¹ Schmitt, Carl, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand: Eine staatsrechtliche Studie” (Dictatorship and State of Siege: A Study of Constitutional Law), Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft, 38 (1917 (1916)), 138–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schmitt, , “Die Einwirkungen des Kriegszustandes auf das ordentliche strafprozessuale Verfahren” (The Effects of the State of War upon the Standard Criminal Trial Procedure), Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft, 38 (1917), 783–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Schmitt, Carl, Tagebücher: Oktober 1912 bis Februar 1915, ed. Hüsmert, Ernst (Berlin, 2003)Google Scholar; and Schmitt, , Die Militärzeit 1915 bis 1919, ed. Hüsmert, Ernst and Giesler, Gerd (Berlin, 2005)Google Scholar.

³ For Schmitt's discussion of “fate” (Schicksal) see especially Schmitt, Militärzeit, 95 (15 July 1915), 118 (27 Aug. 1915), 135 (26 Sept. 1915).

⁴ In making this comparison, I employ the word “normative” in its broader sense, to denote the ought irreducible to that which is, rather than in its narrowly legal sense. The distinction between the normative order of the law and the “actual” (tatsächlich) demands of political or military reality in Schmitt's wartime legal articles will be discussed at length below.

⁵ See Bendersky, Joseph W., Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich (Princeton, NJ, 1983), 22–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Balakrishnan, Gopal, The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt (London and New York, 2000), 32Google Scholar.

⁶ Caldwell, Peter, Popular Sovereignty and the Crisis of German Constitutional Law: The Theory and Practice of Weimar Constitutionalism (Durham, NC, 1997), 41, 52–62Google Scholar.

⁷ Bendersky, Carl Schmitt, 19. On the association of neo-Kantianism, legal positivism and the liberal Rechtsstaat in early twentieth-century German academic discourse, see Seitzer, Jeffrey and Thornhill, Christopher, “An Introduction to Carl Schmitt's Constitutional Theory: Issues and Context”, in Schmitt, Carl, Constitutional Theory, trans. Jeffrey Seitzer (Durham, NC, 2008), 4–5Google Scholar.

⁸ Scheuerman, William, Carl Schmitt: The End of Law (Lanham, MD, 1999), 22–3, 30Google Scholar.

⁹ Mehring, Reinhard, Carl Schmitt: Aufstieg und Fall (Munich, 2009), 77Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See, for instance, Carl Schmitt to Pawla “Cari” Dorotic (24 Oct. 1912) in Schmitt, Tagebücher, 1–2. Discussed below.

¹¹ On the centrality of Schmitt's political theology to his entire theoretical project see Meier, Heinrich, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt: Four Chapters on the Distinction between Political Theology and Political Philosophy, trans. Marcus Brainard (Chicago, 1998), 20–25, 57–9, 72–3Google Scholar.

¹² Balakrishnan, The Enemy, 32.

¹³ Ibid., 17.

¹⁴ Ibid.

¹⁵ See McCormick, John, “The Dilemmas of Dictatorship: Carl Schmitt and Constitutional Emergency Powers” in Dyzenhaus, David, ed., Law as Politics: Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism (Durham, NC, 1998), 217–51, 217, 224Google Scholar. Discussed below.

¹⁶ See Scheuerman, Carl Schmitt, 15–18; and Kennedy, Ellen, Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar (Durham NC, 2004), 43–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Discussed below.

¹⁷ See Schmitt, Carl, Der Wert des Staates und die Bedeutung des Einzelnen (The Value of the State and the Significance of the Individual) (Tübingen, 1914)Google Scholar. Discussed below. See also Mehring, Carl Schmitt, 61–2.

¹⁸ See Caldwell, Peter, “Controversies over Carl Schmitt: A Review of Recent Literature”, Journal of Modern History, 77/2 (June 2005), 373–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a detailed account of Schmitt's career during the early years of the Third Reich see Koenen, Andreas, Der Fall Carl Schmitt: Sein Aufstieg zum “Kronjuristen des Dritten Reiches” (Darmstadt, 1995)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ For Schmitt's appraisal of his own “pointless resentment” (zweckloses Ressentiment) see Schmitt, Militärzeit, 135 (24 Sept. 1915). Discussed below.

