Wilhelm Ebel

Wilhelm Ebel (7 June 1908 – 22 June 1980)[1] was a scholar of Early Germanic law, known for editing and translating a number of law codes. During the Third Reich he was a committed Nazi, with military, administrative, and research service in the SS, and his academic career was interrupted by imprisonment after the end of World War II.

Life and career

Ebel was born in Garsuche, East Prussia (now an outlying district of Jelcz-Laskowice, in Poland). His father's family were Russian migrants; his mother's family hailed from Switzerland. He did his Abitur in 1927 in Rößel (now Reszel, also in Poland), and studied law, history, and philology at the University of Königsberg and Heidelberg University.[2] Ebel completed his Habilitation at the University of Bonn in 1935 and after working as a docent at the Universities of Marburg, Königsberg and Rostock, received his first professorial appointment at Rostock in 1938. He spent most of his career at the University of Göttingen,[1] where he began work in April 1939 and in October of the same year succeeded Herbert Oskar Meyer as professor of German legal history, civil and mercantile law, agricultural and privatization law.[3]

Nazi Party

Ebel joined the Nazi Party shortly after they came to power, on May 1, 1933, was a local party official while in Bonn, and following his Habilitation joined the Association of Nazi Docents, where he was local leader. Beginning in 1935, he was active in the Sicherheitsdienst, and in Rostock he worked for the Gau administration and represented the party on the law faculty. He worked as a scholar for both the Amt Rosenberg and, beginning in October 1938, the Ahnenerbe division of the SS.[4][5]

After the outbreak of war, he volunteered for the Waffen-SS and served with the Totenkopf division in the Battle of France, returning to Göttingen in August 1940. The following year, he joined the Allgemeine SS, where he was promoted to Untersturmführer. After another brief period of military service, he was assigned to the Führungshauptamt of the SS and then became division head for Indo-European and German legal history at the Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt.[6] From November 1941 on, he was chief of race and settlement for the Waffen-SS, and in October 1942 he became Ahnenerbe division leader for "Legal history of Germans in the East". In 1943 he was promoted to Hauptsturmführer, after which he again returned to Göttingen.[3]

Post-war

Ebel became a prisoner of war of the Allies in May 1945, lost his status as a civil servant under an act of the British occupation authorities on July 19 that year, and was then interned for more than two years until 1948.[7] After that he worked for the Gothaer insurance company. In March 1949 he was able to have his classification reduced to that of Mitläufer (fellow traveler), and in September 1950 to have his privileges as a civil servant restored, but he had meanwhile been succeeded in his professorship by Hans Thieme. In April 1952 he was given a teaching position at the university, and in March 1954, after Thieme had left to take up a chair at the University of Freiburg, he once more became a full professor. (He had unsuccessfully requested the faculty appoint him to a different chair that was open.) He took early retirement at 56 for health reasons in April 1965, but headed the university archives until 1978.[8][9] Until his retirement from that position, he successfully prevented research into the Nazi period at the university.[9][10]

Research

Ebel's primary specializations were constitutional history and the history of law, in particular early Germanic law. He was a member of the Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte, an association of medievalists,[11] and beginning in 1959 of the Historische Kommission für Niedersachsen und Westfalen (Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Westphalia). He edited and translated a number of early Germanic law codes including the Asega-bôk, the legal code for the Rustringian Frisians[12][13] and one of the oldest surviving continental Germanic law codes.[14] Despite his commitment to Nazism, his publications included a 1936 refutation of the notion that the employment contract derived from the relationship of Germanic followers with their lord.[15]

Honors

Ebel was awarded the gold medal of honor of the city of Lübeck in 1967, of the city of Goslar in 1973, and of Kiel University also in 1973, and the Brothers Grimm Prize of the University of Marburg the same year.[8]

Selected works

• Geschichte der Gesetzgebung in Deutschland. Göttinger rechtswissenschaftliche Studien 24. 2nd ed. 1958 repr. with additions, ed. Friedrich Ebel. Göttingen: Schwartz, 1988. ISBN 9783509014211 (in German)
• Curiosa iuris Germanici. Kleine Vandenhoeck-Reihe 283/284. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968. OCLC 3026669
• Probleme der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte. Göttinger rechtswissenschaftliche Studien 100. Göttingen: Schwartz, 1978. ISBN 9783509010282 (in German)

