteswissenschaftliche Richtung” in der Weimarer Republik: Untersuchungen zu Erich Kaufmann, Günter Holstein u. Rudolf Smend (1987), as well as Michael Stolleis, Geschichte des Öffentlichen Rechts in Deutschland 1914–1945 (1999) at 175. (The English translation is Michael Stolleis, A HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAW IN GERMANY 1914–1945, (THOMAS Dunlap trans.) (2004). See more in Zwischen Machtstaat und Völkerbund.Google Scholar

¹⁵ As Martti Koskenniemi formulates it: “Though as legal theorist, Kaufmann was a determined enemy of the liberal rationalism represented by most German internationalists, this by no means classed him among the “deniers”… He was not, unlike Kelsen, a friend of parliamentary democracy and held the Weimar constitution a Lebendsfremd abstraction, pieced together from French and English sources and unrespectful of German legal traditions.” See Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations (2001) at 250. (Hereinafter The Gentle Civilizer)Google Scholar

¹⁶ “Die vorliegende Untersuchung will und kann diese Polarität in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung nicht auflösen. Schließlich war die Polarisierung von Kaufmann selbst erwünscht und wesentliches Stilmittel seiner staats- wie völkerrechtlichen Arbeiten.” (The following research will not and cannot solve the polarity in this public perception. After all, Kaufmann himself welcomed this polarisation and used it as a vital stylising-element of his work in public and international law.), see Zwischen Machtstaat und Völkerbund, at 2Google Scholar

¹⁷ The result of this project is accessible through the monographs edited in the series “Studien zur Geschichte des Völkerrechts“ edited by Michael Stolleis (Max-Planck-Institute of European Legal History, Frankfurt), Armin von Bogdandy (Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law Heidelberg) and Wolfgang Graf Vitzthum (University of Tübingen). Other monographs published on similar themes in recent years include, inter alia, Bernhard Roscher, Der Briand-Kellogg-Pakt von 1928. Der “Verzicht auf den Krieg als Mittel nationaler Politik” im völkerrechtlichen Denken der Zwischenkriegszeit (2004); see also Roscher, Der Briand-Kellog-Pakt von 1928, 44 Archiv des Völkerrechts 514 (2007); Claudia Denfeld, Hans Weinberg (1885–1962). Die Organisation der Staatengemeinschaft (2008); Sandra Link, Ein Realist mit Idealen: Der Völkerrechtler Karl Strupp (1886–1940) (2003).Google Scholar

¹⁸ For more on this historical turn see Alexandra Kemmerer, The Turning Aside. On International Law and Its History, Progress in International Law 71 (Rebecca Bratspies and Russell Miller eds., 2008). Jochen von Bernstorff and Volker Roeben, International Law as Public Law: On Recent and Historical German Approaches to International Law (Review Essay on Denfeld, C. Hans Wehberg (1885–1962): Die Organisation der Staatengemeinschaft; Degenhardt, Frank. Zwischen Machtstaat und Völkerbund: Erich Kaufmann (1880–1972); Stefan Talmon, Kollektive Nichtanerkennung illegaler Staaten (2006); Armin von Bogdandy et al., Pluralistische Gesellschaften und Internationales Recht [43 Berichte der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Völkerrecht, 2008]; Klaus Dicke (ed.), Weltinnenrecht: Liber amicorum Jost Delbrück (2005); Nele Matz, Wege zur Koordinierung Völkerrechtlicher Verträge (2005); Angelika Nußberger, Sozialstandards im Völkerrecht (2005); Martin Scheyli, Konstitutionelle Gemeinwohlorientierung im Völkerrecht, 103 Am J. Int'l L. 609 (2009).Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Matthew Craven, Introduction: International Law and Its Histories, in: Matthew Craven, Time, History and International Law 1 (2007), 4–6.Google Scholar

²⁰ As Matthew Craven specifies, this is one of the three ways in which the relationship between international law and history are discussed in contemporary scholarship (the other two forms include narratives that examine institutions or particular ideas within international law and histories with the purpose of discovering meaningful trajectories and teleologies within the discipline. (See ibid., 7.)Google Scholar

