Studies on Legal Philosopher Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde

The legal scholar and historian of modern constitutional law Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (born in 1930) has provided important impulses for an appropriate understanding of the relationship between religion and politics in the modern constitutional state. He undoubtedly belongs to the great public intellectuals in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. His famous dictum that the "free, secularized state lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself" expresses like no other sentence the fragile existence of modern democracies. But also his early works on modern constitutional history, on the role of German Catholicism in 1933 and on the Second Vatican Council are still today a source of reflection.

Reference: Hermann-Josef Große Kracht, Klaus Große Kracht (Hg.), Religion - Recht – Republik. Studien zu Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh 2014, 209 Seiten, ISBN 978-3-506-76611-3, EUR 28.90