²⁰ See Ernst Hüsmert and Gerd Giesler, “Einführung” in Schmitt, Militärzeit, 2. In 1913, along with his friend Fritz Eisler, Schmitt had published a collection of satires (using the collaborative pseudonym Johannes Negelinus), including one called “Gottfried von Bouillon” which lampooned the kaiser. Hüsmert and Giesler liken this piece to an 1894 satire by the pacifist Ludwig Quidde that portrayed Wilhelm II as Caligula. When Quidde attempted to publish another anti-government tract in 1915, it was Schmitt who oversaw its censorship. See ibid. (17 May 1915), 69. On Schmitt's early satirical writing see Villinger, Ingeborg, Carl Schmitts Kulturkritik der Moderne. Text, Kommentar und Analyse der “Schattenrisse” des Johannes Negelinus (Berlin, 1995)Google Scholar.

²¹ For Schmitt's record of his process in composing this work see Schmitt, Militärzeit, 66 (10 May 1915), 95 (15 July 1915), 144–5 (9–12 Nov. 1915). Connections between Schmitt's text Theodor Däublers “Nordlicht” and his later work are fruitfully discussed in Kennedy, Constitutional Failure, 46–7; and Meier, The Lesson of Carl Schmitt, 20–25. On Däubler himself see Furness, Raymond, Zarathustra's Children: A Study of a Lost Generation of German Writers (Rochester, 2000), 153–74Google Scholar.

²² For Schmitt's ardent desire for employment as a lecturer at Strasbourg see Schmitt, Militärzeit, 157 (19 Nov. 1915), 159 (28 Nov. 1915), 161 (2 Dec. 1915). Schmitt attained the position early in 1916, but was obliged to resume his duties in Munich between academic terms. See Hüsmert and Giesler, “Einführung”, 8.

²³ See Kitchen, Martin, The Silent Dictatorship: The Politics of the German High Command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, 1916–1918 (London, 1976), 25Google Scholar. Kitchen notes that the Burgfrieden of 1914 was an outgrowth of systemic conditions of German governance that favored Bonapartism. Since the era of Bismarck, foreign wars had been a primary means of ameliorating domestic conflict. See ibid., 12–14, 17.

²⁴ See Large, David Clay, Where Ghosts Walked: Munich's Road to the Third Reich (New York, 1997)Google Scholar. See also Jelovich, Peter, Munich and Theatrical Modernism: Politics, Playwriting, and Performance, 1890–1914 (Cambridge, MA, 1985)Google Scholar. Both authors note that these pre-war anti-establishment tendencies reflected genuine political diversity, what Jelavich calls the “modernists’ polarization between the anarchist Left and the proto-fascist Right”. See ibid., 290.

²⁵ See Hüsmert and Giesler, “Einführung”, 8.

²⁶ See Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship, 127–36. After assuming command of the General Staff in August 1916, Hindenburg and Ludendorff clashed with Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg on a number of issues, including unrestricted submarine warfare, the extension of suffrage, and the proposal to rule out territorial annexation as a war aim. On a general level, these disputes revolved around the question whether norms of the Rechtsstaat (both domestically and in foreign affairs) should be preserved at the expense of immediate military-strategic gain. The conflict came to a head in July 1917, when the two commanders threatened to resign, effectively forcing the kaiser, who had theretofore largely sided with the chancellor, to acquiesce to his removal (because if the two commanders resigned, the chancellor would become so unpopular as to render his retention politically untenable). Hindenburg and Ludendorff had thus outmanoeuvred the titular head of state to establish themselves as the locus of executive decision-making through the perceived military necessity of maintaining their leadership. For a detailed narrative account of these events see Asprey, Robert, The German High Command at War: Hindenburg, Ludendorff and the First World War (London, 1991)Google Scholar.

²⁷ Schmitt, Militärzeit, 63 (6 May 1915).

²⁸ Ibid., 125 (7 Sept. 1915). It is likely that Schmitt's commanding officer, Captain Christian Roth, was the immediate source of these orders, though it is unclear how high up the chain of command they originated. The fact that Schmitt liked Roth—calling him “friendly” earlier in the entry just cited, before bemoaning his assignment, and elsewhere “a good-hearted fellow”—adds credence to the view that Schmitt's distaste for these assignments was based on principled rather than personal antipathies. For the latter reference see ibid., 36–7 (30 March 1915). On Roth himself see Hüsmert and Giesler's appendix, “Christian Roth” in Schmitt, Militärzeit, 518–20.

²⁹ Mehring, Carl Schmitt, 88.

³⁰ Schmitt, Militärzeit, 126 (7 Sept. 1915): “Und ich bin feige und gebe nach, obwohl doch alles durch Widerspruch erreicht wird.”

