The Making of a ‘58er 45
debate with Forsthoff over the Basic Law. As Habermas explained
in an interview, “I read Heller’s Staatslehre but was not particu-
larly impressed. Heller’s influence came through Abendroth whose
Auseinandersetzung with Forsthoff at the teachers’ conference on
constitutional law I found to be of extreme interest.”^80 Abendroth
sought to build on the legacy of Heller’s effort to combine mate-
rial theories of justice with legal positivism. Like Heller, Abendroth
eliminated suprapositive legal principles in favor of basic legal prin-
ciples (Rechtsgrundsätze) in positive constitutional law.
Ridder and Abendroth saw the Sozialstaat principle as the key to
holding open the West German constitution for socialist democ-
rac y.^81 Abendroth interpreted Article 1, Section 1, “The dignity of
man is inalienable,” as an injunction to “... prevent the human being
from turning into a mere function of the social-political system.” In
recognition of this, the sovereign democratic lawgiver must realize
the social state.^82 Abendroth trusted simple majorities of the leg-
islature to interpret the constitutional state goals (Staatsziele) cor-
rectly. The basic rights catalogue was misunderstood, Abendroth
believed, if treated as a “... fixed guarantee of the dominant social
and economic order.” For this reason, he resisted the tendency of
the Federal Constitutional Court to ascribe to basic rights a “supra-
positive” status, that is, a source of validity beyond the “positive”
constitutional text, usually legitimated by arguments from natural
law, be they Christian or rationalist. “Suprapositive” values should
find no place in constitutional interpretation, Abendroth argued.
In 1956 he wrote, in reaction to the Court’s ban on the Communist
Party, that by reaching for “pregiven legal ideas of community” and
a suprapositive “value order” in a class-divided society, the Court
privileged an illusory homogeneity of class interests. The concreti-
zation of values in a real democracy must come “... from the peo-
ple and not the jurists.”^83 Abendroth’s sensitivity to how the Court
(^80) Author’s private correspondence with Habermas, June 7, 2005.
(^81) See Helmut Ridder, “Enteignung und Sozialisierung,” in VVDStRL 10
(1952): 124–49.
(^82) Wolfgang Abendroth, “Zum Begriff des demokratischen und sozialen
Rechtsstaates im Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,”[1954],
in Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Sozialstaatlichkeit: Aufsätze und Essays, ed. Ernst
Forsthoff (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 114–43.
(^83) Wolfgang Abendroth, “Das KPD-Verbotsurteil des Bundesver-
fassungsgerichts. Ein Beitrag zum Problem der richterlichen Interpretation
von Rechtsgrundsätzen der Verfassung im demokratischen Staat,” in idem,