²¹ See Zwischen Machtstaat und Völkerbund, at 3.Google Scholar

²² “Ich studierte Rechtswissenschaft im Hinblick auf Philosophie, und die Probleme, welche die Beschäftigung mit dem Recht aufwarf, waren der Gegenstand meiner philosophischen Bemühungen.” (Erich Kaufmann, Vorwort, Gesammelte Schriften 1, 2, 3 (1960), at xiv.Google Scholar

²³ For more on this see Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6.Google Scholar

²⁴ As Ludwig Biewer tells, in December 1913 acted as a lieutenant in command of the reserve. Significantly, while military service was obligatory in Prussia – university graduates were obliged to serve a year – a military career was barred from Jews in Prussia. (See Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany 1743–1933 (Dani Urbach, trans., 2004), at 223, 234–5.) Given that the military service in Austria and Bavaria was more tolerant to Jews because there they were accepted to officer schools and even promoted, it is not surprising that Kaufmann volunteered to a Bavarian regiment. (Ludwig Biewer, Erich Kaufmann, der erste Völkerrechtsberater des Auswärtigen Amts der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. 55 Auswärtiger Dienst. Vierteljahresschrift der Vereinigung Deutscher Auslandsbeamten I–IV. (1992), 6–10, and Ludwig Biewer, Erich Kaufmann – Jurist aus Pommern im Dienste vom Demokratie und Menschenrechten. 75 Baltische Studien (1989), 111–124.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid.Google Scholar

²⁶ The On his collaboration with Carl Georg Bruns see more below.Google Scholar

²⁷ The Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft was a German entity formally known as the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V. (Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science). Founded in 1911, this “umbrella” organization for numerous institutes, promoted scientific contributions independently from the German state. Many private persons and companies that included Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Association of German Science) and the American Rockefeller Foundation, made essential contributions to the Society. Up to World War II, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft was heavily sponsored by Jewish donations, securing – however intentionally – the ability of Jews to participate in scientific research. Richard Martin Willstätter (1872–1942), the director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry (1912) and the winner of the Noble Peace Prize in Chemistry in 1915, described this phenomena: “A conspicuously and disproportionately large fraction of the appointments went to Jewish or non-Arian scientists – too large, in my opinion. They just happened to be available since the universities certainly did not make it hard to lure them away.” (See Jeffery Allen Johnson, The Kaiser's Chemists: Science and the Modernization in Imperial Germany (1990) at 166.) Another informative history is how the philanthropist and entrepreneur Leopold Koppel (1843–1933) offered to finance completely the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for physics and chemistry under the condition that the Chemist Fritz Haber (1868–1933), also a Nobel Prize winner (1918) becomes its director. (See Eckhardt Fuchs and Dieter Hoffmann, Philanthropy and Science in Wilhelmine Germany, in Philanthropy, Patronage, and Civil Society: Experiences from Germany, Great Britain and North America 103 (Thomas Adam ed., 2004), at 108. For more on anti-Semitism in German law faculties culminating with Hitler's rise into power see. Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6.)Google Scholar

²⁸ For more on Kaufmanns’ biography see Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer, at 250. And see Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6.Google Scholar

²⁹ See supra note 16.Google Scholar

³⁰ A rather recent work studying this constellation in a more direct manner is the edited volume by Jack Beatson and Reinhardt Zimmermann dedicated to 20^th century German speaking Jewish legal scholars who have immigrated to Britain. See Jurists Uprooted: German-Speaking Émigré Lawyers in Twentieth-Century Britain (Jack Beatson and Reinhardt Zimmermann, eds., 2005). For an account dedicated to a Jewish international lawyer see Martti Koskenniemi, Hersch Lauterpacht 1897–1960, in Jurists Uprooted.Google Scholar

³¹ For more on the failure of Jewish German assimilation see David J. Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry 1780–1840 (1999) and Jacob Katz, Jewish Emancipation and Auto-Emancipation (1986). For more on anti-Semitism in German speaking law faculties see Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6.Google Scholar

³² These consequences were not necessarily experienced similarly. In fact, German Jewry was deeply divided along religious, political, and ideological fault lines. (For more on this topic see for example Donald L, Niewyk, The Jews of the Weimar Republic (1980)Google Scholar