³¹ Although numerous circumventions of the Reich constitution were carried out even in the early stages of the war, there was no significant opposition to these measures within the community of German legal scholars. See Stolleis, Michael, A History of Public Law in Germany: 1914–1945, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Oxford, 2004), 20–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dörner, Heinrich, “Erster Weltkrieg und Privatrecht”, Rechtstheorie, 17 (1986), 385–401, 386–7Google Scholar.

³² Schmitt, Militärzeit, 95 (15 July 1915).

³³ Ibid., 103 (3 Aug. 1915).

³⁴ Ibid., 105 (6 Aug. 1915).

³⁵ Ibid., 94 (13 July 1915).

³⁶ Ibid., 64 (7 May 1915).

³⁷ Ibid., 77 (3 June 1915).

³⁸ Ibid., 130 (17 Sept. 1915).

³⁹ Schmitt, Militärzeit, 134 (22 Sept. 1915). Original emphasis elided. The verb “threatens” (droht) is omitted in Schmitt's original text but suggested by the editors.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 135 (24 Sept. 1915).

⁴¹ Ibid.

⁴² Ibid., 131 (19 Sept 1915).

⁴³ See especially Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, trans. George Schwab (Chicago, 2005), 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schmitt, Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Berlin, 1989), 137Google Scholar. See also Caldwell, Popular Sovereignty, 97–8.

⁴⁴ See Schmitt, Der Wert des Staates, 2–3.

⁴⁵ See Kennedy, Constitutional Failure, 43–4.

⁴⁶ Carl Schmitt, “Kritik der Zeit”, Die Rheinlande (1912), 324.

⁴⁷ Schmitt to Dorotic (24 Oct. 1912), in Schmitt, Tagebücher, 1–2.

⁴⁸ See especially Schmitt, Militärzeit, 176 (July 1916), with its reference to Kant. For Schmitt's later appraisal of Napoleon see ibid., 113 (15 Aug. 1915). Both passages are discussed below.

⁴⁹ See Schudnagies, Christian, Der Kriegs-oder Belagerungszustand im Deutschen Reich während des Ersten Weltkrieg: Eine Studie zur Entwicklung und Handlung des deutschen Ausnahmezustandsrechts bis 1919 (Frankfurt, 1994), 57–8Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ See ibid., n. 2, which discusses the Reichstag debate of 27 Aug. 1915, in which this specific phrase was employed.

⁵¹ See Stolleis, Public Law in Germany: 1914–1945, 20–26. Stolleis lists Schmitt's “Dikatatur und Belagerungszustand” and “Einwirkungen des Kriegszustandes” among those wartime works that exemplified the extent of criticism that was permitted to exist within the field of jurisprudence, which were “directed against the organizational disarray and the confusion over spheres of authority and sought to rectify that situation”. For comparison see also Arndt, Adolf (sr.), “Zum Gesetz über den Belagerungszustand”, Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung, 20 (1915), 307–8Google Scholar; Rosenthal, Felix, Deutsches Kriegsrecht: Eine Übersicht über das Recht des Kriegszustandes (Berlin, 1915)Google Scholar; and Werner Rosenberg, “Die rechtlichen Schranken der Militärdiktatur”, Zeitschrift für die gesamten Staatswissenschaften (1916), 808–25.

⁵² Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 159 and 147. Discussed below.

⁵³ Bendersky, Carl Schmitt, 19.

⁵⁴ The differentiation between constitutional and administrative law dates to the early nineteenth century, but the scholarly elaboration of the latter in Germany began only in the 1860s. On the eve of the First World War, Otto Meyer's parallel treatments of French and German administrative law—Theorie des französischen Verwaltungsrecht and Deutschen Verwaltungsrecht (both 1895–6)—had established the discipline beyond dispute. See Stolleis, Michael, Public Law in Germany: 1800–1914 (New York: Berghahn Books 2001), 373, 393–5Google Scholar. Its most complete articulation prior to the outbreak of the war was Kaufmann, Erich, “Verwaltung, Verwaltungsrecht”, in von Stengel, Karl and Fleischmann, Max, eds., Wörterbuch des deutschen Staats-und Verwaltungsrechts, vol. 3, 2nd edn (Tübingen, 1914)Google Scholar. See Stolleis, Public Law in Germany: 1914–1945, 35–6. Kaufmann's work remained within the parameters of the liberal Rechtsstaat, but, as Stolleis observes, “went far beyond traditional positivism by calling for the inclusion of actual administrative reality and the historical dimension”. In this sense, Schmitt's wartime articles can be read as an application of Kaufmann's method to the wartime administrative powers of the military commander. The radical thrust of Schmitt's argument, however, comes from his exposition of the ways in which constitutional and criminal-procedural statutes collapse in the face of the administrative needs of an emergency situation.

