No, Montesquieu, he certainly knew / nothing of the existence of Nollerich." In addition to such curious verses from a pamphlet designed by students, the newly opened estate of Peter Noll (1926 to 1982) contains numerous typescripts and drafts, photographs and a wide-ranging Correspondence.
Born in Basel, he was not only in contact with the well-known German-speaking lawyers of his time;
he socialized in the same way with Dürrenmatt and Frisch, the publisher Siegfried Unseld or the sociologist Helmut Schelsky – who even reproduced a lengthy excerpt from a letter from Noll in an essay.
In their interaction, the documents bring a large part of university, contemporary and legal history to life.
For all its breadth, the surviving correspondence is extremely incomplete.
In relation to the FAZ, for example, only the two letters that the recently deceased Karl Heinz Bohrer addressed to Peter Noll have survived, but not his replies.
In his second letter, the then head of literature thanks him for agreeing to write a review and apologetically adds: "If I didn't know that you had already written twice for the FAZ, that was probably because I wasn't there these days read my own newspaper carefully, at least not the part outside of the feuilleton and the literary journal.”
Noll's article on the reform of political penal law, which appeared in this newspaper in February 1967, demonstrates his virtues as a lawyer and stylist in an exemplary manner.
He, who saw the first task of the law in the critique of power, also put the question of the right laws before the question of the real conditions: "What is the main problem that triggered the legislative act as a problem impulse?" he the latest statistics: "It consists in a striking disproportion between the number of police investigations in political criminal cases and the number of convictions."
Communications from officials and experiences with laws
This access is characteristic of the later author of the "Gesetzwesenlehre", who throughout his life as a researcher pushed for a more thought-out and better informed legislation and strived for closer cooperation with criminalistics.
In the article, Noll quoted his colleague in criminal law, Günter Stratenwerth, as well as the funeral speech of Pericles or the private communication of “a high-ranking federal official” on counter-espionage issues.
Incidentally, as his Frankfurt colleague Klaus Lüderssen remarked, “a kind of encyclopedia of legal-philosophical, legal-sociological and legal-theoretical problems” was created.
These unexpected cross-references lead to conclusions that seem to have been spoken in the present: "The mosaic theory of jurisprudence, according to which well-known facts,
if they are systematically collected and compiled, can form a secret through this systematic connection is an anachronism in view of computer technology.” Without ignoring the autonomy and inertia of the political system, Noll advocated a restriction or even abolition of state crimes.
A further step in this direction was taken just three years ago when Section 103 of the Criminal Code, which made lese majesté a punishable offence, was repealed.