Carl Theodor Georg Philipp Welcker (29 March 1790 – 10 March 1869) was a German legal scholar, law professor, politician, and journalist.
Biography
Education and early career
He studied at the universities of Giessen and Heidelberg and qualified as a lecturer in 1813 at Giessen. A work on the philosophy of law that he published that year brought about his appointment as extraordinary professor. But after a short time, in 1814, he left his alma mater to follow a call from Kiel, where along with his academic duties he edited the Kieler Blätter, which appeared for the first time in the middle of 1815. Called in 1817 to Heidelberg, he stayed there only until 1819, when he followed a call to Bonn. Here his work was hindered because of an 1817 petition to the diet () he had signed which had asked for a provincial constitution. This provoked an inquiry against him which was ultimately fruitless: he defended himself against collusion in demagogic activity with a complete disclosure.
University of Freiburg
After the case was complete he gladly followed a call from the Grand Duchy of Baden to the University of Freiburg, where he lectured on pandects and constitutional law. Welcker attracted a following among the students, who he introduced to the depths of his knowledge and sought to develop their enthusiasm for the problems it presented, while his colleagues contented themselves with exercising only the students' memories. The all-encompassing character of his lectures is best understood by consulting the encyclopedic work he undertook in the 1820s called The inner and outer system of practical, natural and Roman-Christian-Germanic precepts of law, statecraft and lawmaking (), of which a first volume appeared, though no more followed.
Politician and journalist
With the political turnabout following the assumption of power of Grand Duke Leopold in Baden, Welcker entered the political field in 1830 with a campaign for freedom of the press. This was followed by his entry in 1831 into the second chamber of the Baden diet (), to which he had been elected by the precinct of Ettenheim in the Breisgau as their representative. He remained in the diet for nearly 20 years. In the Baden diet, Welcker displayed tireless and frequently successful effort on behalf of the development of political machinery conducive to freedom. Again and again, for almost eighteen years, he fought against censorship, with even greater energy when the freedom of the press won in 1832 after a short time had to yield to the decrees of the Bundestag of the German Confederation led by Prussia and Austria. That the second chamber held to its right, over strong objections from the government, to develop an integrated German Confederation of national unity and civil freedom, this was essentially Welcker's doing, since he never contented himself with just improving the legislation and administration of the grand duchy with his numerous proposals, but always kept his eye on the grand scheme and early on introduced in the chamber the principles for the reform of the Bundestag and brought them to debate.
In the short time that freedom of the press reigned in Baden, Welcker used it to establish a liberal newsletter, Der Freisinnige ("The Independent"), where he published a series of articles advocating emphatically for sincere and continuing constitutional reform and for freedom-enhancing lawmaking, while on the other hand energetically speaking against the tendency which was gradually taking root in southern Germany to seek by revolutionary means what the governments denied. When Der Freisinnige was suppressed by the Confederation decree of 19 July 1832, and when Welcker spoke out forcefully against what he saw as an illegal proceeding he was suspended from his teaching position. At the same time the University of Freiburg, where along with Karl von Rotteck and other like-minded colleagues, he had taken a hostile attitude toward the tendencies the government was led by, was closed indefinitely. In October, Welcker retired and because of articles he had published in the Freisinnige, a complaint was issued against him, and he was sentenced by the Freiburg court to jail for slandering the government, a sentence which was set aside by a higher court in response to an appeal.