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Joachim Wilhelm Franz Philipp Holtzendorff

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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JOACHIM WILHELM FRANZ PHILIPP VON HOLTZENDORFF (1829-1889), German jurist, born at Vietmannsdorf, in the Mark of Brandenburg, on the 14th of October 1829, was descended from a family of the old nobility. He was educated at Berlin and at Pforta, afterwards studying law at the universities of Bonn, Heidelberg and Berlin. The struggles of 1848 inspired him with youthful enthusiasm, and he remained for the rest of his life a strong advocate of political liberty. In 1852 he graduated LL.D. at Berlin; in 1857 he became a Privatdocent, and in 1860 he was nominated a professor extraordinary. The predominant party in Prussia regarded his political opinions with mistrust, and he was not offered an ordinary professorship until February 1873, after he had decided to accept a chair at the university of Munich. At Munich he passed the last nineteen years of his life. During the thirty years that he was professor he successively taught several branches of jurisprudence, but he was chiefly distinguished as an authority on criminal and international law. He was especially well fitted for organizing collective work, and he has associated his name with a series of publications of the first value. While acting as editor he often reserved for himself, among the independent monographs of which the work was composed, only those on subjects distasteful to his collaborators on account of their obscurity or lack of importance. Among the compilations which he superintended may be mentioned his Encyclopadie der Rechtswissenschaft (Leipzig, 1870-1871, 2 vols.; his Handbuch des deutschen Strafrechts (Berlin, 1871.1877, 4 vols.), and his Handbuch des Volkerrechts auf Grundlage :europaischer Staatspraxis (Berlin, 1885-1890, 4 vols.). Among his many independent works may be mentioned: Das irische Gefangnissystem (Leipzig, 1859), Franziisische Rechtszustande (Leipzig, 1859), Die Deportation als Strafmittel (Leipzig, 1859), Die Kiirzungsfdhigkeit der Freiheitsstrafen (Leipzig, 1861), Die Reform der Staatsanwaltschaft in Deutschland (Berlin, 1864), Die Umgestaltung der Staatsanwaltschaft (Berlin, 1865), Die Principien der Politik (Berlin, 1869), Das Verbrechen des Mordes and die Todesstrafe (Berlin, 1875), Rumaniens Uferrechte an der Donau (Leipzig, 1883; French edition, 1884). He also edited or assisted in editing a number of periodical publications on legal subjects. From 1866 to the time of his death he was associated with Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow in editing Sammlung gemeinverstandlicher wissenschaftlicher Vortrage (Berlin). Von Holtzendorff died at Munich on the 4th of February 1889.