Review Essay - Ernst Forsthoff and the Intellectual History of German Administrative Law

The return of the local state? Failing neoliberalism, remunicipalisation, and the role of the state in advanced capitalism

“…It should be noted that Ernst Forsthoff's (1933) publication Der totale Staat (The total state) has been criticised for attempting to give constitutional legitimacy to the Nazi regime, alongside other publications from prominent lawyers and law experts at the time. Forsthoff, a member of the Conservative Revolution as well as an open Christian, was himself later impeded from academic teaching by the Nazi regime (Caldwell, 1994;Meinel, 2007), but his earlier writings were nevertheless rightfully criticised for their polemic use of eugenic theories and antisemitic language (Meinel, 2007). 3.…”

“…Forsthoff linked the need for Daseinsvorsorge to the joint developments of technology, urbanisation, and industrial capitalist production over the 19th and into the 20th centuries, arguing that these transformations of the nation state made it impossible for citizens to individually provide, for themselves, all necessary means to sustain their 'being' (such as individually supplying themselves with water, heating, and waste management) (Meinel, 2007). This in turn mandates the state to assume the responsibility to provide citizens with essential services, the fulfilment of which Forsthoff called 'Daseinsvorsorge' (Forsthoff, 1958;Schäfer, 2020; see also : Meinel, 2007) although he was more concerned with the stability of the (authoritarian) state than citizens' well-being (Caldwell, 1994;Meinel, 2007). Unlike more contemporary understandings of Daseinsvorsorge, the term's etymology is thus surprisingly anti-democratic (see also : Folkers, 2017).…”