Die Lübecker Ratsurteile.

Wilhelm Ebel und eine wissenschaftliche Geschäftsführung 'ohne Auftrag'?

Autor/innen

  • Carsten Groth

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21248/hgbll.2017.87

Abstract

The edition of the “Lübecker Ratsurteile” (verdicts by the council of Lübeck) by Wilhelm Ebel (1908 – 1980), a legal historian primarily active in Göttingen, is still considered to be a standard work. This article assesses and critiques this common assessment. In view of the assumptions of its editor – and in particular his activities as a member of the SS-Ahnenerbe, a Nazi organization charged with ‘scientifically’ investigating (and maintaining) Arian racial purity – the edition might be flawed.
Ebel assumed that the verdicts embodied Lübeck law (“Lübisches Recht”) and that one could reconstruct Lübeck Law by analysing the “Ratsurteile”. Recent work shows that Lübeck law had a number of other sources as well, so that Ebel’s assumption seems questionable. Moreover, Ebel did not edit all the extant verdicts but rather selected particular ones which he deemed 'essential, substantial and intuitively iomprehensible’. It is unknown which verdicts he left out, much less why. In short, we simply do not know whether Ebel’s reconceptions biased (consciously or unconsciously) his selection of sources for publication and therefore skewed all subsequent research based on his edition.
Furthermore, it is probable that he was only able to gain access to the sources (which had been removed for safe-keeping during  the war) because he was officially tasked with this project by the SS- Ahnenerbe. Ebel was not above hinting that his work might prove to be politically useful to his Nazi masters. Again, we do not know whether this influenced the selection of the verdicts which Ebel deemed worthy to be included in his edition of the “Lübecker Ratsurteile”.

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Veröffentlicht

2020-06-30