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Kelsen and his Circle: The Viennese Years
1 Introduction
Hans Kelsen was born on 11 October 1881 in Prague, in the Austrian imperial part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. From 1883 on the family lived in Vienna. After completing his law degree, Kelsen undertook his habilitation in 1911. From 1919 to 1930 he held the position of `ordentlicher Professor für Staats- und Verwaltungsrecht' (full professor of state and administrative law) at the University of Vienna. In 1930, Kelsen accepted a call to Cologne and left Austria permanently.2
Kelsen's Vienna years fell in the heyday of Viennese modernism, which had begun with the famous fin de siècle. The modernist period continued for the first three decades of this century and it was only with the Ständestaat that it came to an abrupt end. In recent years numerous publications have appeared which address the social and historical conditions of this intellectually progressive period, the diverse ties among its leading figures and, finally, the cultural exodus from Austria.3 An important characteristic of Viennese modernism was the way it encompassed both culture understood in a more narrow sense and science. This may explain why there was a `scientific' streak in the rational `coolness' of the Second Vienna School's twelve-tone music, why the development of psychoanalysis transcended the boundaries of science and culture, and why even today the iron core of Viennese modernism, the neo-positivism of the Vienna Circle, may be seen as a cultural phenomenon.4
Hans Kelsen exerted a decisive influence on this period. With his Pure Theory of Law5 he subjected the theoretical underpinnings of a discipline that had been practised for centuries - namely, jurisprudence - to a fundamental critique, while at the same time constructing a new foundation for legal theory. Both in his life and work, Kelsen conforms with a pattern often found in the leading figures of Viennese modernism: family background of assimilated Judaism; Viennese gymnasium schooling; involvement in the most progressive intellectual movements of the time; radicalism and acuity in his particular revolutionary approach; a unique combination of rationalism with an ethic of scientific world conception; development of a `theory', founding of a `Viennese school'; world fame; emigration to America.
This essay cannot claim to exhaustively analyse Kelsen's unique position in this period.6 Moreover, Kelsen, being of a modest character himself, did not include an autobiography among his vast writings. We therefore seek in this paper to explore `Kelsen' as a subject within a cultural context, referring mainly to his work and only occasionally to his life.
2 * All biographical information in this paper is taken from R. A.
Métall, Hans Kelsen. Leben und Werk (1969)..
3 See, e.g., A. Janik and H. E. Toulmin, Wittgenstein's Vienna
(1973); C. E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna. Politics and
Culture (1979); F. Stadler (ed.), Vertriebene Vernunft (vol. 1 and
II) (1988); J. Nautz and R. Vahrenkamp (eds.), Die Wiener
Jahrhundertwende (2nd ed., 1996); Stadler, `Die andere Kulturgeschichte. Am
Beispiel von Emigration und Exil der österreichischen Intellektuelle
1930-1940', in R. Steininger and M. Gehler (eds.), Österreich im 20.
Jahrhundert, vol. 1 (1997) 498, at 506.
4 Stadler, `Wissenschaft als Kultur?', in F. Stadler (ed.),
Wissenschaft als Kultur. Österreichs Beitrag zur Moderne (1997), at
9.
5 Kelsen used this expression for the first time as the title of a
book: Reine Rechtslehre (1934), which translates into English as Pure
Theory of Law. In the following, `Pure Theory of Law' will be used, in
Kelsen's sense, to refer to his legal theory work in general.
6 The main source thus remains Métall's biography,
supra note 1. The Kelsen estate, archived at the Hans Kelsen Institute
in Vienna, contains very few personal documents.
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