38 Facts About Carl Schmitt

Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, political theorist, and prominent member of the Nazi Party.

Carl Schmitt's work has been a major influence on subsequent political theory, legal theory, continental philosophy, and political theology, but its value and significance are controversial, mainly due to his intellectual support for and active involvement with Nazism.

Carl Schmitt's parents were Roman Catholics from the German Eifel region who had settled in Plettenberg.

Carl Schmitt studied law at Berlin, Munich and Strasbourg and took his graduation and state examinations in then-German Strasbourg during 1915.

Carl Schmitt then taught at various business schools and universities, namely the University of Greifswald, the University of Bonn, the Technische Universitat Munchen, the University of Cologne, and the University of Berlin.

In 1916, Carl Schmitt married his first wife, Pavla Dorotic, a Croatian woman who pretended to be a countess.

Carl Schmitt was excommunicated by the Church due to his second marriage.

Carl Schmitt translated several of her father's works into Spanish.

Carl Schmitt died on 7 April 1985 and is buried in Plettenberg.

Rather, Carl Schmitt should be understood as carrying an atheistic political-theological tradition to an extreme.

Carl Schmitt met Mircea Eliade, a Romanian religion historian, in Berlin in the summer of 1942 and later spoke to his friend Ernst Junger of Eliade and his interest in Eliade's works.

Carl Schmitt changed universities in 1926, when he became professor of law at the Handelshochschule in Berlin, and again in 1932, when he accepted a position in Cologne.

In 1932, Schmitt was counsel for the Reich government in the case Preussen contra Reich, in which the Social Democratic Party of Germany-controlled government of the state of Prussia disputed its dismissal by the right-wing Reich government of Franz von Papen.

Carl Schmitt replaced Heller as a professor at the University of Berlin, a position he held until the end of World War II.

Carl Schmitt presented his theories as an ideological foundation of the Nazi dictatorship and a justification of the Fuhrer state concerning legal philosophy, particularly through the concept of auctoritas.

In June 1934, Carl Schmitt was appointed editor-in-chief of the Nazi newspaper for lawyers, the Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung.

Carl Schmitt presented himself as a radical antisemite and was the chairman of an October 1936 law teachers' convention in Berlin at which he demanded that German law be cleansed of the "Jewish spirit " and that all Jewish scientists' publications be marked with a small symbol.

Nevertheless, in December 1936, the Schutzstaffel publication Das Schwarze Korps accused Carl Schmitt of being an opportunist, a Hegelian state thinker, and a Catholic, and called his antisemitism a mere pretense, citing earlier statements in which he criticized the Nazis' racial theories.

Carl Schmitt continued to be investigated into 1937, but Goring stopped further reprisals.

Carl Schmitt remained unrepentant for his role in the creation of the Nazi state, and refused every attempt at denazification, which barred him from academic jobs.

In 1962, Carl Schmitt gave lectures in Francoist Spain, two of which resulted in the publication, the next year, of Theory of the Partisan, in which he characterized the Spanish Civil War as a "war of national liberation" against "international Communism".

Carl Schmitt regarded the partisan as a specific and significant phenomenon which, during the latter half of the 20th century, indicated the emergence of a new theory of warfare.

Carl Schmitt saw the office of the president as a comparatively effective element, because of the power granted to the president to declare a state of exception.

Carl Schmitt was at pains to remove what he saw as a taboo surrounding the concept of "dictatorship" and to show that the concept is implicit whenever power is wielded by means other than the slow processes of parliamentary politics and the bureaucracy:.

The use of the term "exceptional" has to be underlined here: Carl Schmitt defines sovereignty as the power to decide to initiate a state of exception, as Giorgio Agamben has noted.

Carl Schmitt opposes this definition of sovereignty to those offered by contemporary theorists on the issue, particularly Hans Kelsen, whose work is criticized at several points in the essay.

Carl Schmitt criticized the institutional practices of liberal politics, arguing that they are justified by a faith in rational discussion and openness that is at odds with actual parliamentary party politics, in which outcomes are hammered out in smoke-filled rooms by party leaders.

Carl Schmitt posits an essential division between the liberal doctrine of separation of powers and what he holds to be the nature of democracy itself, the identity of the rulers and the ruled.

Carl Schmitt provided a positive reference for Leo Strauss, and approved his work, which was instrumental in winning Strauss the scholarship funding that allowed him to leave Germany.

In turn, Strauss's critique and clarifications of The Concept of the Political led Carl Schmitt to make significant emendations in its second edition.

The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, with the subtitle "Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol", is a 1938 work by Carl Schmitt that revisits one of his most critical theoretical inspirations: Thomas Hobbes.

But, as Carl Schmitt makes clear, Hobbes' Leviathan is very different from these interpretations, being illustrated firstly in his work Leviathan as a "huge man".

This, says Carl Schmitt, is really just a continuation of Descartes' dualism of man between mind and body.

Carl Schmitt uses this interpretation to develop a theory of myth and politics that serves as a cultural foundation for his concept of political representation.

Carl Schmitt is described as a "classic of political thought" by Herfried Munkler, while in the same article Munkler speaks of his post-war writings as reflecting an: "embittered, jealous, occasionally malicious man".

Carl Schmitt's doctrine helped clear the way for Hitler's rise to power by providing the theoretical legal foundation of the Nazi regime.

Some have argued that Carl Schmitt has become an important influence on Chinese political theory in the 21st century, particularly since Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012.

Carl Schmitt's ideas have proved popular and useful instruments in justifying the legitimacy of Communist Party rule.