Knut Wolfgang Nörr
(1935-2018)

January 22, 2018

With works covering topics ranging from Panormitanus, early modern learned process, natural law and civil procedure to twentieth-century private law and legal theory, Knut Wolfgang Nörr was one of the few legal historians as at ease with material from the Middle Ages as from the last century, as capable of analysing historical legal philosophy as engaging in comparative legal history. Born in Munich and educated there and in Heidelberg, his path took him to Stephan Kuttner in Washington, D.C. early in his career. He assumed his first chair as professor in Bonn in 1966 before moving to Tubingen in 1971, where he co-edited the canon-law section of the ZRG, taught, and published on the historiography of medieval canon law, modern private law and commercial law for over four decades. He had been closely connected to the Max Planck Institute since 1970 as an external research fellow.

Knut Nörr passed away on 15 January 2018. At the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History and beyond, legal historians remember him in gratitude for his companionship and in awe of his extraordinary scholarship.

Thomas Duve

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