Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht

Who was Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht?

Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht was a German constitutional lawyer, jurist, and docent. Albrecht was most notable as a member of the Göttingen Seven, a group of academics who in 1837 protested the abrogation of the constitution of the Kingdom of Hanover by Ernest Augustus I.

Albrecht was born in Elbing, East Prussia, and studied in Berlin, Göttingen, and Königsberg. He taught jurisprudence in Königsberg in 1829, relocating to Göttingen the following year. After his association with the Göttingen Seven in 1837, which resulted in his dismissal, he found work as a freelance lecturer in Leipzig. Here, in 1840, he became a professor of law.

In 1847 Albrecht joined the Lübeck chapter of the Germanistentage. In 1848, during the March Revolution, Albrecht was a member of the Frankfurt Parliament and a delegate to the Siebzehnerausschuss, whose constitution he prepared. From May 18 to August 17, he represented Harburg in the Frankfurt Parliament, where he allied himself with the Casino faction.

In 1863 Albrecht was appointed to the Geheim Hofrat, shortly before his retirement in 1868.

Albrecht remains a significant figure in jurisprudence for his conception of the state as a purely theoretical legal entity, a view he developed in an 1837 review of Romeo Maurenbrecher's "Grundsätze des heutigen Staatsrechts". This view stands in opposition to the old Germanic concept of the state as Verbandsperson, a collective person, a position defended by Otto von Gierke.