Reinhard Frank

Reinhard Frank (1860 to 1934, ennobled as von Frank in 1912) was a German lawyer and academic specialising in criminal law and international public law, a prolific author of legal textbooks and an influential law reformer. Born at Reddighausen in Hesse, he switched from philology and mathematics to law at Marburg, where Franz von Liszt supervised his doctorate in 1886 and his habilitation in 1887, and he set up a practice in Kassel. He held chairs of criminal law and civil procedure at Giessen from 1890, Halle from 1899 and Tübingen from 1902, and from about 1914 taught at Munich. His textbook on the German penal code, first published in 1897, ran to eighteen editions by his death. In 1902 he joined the government's Criminal Justice Committee and contributed to the comparative presentation of German and foreign criminal law, and in 1920 he became rector of the University of Munich.