³³ It is as if being Jewish became an anxiety of influence that determined Kaufmanns’ life choices and legal Weltanschauung. (See Harold Bloom, The Anxiey of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1997) His dissertation topic, for instance, dedicated to the works of an earlier Jewish convert, Friedrich Julius Stahl, reflects such an influential anxiety. This dissertation, entitled “Studien zur Staatslehre des monarchischen Prinzips” (1906), conceives Stahl as “der Rechtsphilosoph der Staatslehre des monarchischen Prinzips.“ In fact, Kaufmann's conversion to the Lutheran church can be understood as an attempt to follow Stahl's footsteps and convert into the predominant universal current, which at this time implied adherent nationalism. (See more in Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6).Google Scholar

³⁴ See above pp. 443–446. PLEASE CHECK THE PAGES OF THIS FOOTNOTE ON THE LAST VERSION (IF IT MAY STILL CHANGE)Google Scholar

³⁵ In fact, examining Kaufmann's “jüdische Herkunft“ (Jewish origins) remains difficult for the others who have attempted to contextualize his theory with his biography. If it is mentioned at all, it is only in some biographical traces in an almost secretive and ex post facto manner. In most instances when Kaufmann's Judaism is referred to, it is done only through the overarching title of the books the article dedicated to him. Likewise wehen religion is mentioned as a category, it is Kaufmann's Protestantism that is mentioned. (See for instance Peter Lerche, Erich Kaufmann Gelehrter und Patriot, in Grosse Jüdische Gelehrte an der Münchener Juristischen Fakultät 20 (Peter Landau and Hermann Nehlsen, eds., 2001)Google Scholar

³⁶ Carl Georg Bruns was one of the most important lobbyists and the General Secretary to the Verband der Deutschen Minderheiten in Europa, formed in 1922 and fittingly turned into the Verband der Deutschen Volksgruppe in 1928. Officially, Kaufmann was Bruns’ Doktorvater. Nevertheless, their relationship seems to have been of a much closer nature that included mutual geographical relocations from 1914 onwards. See Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, at 90, 95.Google Scholar

³⁷ Some of the associations/unions that Kaufmann participated in include the “Deutsche Liga für den Völkerbund“, “Volksdeutscher Klub“ and the “Deutscher Schutzbund für das Grenz- und Auslandsdeutschtum“.Google Scholar

³⁸ As Degenhardt describes it, Kaufmann, together with Bruns, saw the magic appeal of the German minority issue because it “availed the possibility to unite legal theory and legal dogmatism together with national political commitments.” (Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, at 96).Google Scholar

³⁹ For more on the issue of German minorities see John Hiden and Martyn Houdsen, Peaceful Coexistence, Neighbors or Enemies? Germans, The Baltic and Beyond (On the Boundary of two Worlds: Identity, Freedom, and Moral Imaginations in the Baltics 19 (John Hiden and Martyn Houdsen eds., 2008).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Supra note 38. For more details about Kaufmanns’ involvement with the minority issue see Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, 90–100.Google Scholar

⁴¹ To name just a few persons who contributed to philosophical, cultural, legal, economical and political minority issues – the Russian Vladimir Medem and Simon Dubnow, the Austrian Otto Bauer, the Lithuanian born American Mordechai Kaplan and many others.Google Scholar

⁴² His work at the foreign ministry began only after Kaufmann made a name for himself earlier through his efforts to secure the rights of the German national minorities, as mentioned above. (Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, at 91.)Google Scholar

⁴³ As Degenhardt phrases it: “for the Foreign Ministry Kaufmann was the Idealbesetzung (ideal-occupant): on the one hand he was respected in “the minority cliques” of the time… while on the other hand he was, also thanks to his renowned scientific stature, well-connected with international decision-makers. Methodologically speaking, Kaufmann did not even need to distort his approach.” (See Ibid., 99)Google Scholar

⁴⁴ See more on this issue in Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Interestingly Kelsen was Kaufmann's everlasting target of condemnation. For more on Kelsen's life and work and the relationship between the two see Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6. For more on Kelsen's “school” see Jochen von Bernstorff, Der Glaube an das universale Recht: Zur Völkerrechtstheorie Hans Kelsens und seiner Schüler (2001).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ “Im Grunde war jede These seines Referats eine Provokation für die bislang herrschende Meinung.” (Stolleis, supra note 14 (German version) at 191.)Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer, at 257.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ For more on the differentiation between these “camps” see Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, 57–59.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ For an analysis of the German legal education system see Annette Keilmann, The Einheitsjurist - A German Phenomenon, 7 German Law Journal 293 (2006), available at: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/index.php?pageID=11&artID=712. For a recent critique, see Stephan Leibfried, Christoph Möllers, Christoph Schmid and Peer Zumbansen, Redefining the Traditional Pillars of German Legal Education and Setting the Stage for Contemporary Interdisciplinary Research, 7 German Law Journal 661 (2006), available at: http://germanlawjournal.com/pdfs/Vol07No08/PDF_Vol_07_No_08_661-680_Articles_Leibfried.pdf), and for a comparative perspective see the contributions to the Symposium on “Transnational Legal Education”, 10 German Law Journal (2009), available at: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/pdfs/Vol10No07/PDF_Vol_10_No_07_SI_859-876_Scott.pdf Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, 11–12.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ibid., 25–29.Google Scholar

⁵² “Der Staat ist ihm einerseits, objektiv reale Größe, dis sich in und an den Individuen auswirkt'; andererseits prägt aber acuh das Individuum den Volksgeist., webt es mit an seinem Gewande.” (Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, at 23.)Google Scholar

⁵³ For more on the ‘quarrel over method’ between the open-ended label ‘positivists’ and ‘anti-positivists’ in Germany and Austria, mainly the Vienna School, see Stolleis (English translation) supra note 14, 145–175.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ For more on Kaufmann's understanding of state's power see Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, at 26.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Ibid., 26–27.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ “The victorious war is the ultimate means for every highest objective. In war the state demonstrates its real being, it is the fullest proof of the special quality of the state… In the victorious war legal thought sets the ultimate norm which decides which state has the right on its side… Who can, may also.” Erich Kaufmann, Das Wesen des Völkerrechts und die Clausula Rebus Sic Stantibus (1911) at 146. See also Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer, at 179.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ The rising, conformist and even blind German patriotism energizing the righteousness atmosphere at the beginning of World War I was shared by Jewish intellectuals and scientists to a unprecedented level. See more in Elon, supra note 24, at 295–352.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, at 26. For more on the relationship between the three legal scholars see Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ In addition to Kelsen and Lauterpacht, Kaufmann's position was highly criticised by the Austrian Heinrich Lammasch (1853–1920); the French Léon Duguit (1859–1928) and George Scelle (1878–1961); the Greek Nicolas Politis (1872–1943); the Chilean Alejandro Alvarez (1868–1960) and James Brierly (1881–1955). See Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, 12–84 at 56. The neo-Kantian radical socialist Leonard Nellson (1882–1927) saw Kaufmann's conceptualisation to destroy legal concepts altogether, just as Eduard Bristler (John H. Hertz) saw this to be “the crowning theory of the imperialist Machtstaat.” (Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer, at 256.)Google Scholar

⁶¹ Eduard Bristlers, Die Völkerrechtslehre des Nationalsozialmus (1938) at 53, 62, 170. See also Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer, at 256.Google Scholar

