Die Aufhebung akademischer Ehrungen

Most higher education laws provide authorizations to honor individuals for services to a higher education institution and to bind them to the institution through a visible designation. Higher education law recognizes, for example, the award of the title of honorary senator. The awarding of an honorary doctorate plays a special role. The requirements for this vary in some cases between state university laws and in some cases between academic statutes. Unpleasant surprises also crop up time and again among academic honors. People have been awarded honorary academic titles, the memory of which has faded, and decades later a university is suddenly confronted with the fact that it once honored someone who is now utterly discredited by their biography. Examples include honorary doctorates awarded to officials and representatives of the Nazi regime or to antidemocrats who actively contributed to the downfall of the Weimar Republic. Could a university revoke an honorary doctorate posthumously if it had been awarded to, for example - purely hypothetical cases - Heinrich Himmler, Erich Ludendorff, Hilde Benjamin or Lothar von Trotha? Is this a matter of mere symbolism or of administrative procedural law? Corrections to earlier decisions awarding honors raise administrative law issues that are less trivial than they may appear at first glance. This essay examines the administrative law issues surrounding the revocation of academic honors, distinguishing between cases where the person concerned is still alive and those where they have already died.