Career
| 14 July 1936 | Born in Güstrow (Mecklenburg) |
1955 | Passed the Abitur at the Katharineum in Lübeck (humanities-focused grammar school) |
| 1955–1959 | Studied law and Eastern European studies in Bonn, Berlin and Munich |
| 1959 | Passed the legal trainee examination in Munich |
| 1961–1967 | Research assistant at the University of Munich under Prof. Dr Reinhart Maurach |
| 1963 | PhD at the University of Munich (thesis title: ‘The Perpetrator Behind the Perpetrator’) |
| 1964 | Passed the assessor’s examination in Munich |
| 1968 | Habilitation at the University of Munich (topic of the habilitation thesis: ‘The Protection of the State and the Constitution in Criminal Law’) |
| 1968 | Appointed to the Chair of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and Eastern European Law at the University of Regensburg |
| 1970–1995 | Member of the Board of Trustees and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg |
| 1971/72 | Dean of the Faculty of Law and Economics at the University of Regensburg |
| 1973 onwards | Research Director of the Institute for Eastern European Law, Munich |
| 1973 onwards | Head of the ‘Law’ Section of the German Society for Eastern European Studies |
| 1981–1994 | Lecturer in Eastern European Law at the University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Social Sciences, St. Gallen |
| 1981–1991 | Deputy Chair of the Working Group on German Studies at the Federal Ministry for Inter-German Relations |
| 1992–1994 | Member of the German Bundestag’s Enquete Commission on ‘Coming to Terms with the History and Consequences of the SED Dictatorship in Germany’ |
| 1994–2002 | Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Agency for Civic Education |
| 1994 onwards | Member of the Executive Committee of the German National Group of the Association internationale de droit pénal |
| 1999 | Honorary Doctorate from the University of Breslau / Wrocław (Poland) |
| 2004 | Retired, but continues to lecture and conduct research at the University of Regensburg |
| 2010 | Honorary Doctorate from the University of Huánuco (Peru) |
| 2024 | Died on 26 March in Regensburg |
Biographical details
I. Education
- 1. First State Examination in Law, Munich, 1959 (grade ‘very good’)
- 2. Second State Examination in Law, Munich, 1964 (grade ‘good’, rank 5 out of 280)
- PhD in Munich in 1963 with the thesis ‘The Perpetrator Behind the Perpetrator’
- Habilitation in Munich in 1968 with the thesis “The Protection of the State and the Constitution in Criminal Law – A Systematic Presentation, Developed from Legal History and Comparative Law”
II. Career as a university lecturer
- Appointed to the Chair of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and East German Law at the University of Regensburg in April 1968
- Retired in October 2004
- Supervisor to 45 doctoral candidates (list here)
- 14 study trips with students to Eastern Europe (1982 Caucasus, 1983 Prague, 1985 GDR, 1987 the Baltic States, 1990 Odessa, 1991 Brno, 1993 St Petersburg, 1994 Slovakia, 1995 Poland, 1996 Moscow, 1997 China, 1999 St Petersburg/Moscow, 2002 Moscow, 2003 St Petersburg)
- 3 appointments at other universities (1972 Kiel, 1977 Hamburg, 1988 Tübingen)
III. Additional academic activities
- Director of the Institute for Eastern European Law, Munich, since 1973
- 1970–1995 Member of the Board of Trustees and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg
- From 1975 onwards: Deputy Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Eastern European Studies, Munich
- Working Group on Comparative German Studies at the Federal Ministry for Intra-German Relations, 1981–1991
- Co-author of the materials for the 1972 State of the Nation Report
- Member of the German Bundestag’s Enquete Commission on ‘Coming to Terms with the History and Consequences of the SED Dictatorship in Germany’, 1992–1994
- 1980–1989: Chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee; 1988–1997: Chairman of the Executive Board of the Königstein Circle (Association for German Law and German Politics)
- 1994–2002: Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Agency for Civic Education
- 1995–present: Regular guest lectures at Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul
- 2004 onwards: Regular guest lectures at Dnipropetrovsk State University of Internal Affairs (Ukraine)
IV. Publications and Editions
- Since the 6th edition (1977/81), editor of the two-volume textbook on criminal law, ‘Special Part’ by Reinhart Maurach (now in its 9th edition)
- 9th edition (1974) – 11th edition (1994): Editor of Sections 15–18 of the German Criminal Code (StGB) (intent and negligence, awareness of wrongfulness) in the comprehensive commentary – the Leipzig Commentary on the German Criminal Code
- Textbook on Criminal Procedure Law (1st ed. 1993, currently 4th ed. 2007)
- 30 monographs and over 500 articles (see also Publications)
- Established the discipline of ‘Sport and Law’ through the publication of a book in 1972
- Co-editor of the journals *Jahrbuch für Ostrecht*, *Osteuropa-Recht* and *Wirtschaft und Recht in Osteuropa*
- Since 1986, co-editor (and sole editor from 2002 to 2007) of *Strafrechtliche Abhandlungen*, new edition
- Regular contributions on legal policy, criticism of the judiciary and Russian law in the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung*
- Complete list available for download
V. Honours
- Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon, 1989
- Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class, 1998
- Honorary Doctorate (Dr. h.c.) from Breslau, 1999
- Bavarian Order of Merit 2001
- Honourary Medal of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine 2008
- Honorary Doctorate from Huánuco 2010