⁶² Ibid., 259.Google Scholar

⁶³ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ For more on this see version of Kaufmann's legal approach see Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, at 53.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ To do this he constructed the notion of sovereignty's “elasticity”: its ability to “contract” allows for a differentiation between sovereign “substance” from sovereign “practice”. and this, among other things, prevents Kaufmann's approach to state-sovereignty becoming entirely dependent on power politics. (This is particularly visible in Kaufmann's general course at The Hague, 1935. Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, 55–57.)Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Erich Kaufmann, Règles générales du drois de la paix. 54 Recueil de Cours de L'Académie de Droit International (1935/IV), 313–615 at 363.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ As Koskenniemi puts it: “Like legal realists, Kaufmann now saw the state as the access-point for those values, the medium…” The Gentle Civilizer, 258–261: at 259.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ In Bismarcks Erbe in der Reichsverfassung (1917), Kaufmann refers to wars as “Gottesurteil“ (judgment of God) and “Glied der Göttlichen Weltordnung“ (element of God's world order). See Erich Kaufmann, Bismarcks Erbe in der Reichsverfassung (1917), 1 Gesammelte Schriften 4 (1960), at 4. See Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, at 30 and 57.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Carl Schmitt used this exact word when referring to Kaufmann during his interrogation at the Nuremberg Trials. Interestingly, at Nuremberg, Schmitt answered Robert Kempner's question, (“Did you consider the influence of your Jewish colleagues, who were teachers of international law, a misfortune?”) with the following sentence: “With the exception of Erich Kaufmann, there were no Jewish legal scholars there [in Nazi Germany]. He was a belligerent militarist. He originally coined the phrase ‘The social ideal is the victorious war.”’ (See complete narrative in Joseph Bendersky, The Expendable Kronjurist: Carl Schmitt and National Socialism, 1933–36, 14 Journal of Contemporary History 309 (1979). Degenhardts’ analysis of Schmitt's relationship to Kaufmann is of significance for the understanding of life at the German law faculties before and during World War II. For instance, to make sure that Kaufmann would finally be “removed” from the law faculty but also from Berlin entirely (so that Schmitt could take Kaufmann's academic chair and have no competition altogether) Schmitt brought to the attention of the German cultural ministry the “troubling” “Hamel Case”. This was an incident involving Walter Hamel, who was one of Kaufmanns’ few habilitation students and a NSDAP member since 1932. Hamel dedicated to Kaufmann his habilitation thesis – published in 1933 – because he seems to have been “tricked” into believing that Kaufmann was Arian. (See Degenhardt, “Kaufmann und Schmitt – vom “Freund” zum Feind”, Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, 119–123).Google Scholar

⁷² See above 443–446. PLEASE CHECK AGAIN BEFORE PUBLICATIONGoogle Scholar

⁷³ Statistically this meant that a large presence of Jews in liberal and free professions. For example, while Jews constituted less than 1 percent of the general population in Germany by the early 1930's, 10.9 percent of the general population, were Jewish medical doctors, 10.7 percent were dentists, 5.1 percent were editors and authors and up to 16.3 percent were lawyers. As Marvin Perry phrases it: “as victims of persecution, they naturally favored societies that were committed to the liberal ideals of legal equality, toleration, the rule of law and equality of opportunity.” (See more in Marvin Perry WESTERN CIVILIZATION: IDEAS, POLITICS AND SOCIETY, VOL. II (2009) at 615–616.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ See Elon, supra note 24, at 357.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ See for instance, Hans. J. Morgenthau, The Tragedy of German Jewish Liberalism, LEO BAECK INSTITUTE INC. (1961): 5–16.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ For more on the possible differentiation between forms of liberalism/anti-liberalism and/or positivism/anti-positivism in German legal debates until the outbreak of World War II see Reut Yael Paz, A Gateway Between a Distant God & a Cruel World supra note 6. And Koskenniemi, THE GENTLE CIVILIZER 179–261.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ (Elon, supra note 24, at 373)Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Or as Martti Kosekenniemi sees Kaufmann's nationalistic stance as indissociable from his romantic conservativism. See also The Gentle Civilizer, at 256.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Ibid., 121–122.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Ibid. See also Anna Maria von Lösch, Der Nackte Geist. Die Juristische Fakultät der Berliner Universität im Umbruch von 1933, (1999), at 201.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Ibid.Google Scholar

⁸² Rather paradoxically Kaufmann ends up creating a “Kreis” of like-minded people only after he lost his official positions and most of his Jewish colleagues have already left Germany. As he himself describes this Kreis: “Ich war vom Lehrstuhl vertrieben und sollte jeder akademischen Wirkungsmöglichkeit beraubt werden. Aber es fügte sich, dass, was die Menschen Böses an mir tun wollten, zum Segen wurde.” (Zwischen Machtsstaat und Völkerbund, 125.) The suspension of the Nikolassee-Kreis could also be attributed to Carl Schmitt's anti-Semitic meddling, although it cannot be proven. (Ibid., 126 note 225)Google Scholar

⁸³ Or as Kafka phrased it in Before the Law: “Wieso kommt es, daß in den vielen Jahren niemand außer mir Einlaß verlangt hat?” (How does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?) See Franz Kafka, Vor dem Gesetz, Erzählungen veröffentlicht zu Lebzeiten (1904–1924) available at http://www.textlog.de/32064.html Google Scholar