⁵⁵ For an explanation of positive legal theory's categorical separation of the normative sphere from all concrete considerations see Jacobson, Arthur J. and Schlink, Bernhard, “Introduction. Constitutional Crisis: The German and the American Experience”, in Jacobson, Arthur J. and Schlink, Bernhard, eds., Weimar: A Jurisprudence of Crisis (Berkley and Los Angeles, 2000), 1–39, 6–7Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ See Korioth, Stefan, “Erschütterung des staatsrechtlichen Positivismus im ausgehenden Kaiserreich”, Archiv für öffentliches Recht, 117 (1992), 212–38Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ See especially Schmitt, Carl, Gesetz und Urteil: Eine Untersuchung zum Problem der Rechtspraxis (Munich, 1969Google Scholar; first published 1912), which, as Stolleis explains, “marked the first appearance of the ‘decision’ [Dezision] as a validating norm-creating factor”. Stolleis, Public Law in Germany: 1914–1945, 18. See also Hofmann, Hasso, Legitimität gegen Legalität: Der Weg der politischen Philosophie Carl Schmitts, 3rd edn (Berlin, 1995), 32–9Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 138, 147.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 156. Both concepts, and the formal distinction between them, come from the French tradition of constitutional law, which strongly informed the German emergency laws of 1851 and 1871, but in Germany the legislative checks on emergency powers were significantly curtailed. Indeed, after defeating Napoleon III, it was the new German empire under Bismarck that carried the standard of plebiscitary dictatorship, or Bonapartism, into the twentieth century, leaving the constitutional questions surrounding the limitations of these emergency powers largely unresolved. See Whittington, Keithet al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics (Oxford, 2010) §§1.3–1.4Google Scholar. See also Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship, 9–14.

⁶⁰ Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 153–4.

⁶¹ Ibid., 160.

⁶² Again see ibid., 159, 147.

⁶³ See ibid., 153.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 161. Emphasis added.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 153.

⁶⁶ See Schmitt, “Einwirkungen des Kriegszustandes”, 789–90.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 796.

⁶⁸ See ibid., 786–87. See also Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 147, 160.

⁶⁹ See Schmitt, “Einwirkungen des Kriegszustandes”, 786–7.

⁷⁰ Caldwell, Popular Sovereignty, 61.

⁷¹ Schmitt, “Einwirkungen des Kriegszustandes”, 788. Emphasis added.

⁷² Ibid., 792. Emphasis added.

⁷³ See Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 147.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 158.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 159.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 159; see also 152.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 159, 158. On this point see Kelly, Duncan, The State of the Political: Conceptions of Politics and the State in the Thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Franz Neumann (Oxford, 2003), 177Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 159. See also Schmitt, “Einwirkungen des Kriegszustandes”, 792.

⁷⁹ Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 159.

⁸⁰ McCormick, “Dilemmas of Dictatorship”, 224; quoting Schmitt, Political Theology, 6.

⁸¹ Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 159. See Caldwell, Popular Sovereignty, 59.

⁸² Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 147.

⁸³ The quoted phrase is from Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 147.

⁸⁴ Caldwell, Popular Sovereignty, 60.

⁸⁵ See Kitchen, The Silent Dictatorship, 25–41.

⁸⁶ See note 26 above.

⁸⁷ See editors’ note, Schmitt, Militärzeit, 175.

⁸⁸ Schmitt, Militärzeit, 65 (8 May 1915).

⁸⁹ Ibid., 102 (1 Aug. 1915).

⁹⁰ Ibid., 112 (14 Aug. 1915).

⁹¹ Ibid., 112–13 (14 Aug. 1915).

⁹² Ibid., 71 (21 May 1915).

⁹³ Ibid., 153 (5 Nov. 1915).

⁹⁴ Ibid., 115 (23 Aug. 1915).

⁹⁵ Ibid., 149 (26 Oct. 1915).

⁹⁶ Ibid., 67 (12 May 1915).

⁹⁷ Ibid., 81 (13 June 1915).

⁹⁸ Ibid., 113 (15 Aug. 1915).

⁹⁹ Ibid., 75 (29 May 1915).

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 149 (25 Oct. 1915).

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 91 (8 July 1915).

¹⁰² Ibid., 88 (30 June 1915).

