International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Carl Schmitt was born in the Rhineland town of Plettenberg, Germany on July 11, 1888 to a Franco-German Catholic family from the Mosel Valley region. An arch-conservative political theorist, Schmitt holds the persistently perplexing position of having an often awkward theoretical influence on both left- and right-wing revolutionary and political movements hostile to the status quo of Western liberal governments. He completed his studies in law in 1915 and began an academic career, holding positions in Griefswald, Bonn, Berlin, and Cologne. The details of Schmitt's intellectual and activist career as a jurist and theologico-political theorist limn a well-known narrative of infamy. Schmitt's biography stretches from his early formation as a Catholic conservative thinker, constitutional theorist, and critic of liberal parliamentarian democracy, to his status in the Weimar Republic as an influential judicial activist and legal architect, his post-1933 position as NSDAP member No. 2,098,860 and supposed “crown jurist of the Third Reich,” all the way to his near-trial for war crimes, and his postwar position as discredited collaborationist and sage of political realism. Regardless of his alacritous participation in the National Socialist regime, Schmitt experienced a postwar afterlife through his influence on and engagement with elements of the European New Left student protest and revolutionary ... log in or subscribe to read full text