Herbert Kraus was born in Rostock. He studied law from 1904 to 1908 in Heidelberg, Leipzig and Berlin. In 1908 he completed his Ph.D. and completed his 2nd State Law Exam in Saxony in 1911. During a subsequent stay at Columbia University and Harvard University he completed his habilitation on “The Monroe Doctrine and its relations with American Diplomacy and Public International Law” . He spent the winter term 1913/1914 in Paris at the Sorbonne and received his habilitation in summer 1914 from the University of Leipzig. During World War I Kraus served in the German civil administration in Belgium. Between 1917 and 1919 he worked in the division for legal affairs of the German Foreign Office. He took part in the negotiations of the Treaty of Brest-Litowsk and the Treaty of Versailles.
After the Nazis seized power, the so-called Machtergreifung, Kraus had to face hostilities by Nazi authorities. He published his criticism of the Nazi foreign policy in 1934 in a work titled “The crisis of inter-state thought“ . In this work he argued in favor of a certain binding minimal moral standards. Though he criticized the Treaty of Versailles, he also called Adolf Hitler a „fool“. In several subsequent articles he also criticized Carl Schmitt´s understanding of international law. After 4 years of hostilities Kraus was removed from all offices in 1937, forced to retire and banned from publishing. Kraus moved to Dresden where he undertook 1937-1938 some work commissioned by Columbia University. Subsequently he worked on a textbook of international law and a book on Georg Friedrich von Martens but the drafts of these works were destroyed in the dresden bombing in February 1945.
Herbert Kraus was married to the American sculptor Katharina Hobson-Kraus. She left Germany in 1935 and they divorced in 1939.
Works (extract)
Die Monroedoktrin und ihre Beziehung zur Amerikanischen Diplomatie und zum Völkerrecht, Berlin, 1913.
Interesse und zwischenstaatliche Ordnung, NZIR, Bd. 49, 1934, S. 22-65.
Carl Schmitt, Nationalsozialismus und Völkerrecht, NZIR, Bd. 50, 1935, S. 151-161.
Internationale Gegenwartsfragen – Völkerrecht, Staatsethik, internationale Politik, Würzburg, 1963.
Literature
Heiko Meiertöns: An International Lawyer in Democracy and Dictatorship - Re-Introducing Herbert Kraus, in: EJIL, Vol. 25, pp. 255-286.
Dietrich Rauschning, Herbert Kraus , in: Die Albertus-Magnus-Universität zu Königsberg und ihre Professoren, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994, S. 371-382.
Frank Halfmann: Eine „Pflanzstätte bester nationalsozialistischer Rechtsgelehrter“: Die juristische Abteilung der Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftlichen Fakultät, in: Die Universität Göttingen unter dem Nationalsozialismus, München u.a.: K.G. Saur, 1987