¹⁰³ See ibid., 157 (19 Nov. 1915), 159 (28 Nov. 1915), 161 (2 Dec. 1915). In a unique moment of equivocation, Schmitt writes in his penultimate journal entry of 1915 (just prior to the point where he tears out the final entries of the year and leaves off journalling until the summer of 1916), “Last year, everything was still a whirlwind of victory, today everything is already [oriented] against annexations, and this time next year militarism will also succumb. Oh God, then I might be better off in the end not going to Strasbourg.” Ibid., 173 (28 Dec. 1915). Of course, in the end, Schmitt might have been better off not taking the position at Strasbourg, but for a reason exactly opposite to his optimistic conjecture: France's annexation of the city following Germany's defeat, which forced Schmitt into an even more profound state of professional insecurity than any he had experienced beforehand. What this passage of 28 December does underscore, however, is the motivating reason behind Schmitt's eagerness to become Privatdozent at Strasbourg: his desire to escape from the immediate pressure of his place in the military bureaucracy and the looming threat of the trenches.

¹⁰⁴ See Paul Laband to Carl Schmitt (6 Jan. 1917), in ibid., 501.

¹⁰⁵ Schmitt, Militärzeit, 131 (19 Sept 1915). Discussed above.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., 163 (8 Dec. 1915).

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., 176 (July 1916). Emphasis added.

¹⁰⁸ Again see Schmitt to Dorotic (24 Oct. 1912) in Schmitt, Tagebücher, 1–2. Discussed above.

¹⁰⁹ Schmitt, Militärzeit, 113 (15 Aug. 1915). Discussed above.

¹¹⁰ Ibid., 159 (27 Nov. 1915).

¹¹¹ Ibid., 162 (3 Dec. 1915).

¹¹² See Anon., Wiedergeburt: Deutschreligiöse Flugschriften (Rebirth: German Religious Pamphlets) (Berlin, Jan. 1914–Dec. 1916). See also Hüsmert and Giesler's editors’ note confirming this attribution in Schmitt, Militärzeit, 159. Founded during the Third Crusade, the Deutscher Orden (Teutonic Knights) had given rise, by this point, to a politicized press representing what might be termed the Catholic wing of militant German nationalism. Note that while virulently anti-Catholic himself, Treitschke had celebrated the historical annexationist mission of this group in his Das deutsche Ordensland Preußen (The State of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia), which appeared posthumously in 1915.

¹¹³ See Quinn, Malcom, The Swastika: Constructing the Symbol (London, 1994), 145–6Google Scholar.

¹¹⁴ Schmitt, Militärzeit, 171 (21 Dec. 1915). See ibid., 170 (20 Dec. 1915).

¹¹⁵ Ibid., 171 (22 Dec. 1915).

¹¹⁶ Schmitt would go on to develop this theme in Schmitt, Carl, Römischer Katholizismus und Politische Form (Munich, 2008Google Scholar; first published 1923).

¹¹⁷ Cf. Schmitt, Der Wert des Staates, 43. See also Schmitt, , “Die Sichtbarkeit der Kirche: Eine scholastische Erwägung,” Summa, 2 (1917–18), 71–80Google Scholar. The strong thematic similarity of these texts is discussed in Mehring, Carl Schmitt, 97–9. Though “Die Sichtbarkeit der Kirche” is from the period after Schmitt's pivotal winter of 1915–16, it does not present any discernible political-theological edge.

¹¹⁸ Schmitt, Militärzeit, 118 (27 Aug. 1915).

¹¹⁹ Ibid.

¹²⁰ On the personal dimension of this shift in political allegiance see especially Balakrishnan, Gopal, “Two on the Marble Cliffs”, in Balakrishnan, , Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War (London, 2009), 195–204, 195 ffGoogle Scholar.

¹²¹ See Schmitt, Carl, “Der Führer schützt das Recht: Zur Reichstagsrede Adolf Hitlers vom 13. Juli 1934” (The Führer Defends the Law: On Adolf Hitler's Address to the Reichstag on 13 July, 1934), in Schmitt, , Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar–Genf–Versailles. 1923–1939 (Berlin, 1988; first published 1934, 1940) 199–203Google Scholar. The basic idea articulated in this text is prefigured in Schmitt's wartime argument that the dictator “does not execute a given statute of the authority [Stelle] which gives him the order, but rather he stands protectively in front of the authority [Stelle] itself.” See Schmitt, “Diktatur und Belagerungszustand”, 143. Here Schmitt plays upon the ambiguity of the term Stelle, which can mean both “authority” and “position”.

¹²² See ibid., 199, 200 and 203.