Acceso usuarios
Martin Schennach
The contribution deals with the echoes in the Austrian scientific community of the German and international discussion of criminal law between the ‘classical school’ around Karl Binding and the so-called ‘positivist school’ led by Franz von Liszt. After analysing communicative structures and networks which formed the institutional frame for scientific debates (for instance the Austrian branch of the “International Union of Criminal Law” and the “Austrian Journal of Criminal Law”), the paper takes a closer look at individual Austrian legal scholars and their positions. Only a few representatives of Austrian criminal law like Hans Gross and Julius Vargha were open to the new concepts without being mere Doppelgänger of von Liszt. Nevertheless, von Liszt’s adversaries in Austria significantly outnumbered his adherents, and the most prominent and convinced opponent of penal positivism was without doubt Hans Hoegel, who also played an important role in the planned reform of Austrian penal law. Some scholars like Heinrich Lammasch and Carl Stooss (who was professor at the University of Vienna starting in 1896) adopted some of the views and theoretical premises of Franz von Liszt without declaring themselves part of the reform movement and without losing their scepticism towards some of his ideas.
