29 October 1956
29 October 1956
The recently relocated Institute celebrates the dedication of its premises on Mittelweg in Hamburg. It was the first of what are now three Max Planck Institutes in the city. Hamburg had actively courted the move from Tübingen in the 1950s, donating the land and financing new construction. The initiative to relocate is credited to Hans Dölle, who was appointed director at the Institute in 1949 despite his prior associations with the Nazi regime. Dölle rebuilt the Institute, focusing on family law, private international law, and international sales law. He also professionalized the library in terms of both its staff and organization.
With the end of the war in 1945, Ernst Rabel, who had been living in exile in the United States, returns to the Institute in a guest capacity, intent on continuing his work on the second volume of Das Recht des Warenkaufs, his treatise on international sales law. Rabel has already ruled out becoming director again, thereby creating the opening that Hans Dölle is appointed to fill. Institute fellow Hans Rupp, now a civil servant in the state government of Württemberg, supports Dölle’s appointment. Konrad Zweigert, another fellow at the Institute and the chairman of Dölle’s denazification committee, shepherds Dölle through the process.
As director, Dölle begins reviving the Institute’s international connections by organizing conferences, field work, and lectures. The Institute’s activities during this period centre in particular around international sales law as well as private international law. Dölle also starts a series of comparative studies on family law. On his initiative in 1950 the Gesellschaft für Rechtsvergleichung and in 1953 the Deutscher Rat für interationales Privatrecht are established.
The new building in the media
(Click on the image to view a larger version)
Dölle also continues to press for the Institute’s relocation to Hamburg, an effort that finally succeeds in 1952. Hamburg’s attraction stems not only from its status as a hub for international trade but also from the fact that the city is prepared pay for the construction of a new building in a highly desirable location. Dölle and Zweigert are also offered professorships at the University of Hamburg.
Construction of the new Institute building
(Click on the image to view a larger version)
Acquiring new books for the library used to be the responsibility of research fellows at the Institute. Then, in 1953, a trained librarian named Hans Peter des Coudres was put in charge. Over the next 20 years, des Coudres expands and reorganizes the library, remaking it into a world-class facility and opening it up to the scholarly community at large. As with Dölle, his Nazi past seems to have gone unchallenged at the Institute.