Status: 07/27/2021 4:29 p.m.
Schönfelder, Maunz, Palandt – the standard works named after Nazi lawyers are to be renamed. This was announced by the Munich publisher CH Beck. In times of increasing anti-Semitism, they want to set an example.
The CH Beck publishing house no longer names standard legal works after Nazi lawyers. Affected are the short comment “Palandt” on the German Civil Code (BGB), the most important collection of laws “Schönfelder”, the loose-leaf collection on the Basic Law by Maunz / Dürig and the standard comment “Blümich” on tax law.
“In times of increasing anti-Semitism, it is important to me to set an example through our measures,” said publisher Hans Dieter Beck. The decision had also been coordinated with the publisher’s authors. Further works would be checked.
Beck: “No memorial for Palandt”
Otto Palandt was President of the Reich Justice Examination Office, Theodor Maunz propagated the National Socialist leadership state during the Nazi era. The NSDAP lawyer Heinrich Schönfelder, who died in 1944, was a judge-martial in Italy. From 1933 on, Walter Blümich headed the income tax department in the Reich Ministry of Finance, where he promoted the tax harassment of Jews.
“You can’t undo history,” said Beck, the publisher. That is why the historical names were initially retained. “So the name Palandt should remain visible as a reminder of the darkest chapter of German legal history.” They did not want to put a monument to him with it. In addition, the problem was expressly pointed out in the foreword of the work.
For years there has been growing criticism of the Beck publishing house
For several years, the CH Beck Verlag has been increasingly criticized because lawyers and from the university sector pointed out the entanglement of the namesake in National Socialism and therefore called for a renaming. Most recently, there was also pressure from politics.
Bavaria’s Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich (CSU) spoke of a significant decision. “The renaming is necessary: the namesake for collections of laws and comments must be personalities of integrity. No National Socialists.”
Eisenreich: “No place for anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism”
In the spring, Eisenreich had commissioned a study from the Institute for Contemporary History on the namesake of the standard works Palandt and Schönfelder. This was expressly welcomed by the publisher at the time.
Germany has a special historical responsibility, the minister said. “Anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism have no place in our society. I therefore consider it essential that historical awareness of National Socialist injustice is heightened in all areas.” The Nazi injustice state and the inhuman crimes were also possible because “not a few lawyers who were actually obliged to law and law, put themselves at the service of the regime”.
Lambrecht: “High time”
Federal Minister of Justice Christine Lambrecht (SPD) and the Federal Government’s Anti-Semitism Commissioner, Felix Klein, welcomed the renaming. Lambrecht emphasized that it was high time to rename the “Palandt”. “Anyone who has advocated aligning legal training with the misanthropic goals of the Nazi regime must not be the namesake of a standard legal work in our democratic constitutional state,” she said.
Klein told the newspapers of the Funke media group that the renaming was an important sign. The books in question have been part of the daily work of lawyers for decades. “It therefore sends out a signal that the publisher has decided to rename it.” Klein also announced that in future the Nazi injustice would also be critically examined within the law course.
“Grüneberg” instead of “Palandt”
According to the publisher, the “Palandt” will bear the name of the current coordinator of the authors, the judge at the Federal Court of Justice, Christian Grüneberg, as early as November. In the future, Dürig / Herzog / Scholz will be on the title of Maunz / Dürig. The chairman of the permanent deputation of the German Association of Jurists, Mathias Habersack, now publishes the “Schönfelder”. Blümich’s comment was given the name of the editors Peter Brandis and Bernd Heuermann, according to CH Beck.