Falk Ruttke

Falk Alfred Ruttke (11 November 1894 – 9 September 1955) was a German jurist and law professor. He was considered a prominent representative of National Socialist racial hygiene and was the official legal commentator of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.

Biography

Falk Ruttke was born in Halle (Saale). He studied law in Halle between 1912 and 1914 and between 1918 and 1920. During the First World War he fought as a member of the Marine Corps Flanders, last as leader of a machine gun company. He received the Iron Crosses (1st and 2nd class), as well as the Flanders Cross. In 1919 he belonged to the Freikorps Halle. After receiving his doctorate in 1921, he left his legal clerkship to manage the affairs of the Rheinisch-Westfälischer Mietverein in Essen. In 1923 he became syndic for the Eisenberg Employers' Association in Thuringia and at the same time represented industry on the East Thuringia Settlement Committee. In Eisenberg he also sat on the town council between 1924 and 1927. In 1927, he became head of the sociopolitical department of the Imperial Association of the German Meat Products Industry. In 1931 he became a judge at the Labor Court of Greater Berlin.

Ruttke originally belonged to the DNVP and was a member of the Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation and the Steel Helmet. In May 1932, he joined the NSDAP. He had also been a member of the SS since 1933 and was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer in September 1938. When the National Socialists seized power, Ruttke was appointed Imperial Commissioner of the Committee for Public Hygiene Instruction. From May 1933 he was a member of the Committee of Experts on Population and Racial Policy at the Imperial Ministry of the Interior. In this capacity, together with Arthur Gütt and Ernst Rüdin, he edited the commentary on the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases.

He contributed to the establishment of the Nuremberg Laws. From 1936, Ruttke worked first as a provisional assistant, then as a government councilor, and finally as a senior government councilor in the Ministry of the Interior in 1937.

Ruttke advocated a doctrine of law as a "fighting science" and called for a sharp application of the racial laws against "internal and external enemies". In 1935 Ruttke received a lectureship on "Race and Law" at the University of Berlin, and in 1938 a similar assignment in Vienna. In 1940 he took over a "Chair of Race and Law" and a corresponding institute at the University of Jena as a full professor. Ruttke was co-editor of the journal Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie. In the fall of 1940, he trained members of the SS in Warthegau in racial subjects on a special assignment. He was drafted into the Navy on January 6, 1942, and dismissed from the university on September 13, 1945.

From 1945 to March 1948, Ruttke was imprisoned. In the denazification proceedings, he was classified as "incriminated". All of his writings as well as the journal Recht der Rasse, which he edited, were placed on the list of literature to be eliminated in the Soviet occupation zone. After 1952 he lived in Stuttgart, where he died three years later.

Works

• Die Stellung des Reichspräsidenten zur Reichsregierung nach der Verfassung des deutschen Reiches vom 11. August 1919 (1921)
• Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Abgrenzung zwischen Fleischwaren-Industrie und Fleischer-Handwerk (1930)
• Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses vom 14. Juli 1933. Mit Auszug aus dem Gesetz gegen gefährliche Gewohnheitsverbrecher und über Maßregeln der Sicherung und Besserung vom 24. Nov. 1933 (1936; with Arthur Gütt und Ernst Rüdin)
• "Rassenhygiene und Recht". In: Erblehre und Rassenhygiene im völkischen Staat (1934), pp. 91–103.
• Die Verwaltungs-Akademie. Ein Handbuch für den Beamten im nationalsozialistischen Staat (1934; contributor)
• Schrifttum und Aufklärungsstoff zur Volkspflege. Rassenkunde – Rassenpflege – Erbkunde – Erbpflege – Familienkunde – Familienpflege (1935)
• Rasse und Recht im deutschen Hochschulwesen (1936)
• Rasse, Recht und Volk. Beiträge zur rassengesetzlichen Rechtslehre (1937)
• Die Verteidigung der Rasse durch das Recht (1939)
• Dr. Friedrich Lange (1852–1917). Ein Vorkämpfer für den Rassengedanken in schwerer Zeit (1939; with Friedrich Lange)
• Geld ersetzt nicht Blut. Britische Bevölkerungssorgen (1940)

References

• Grüttner, Michael (2004). Biographisches Lexikon zur nationalsozialistischen Wissenschaftspolitik. Heidelberg: Synchron, pp. 143–44.
• Hamann, Annett (2003). "„Männer der kämpfenden Wissenschaft“. Die 1945 geschlossenen NS-Institute der Universität Jena." In: Uwe Hossfeld, ed., Kämpferische Wissenschaft: Studien zur Universität Jena im Nationalsozialismus. Köln, pp. 202–34.
• Klee, Ernst (2007). Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag.