| Encounter with Carl Schmitt |
|
One of Peter Drucker's duties as youth leader was to recruit prominent conservatives known for their opposition to the Nazis to the new party. In this connection, Drucker recalls meetings with the constitutional lawyer Carl Schmitt and the writer Ernst Jünger, whom, towards the end of the Weimar Republic, he vainly tried to win over to the cause of the "People's Conservatives." Yet especially the meeting with Schmitt took place in a very cordial atmosphere. Schmitt encouraged Drucker in his intention to move to Cologne - Drucker had received a concrete offer there, as branch editor for politics, economics, and culture for the respected newspaper Kölnische Zeitung. Schmitt also advised Drucker to give up his sideline assistant position at the international law seminar, which he had held since his promotion in 1931, and to strive for a private lectureship at the University of Cologne. Schmitt even offered to oversee his habilitation thesis in Cologne, "although," as Drucker remarks, "it was naturally very clear to Schmitt that my world view and convictions did not agree with his."
Drucker's habilitation thesis would have carried the title "The Constitutional State" and dealt with three protagonists of nineteenth-century Prussian history: the university founder Wilhelm von Humboldt, the general and Catholic politician Joseph von Radowitz, and the constitutional lawyer Friedrich Julius Stahl. The work was never completed; Hitler's takeover thwarted Drucker's career plans in both journalism and academics. Yet Drucker was still able to commit a part of his planned habilitation thesis to paper - just under thirty pages on the conservative constitutional lawyer Friedrich Julius Stahl. Just before leaving Germany at the end of April 1933, Drucker managed to publish the treatise with the famous publisher J.C.B. Mohr in Tübingen - it was a clear rejection of National Socialism, as Stahl was not only the most important Prussian politician before Bismarck, he was also of Jewish descent. Immediately after Hitler's takeover, Drucker left Germany. But at the end of April 1933, he was still able to publish a paper on the conservative constitutional lawyer Friedrich Julius Stahl - Stahl was not only the most important Prussian politician before Bismarck, he was also of Jewish origin. Drucker wanted to remind the conservative elites of their own traditions and warn them of making common cause with the "total state" of the Nazis. The short treatise could not change the course of events, yet it did not remain without effects: Walter Hallstein, who after the war became the founder and first president of the European Economic Community, told Drucker in 1970 that as a young lawyer at that time, his reading of the "Stahl" treatise had led him to maintain a clear distance to the new rulers. >> Drucker's emigration to England |
| Carl Schmitt, a 1933 portrait |