How much activism can academia take?

Walther Schücking and an international law scholar’s struggle against war

News from the United States and Europe currently shows that researchers who are socially and politically engaged are soon subjected to harsh criticism. Walther Schücking, an international legal scholar from Münster who would have turned 150 this year, was just such a researcher. His example shows how old – and yet how relevant – this debate is. What can we observe here?

Research is currently being attacked by Donald Trump and his supporters, as well as by right-wing extremists in Europe. The argument is that research tends to be too politicised. Yet it is precisely these politicians who are using strategies of disinformation and conspiracy theories to shape the political discourse. In a motion to the Bundestag in May 2024, the AfD called for funding for projects that spread ‘postcolonial ideology’ to be halted, and it also wants to stop funding for ‘gender research’. In the Hessian state parliament in spring 2025, the AfD called for the abolition of ‘purely activist-based degree programmes’, and referred among other things to gender and disability studies.

However, there is no consensus in academia on how to deal with these attacks. The argument that researchers make themselves vulnerable when they involve themselves too much in socio-political debates is countered by the argument that it is precisely now that academia must be visible to the general public so that post-factual trends can be combatted.

Schücking as a peace activist

Born in Münster on 6 January 1875, the legal scholar Walther Schücking was not only an academic and politician, but also a peace activist. He saw no problem in combining these diverse roles. Schücking was an associate professor in Breslau from 1900, and a full professor of public law in Marburg from 1903. He specialised in international law early on, and believed that scholars in his discipline had an active role to play in creating and developing international law. In contrast, his contemporaries saw their task primarily in dealing with existing law.

His views mean that Schücking is sometimes regarded as the only international legal scholar of his time who succeeded in overcoming the contradictions between the peace movement and the science of international law. The peace movement of the early 20th century had recognised law as an instrument for advancing its agenda, such as that of a community of states and compulsory arbitration. Activists such as Bertha von Suttner and Alfred H. Fried therefore dealt intensively with questions of international law. However, other scholars took a critical view, and discussions with peace activists barely took place. Schücking, on the other hand, corresponded with a remarkable number of figures in the peace movement, such as von Suttner and Fried. For him, von Suttner’s work had contributed greatly to the development of international law.

Schücking’s activities in the peace movement were shaped by his role as a public intellectual. He published not only in journals of international law, but also often in pacifist newspapers, in particular the Friedenswarte. He was also seen as a leading figure in the German Peace Society, he founded the Association for International Understanding, and gave lectures to various civil society organizations. In doing so, he went beyond his actual field of research and spoke out in favour of legal equality for women and a strict separation of state and church.

A confederation of states as a path to peace

Schücking’s primary goal was the abolition of war. He made peace between states into a maxim and saw the best means of achieving this as lying in a confederation of states. His role in the peace movement therefore also influenced his academic work.

But Schücking’s approach was not entirely new. There was a tendency especially among late-19th-century liberal scholars of international law to use arguments from natural law to create space for their own political views. They did so, for example, by referring to the so-called ‘legal conscience’ of the ‘civilised’ world, with the scholars claiming for themselves the competence to recognise and interpret this legal conscience. What was special about Schücking was the extent to which he interpreted this competence. This was a kind of self-empowerment.

This was how he commented on the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907. These international gatherings saw conventions signed on issues such as the laws of war and dispute resolution. Schücking went so far as to claim that the conferences had created a confederation of states, and he derived from the individual conventions an obligation for the participating states to form an organisational union.

Between politics and academia

Walther Schücking was often attacked for his political activities, primarily because he was very critical of the German government. He believed that the German Empire had isolated itself within the international community, primarily through its hostile stance at the Hague Conferences. Schücking himself also felt the effects of this hostility. After his appointment to Marburg at the age of only 28, his career in Imperial Germany stalled. It was not until 1921 that he left Marburg to take up a position at the Berliner Handelshochschule and, in 1926, another at the University of Kiel.

Schücking was active not only in civil society but also in political institutions. From 1919 to 1928, he was a member of the Weimar National Assembly and sat in the Reichstag for the German Democratic Party. He had strongly criticised the outbreak and continuation of the World War I, but rejected the accusation that Germany was to blame for the war. He had been one of the six main German delegates during the peace negotiations in Versailles, but was disappointed by the attitude of the Entente. He not only criticised the League of Nations Charter for failing to condemn war; he also rejected the focus on Germany’s sole responsibility for the war and even voted against the signing of the treaty in the Reichstag. Was it patriotism or simply disappointment with the post-war order? As chair of the ‘Investigation Committee on the Questions of Guilt in the World War’, he attempted to refute the accusation of aggression. In addition, he suddenly took a much more dogmatic and narrow view on the law of war in relation to German war crimes, which led Schücking to being accused of allowing himself to be exploited by representatives of the old elites.

This shift in the interpretation of international law also provides arguments in Schücking’s biography against academics being too involved in politics. Historians of international law nonetheless now hail him as a visionary, and recognise his draft of a confederation of states as pioneering. His dynamic concept of law allowed him to deal with law as a means of achieving peace, which makes his work relevant to this day.

Schücking’s legacy

In 1930, Schücking was elected judge at the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague, where he died in 1935. At the time of his death, he was already regarded internationally as the most important scholar of international law of his era. In Germany, however, he was dismissed from university shortly after the National Socialists seized power. It was prohibited to attend his funeral, which may also be one reason why – outside the history of international law – Schücking has been largely forgotten in Germany.

His career never led Schücking back to his hometown of Münster, although he very much wanted to return. According to Schücking himself, it was clerical resistance that prevented an appointment to the University of Münster. Nevertheless, it is surprising that the Wikipedia entry ‘Münster’ does not list Schücking among the city’s famous sons and daughters (as of June 2025). His name is not mentioned in the city museum, and there is also no street or square named after him in the city. But his estate is kept at the University and State Library of Münster, and the correspondence that it contains could shed new light on his role as an activist.

Further literature:

Bodendiek, Frank, Walther Schücking and the Idea of ‘International Organization’. European Journal of Internatinoal law 22, Nr. 3 (2011), 741-754.

García-Salmones, Mónica, Walther Schücking and the Pacifist Traditions of International Law. European Journal of International Law 22, Nr. 3 (2011) 755–782.

Herzog, Amelie, Frauen denken Völkerrecht, Dissertation Wien 2025

Maier-Metz, Harald, Frieden durch Recht – Recht ohne Frieden. Der Pazifist und Völkerrechtler Walther Schücking in Marburg. 1902–1921, Münster – New York, 2022.

Mohr, Johannes, Between Pacifism and Patriotism: Walther Schücking (1875–1935). German Yearbook of International Law 62, Nr. 1 (2021) 275–302.

Morgenstern, Ulf, Bürgergeist und Familientradition. Die liberale Gelehrtenfamilie Schücking im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Paderborn, 2012.

Schücking, Walther, Der Staatenverband der Haager Konferenz, München, 1912.

Simon, Hendrik, A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern International Order, Oxford, 2024.

Tams, Christian J., Re-Introducing Walther Schücking. European Journal of International Law 22, Nr. 3 (2011) 725–739.

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Zitieren als:

Anastasia Hammerschmied: ‘How much activism can academia take?’. EViR Blog, 15.08.2025, https://www.evir.uni-muenster.blog/en/activism.

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