References

Notes

1. Ebel, Wilhelm, German National Library (in German)
2. Köbler.
3. Buddrus & Fritzlar 2007, p. 120.
4. Buddrus & Fritzlar 2007, pp. 119–20.
5. Halfmann 1987, p. 111.
6. Becker 1995, p. 21.
7. Halfmann 1987, pp. 119, 121.
8. Buddrus & Fritzlar 2007, p. 121.
9. Halfmann 1987, p. 121.
10. Dahms 1987, p. 48.
11. Petersohn 2001.
12. Mallet & Blackwell 1847, p. 48.
13. Bosworth 1838, p. lxi.
14. Lear 1965.
15. Kroeschell 1995, pp. 74–75.

Bibliography

• Becker, Hans-Jürgen (1995). "Neuheidentum und Rechtsgeschichte". In Rückert, Joachim; Willoweit, Dietmar (eds.). Die Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte in der NS-Zeit: ihre Vorgeschichte und ihre Nachwirkungen. Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (in German). 12. Tübingen: Mohr. pp. 7–30. ISBN 9783161464447.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Bosworth, Joseph (1838). A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language. London: Longman.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Buddrus, Michael; Fritzlar, Sigrid (2007). "Ebel, Wilhelm". Die Professoren der Universität Rostock im Dritten Reich. Ein biographisches Lexikon (in German). Munich: Saur. pp. 119–21. ISBN 978-3-598-11775-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Dahms, Hans-Joachim (1987). "Einleitung". In Becker, Heinrich; Dahms, Hans-Joachim; Wegeler, Cornelia (eds.). Die Universität Göttingen unter dem Nationalsozialismus: Das verdrängte Kapitel ihrer 250jährigen Geschichte (in German). Munich: Saur. pp. 15–60. ISBN 9783598106767.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Köbler, Gerhard. "Wer war wer im deutschen Recht". Retrieved 12 January 2013.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Halfmann, Frank (1987). "Eine 'Pflanzstätte bester nationalsozialistischer Rechtsgelehrter': Die Juristische Abteilung der Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftlichen Fakultät". In Becker, Heinrich; Dahms, Hans-Joachim; Wegeler, Cornelia (eds.). Die Universität Göttingen unter dem Nationalsozialismus: Das verdrängte Kapitel ihrer 250jährigen Geschichte (in German). Munich: Saur. pp. 88–141. ISBN 9783598106767.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Kroeschell, Karl (1995). "Führer, Gefolgschaft und Treue". In Rückert, Joachim; Willoweit, Dietmar (eds.). Die Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte in der NS-Zeit: ihre Vorgeschichte und ihre Nachwirkungen. Beiträge zur Rechtsgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (in German). 12. Tübingen: Mohr. pp. 55–76. ISBN 9783161464447.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Lear, Floyd Seyward (1965). "Rev. of Buma, Ebel, Das Rüstringer Recht ". Speculum. 40 (2): 332–34. doi:10.2307/2855565. JSTOR 2855565.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Mallet, Paul Henri; Blackwell, I. A. (1847). Northern antiquities: or, An historical account of the manners, customs, religion and laws, maritime expeditions and discoveries, language and literature of the ancient Scandinavians. translator Thomas Percy. London: Henry G. Bohn.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Petersohn, Jürgen, ed. (2001). "Wilhelm Ebel". Der Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für Mittelalterliche Geschichte, 1951–2001: die Mitglieder und ihr Werk: eine bio-bibliographische Dokumentation (in German). Stuttgart: Thorbecke. pp. 103–08. ISBN 9783799569064.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Further reading

• Studien zu den germanischen Volksrechten: Gedächtnisschrift für Wilhelm Ebel. Vorträge gehalten auf dem Fest-Symposion anlässlich des 70. Geburtstages von Wilhelm Ebel am 16. Juni 1978 in Göttingen. Ed. Götz Landwehr. Rechtshistorische Reihe 1. Frankfurt: Lang, 1982. ISBN 9783820464122 (in German)