Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde
Böckenförde in 1989
Born	(1930-09-19)19 September 1930 Kassel,Prussia,Germany
Died	24 February 2019(2019-02-24) (aged 88) Au,Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Education	University of Münster
Organizations	University of Heidelberg University of Bielefeld University of Freiburg Federal Constitutional Court
Known for	Böckenförde dilemma
Office	President of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
Awards	Romano Guardini Award Hannah Arendt Prize Sigmund Freud Prize Grand Cross of Merit

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (German:[ɛʁnstˈvɔlfɡaŋˈbœkŋ̍ˌføːɐ̯də]; 19 September 1930 – 24 February 2019) was a Germanlegal scholar and ajustice on Germany'sFederal Constitutional Court. He was a professor at theUniversity of Freiburg and the author of more than 20 books and 80 articles dealing with legal and constitutional theory, as well as political theory, political philosophy and Catholic political thought. Böckenförde was considered a member of theRitter School.

Böckenförde was born on 19 September 1930 inKassel. His parents were forester Josef Böckenförde (1894–1962) and his wife Gertrud (née Merrem; 1899–1977).^[1] As a child, he attended theWilhelmsgymnasium in Kassel, where he passed hisAbitur.^[2]

Böckenförde received a PhD inlaw inMünster in 1956,^[3] for a dissertation he wrote under the supervision ofHans Julius Wolff. He also received a PhD inhistory in 1960 from the University of Munich^[3] for a thesis supervised byFranz Schnabel. In 1964 he completed hispostdoctoralhabilitation with a thesis titledThe power of organisation in the purview of the government. A survey ofconstitutional law in theFederal Republic of Germany.^[3] He became Professor of Public Law, Constitutional History, Legal History and Philosophy of Law at theUniversity of Heidelberg in the same year. In 1969, he moved to theUniversity of Bielefeld, and in 1977 to theUniversity of Freiburg, where he remained until his retirement.^[4]

Böckenförde served as a member of the second senate of theFederal Constitutional Court from 1983 until 1996.^[5] Into his tenure fall several path-breaking decisions for theFederal Republic of Germany, including decisions pertaining to the deployment of missiles, the law of political parties, and the legal regulation of abortion.^[3]

Böckenförde was a member of theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) since 1967.^[6] He was also a practisingCatholic.^[7] As such, he worked in several institutions, including theBensberger Kreis [de], a circle of Catholic intellectuals, as well as serving as a counsel for theCentral Committee of German Catholics.^[8] From 1971 until 1976 Böckenförde was a member of the Special Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Reform.^[4]

Böckenförde received numerous awards for his academic and public service commitments, among themhonorary doctorates from the Faculties of Catholic Theology of theUniversity of Bochum (1999) and theUniversity of Tübingen (2005), and from the Law Schools of Bielefeld University (1999), theUniversity of Münster (2001) and theUniversity of Basel (1987).^[3] He also received the Reuchlin Award of the City of Pforzheim for outstanding work in the humanities (1978),^[9] the order of merit of the state of Baden-Württemberg (2003),^[3] theRomano Guardini Award [de] of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria for work in the field of the philosophy of religion (2004),^[10] theHannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought (2004),^[11] theSigmund Freud Prize for scholarly prose (2012),^[12] and theGrand Cross of Merit (2016), the highest tribute the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for services to the nation.^[3]

A sentence from a 1964 article of his caused decades of discussion in German and European political thought. It became known as theBöckenförde dilemma: "The liberal secular state lives on premises that it cannot itself guarantee."^[13]

Böckenförde last lived inAu near Freiburg, where he died on 24 February 2019, aged 88.^[3]

• Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (1991):State, Society, and Liberty: Studies in Political Theory and Constitutional Law. Berg, New York.
• "Carl Schmitt Revisited".Telos 109 (Fall 1996). New York: Telos Press.
• "The Concept of the Political as the Key to Understanding Carl Schmitt’s Constitutional Theory", inThe Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, January 1997, Vol. 10, 5. (Translated by Heiner Bielefeldt from "Der Begriff des Politischen als Schlüssel zum staatsrechtlichen Werk Carl Schmitts (1988)").
• Constitutional and Political Theory: Selected Writings, edited by Mirjam Künkler and Tine Stein, Oxford University Press 2017,ISBN 9780198714965.
• Religion, Law, and Democracy: Selected Writings, edited by Mirjam Künkler and Tine Stein, Oxford University Press 2021,ISBN 9780198818632.

• 20th-century German judges
• People from Hesse-Nassau
• Justices of the Federal Constitutional Court
• 1930 births
• 2019 deaths
• People from Kassel
• Academic staff of Bielefeld University
• German scholars of constitutional law
• German Roman Catholics
• Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• Recipients of the Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg

• CS1 maint: location missing publisher
• CS1 German-language sources (de)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with hCards
• Pages with German IPA