Carl Schmitt

This article is about the German jurist and political theorist. For the American artist, see Carl Schmitt (artist). For New Zealand violinist and composer, see Carl Schmitt (composer). For people with a similar name, see Carl Schmidt.

Carl Schmitt
Schmitt in 1932
Born(1888-07-11)11 July 1888
Plettenberg, Prussia, German Empire
Died7 April 1985(1985-04-07) (aged 96)
Plettenberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany
Other names"Crown Jurist of the Third Reich" (Nickname)
Education
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School
Institutions
Main interests
Notable ideas

Carl Schmitt[a] (11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, political theorist, and prominent member of the Nazi Party.

Born in Plettenberg in 1888, Schmitt studied law in Berlin, Munich, and Strasbourg. In 1916, he married his first wife, Pavla Dorotić, but divorced her after realizing that she had pretended to be a countess. Schmitt was Catholic but broke with the church in the 1920s. He married Duška Todorović in 1926. During this time, he taught in Greifswald, Bonn, and Munich and published Dictatorship and Political Theology. Schmitt taught in Cologne in 1932, published The Concept of the Political, and supported the Papen government in Prussia v. Reich. After the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor in 1933, Schmitt joined the Nazi Party. He was an active jurist, a member of the Prussian State Council, and a professor in Berlin. In 1936 Schmitt was forced to resign his political role when the SS targeted him, but Hermann Göring protected him. After the Second World War ended, Schmitt spent over a year in an internment camp and returned to Plettenberg. He refused denazification, which barred him from academic positions. However, he continued his studies and frequently received scholarly visitors. In 1963, he published the Theory of the Partisan. Schmitt died on 7 April 1985 at the age of 96.

Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist,[4][5] he is noted as a critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism.[6] His works cover political theory, legal theory, continental philosophy, and political theology. However, they are controversial, mainly due to his intellectual support for and active involvement with Nazism.[7] According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Schmitt was an acute observer and analyst of the weaknesses of liberal constitutionalism and liberal cosmopolitanism. But there can be little doubt that his preferred cure turned out to be infinitely worse than the disease."[8]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Wolin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Oliver W. Lembcke, Claudia Ritzi, Gary S. Schaal (eds.): Zeitgenössische Demokratietheorien: Band 1: Normative Demokratietheorien, Springer, 2014, p. 331.
  3. ^ Hooker, William (12 November 2009). Carl Schmitt's International Thought: Order and Orientation. Cambridge University Press. p. 204. ISBN 978-1-13948184-7. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
  4. ^ Hoffman, John (2015). Introduction to Political Theory. Routledge. p. 114. ISBN 9781317556602.
  5. ^ Martin, James (2008). Piero Gobetti and the Politics of Liberal Revolution. Springer. p. 142. ISBN 978-0-230-61686-8.
  6. ^ Vinx 2019.
  7. ^ Caldwell, Peter C. (June 2005). "Controversies over Carl Schmitt: A Review of Recent Literature". The Journal of Modern History. 77 (2): 357–387. doi:10.1086/431819. ISSN 0022-2801.
  8. ^ Vinx 2019, ch. 5 "Liberal Cosmopolitanism and ...".


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