Max Kaser (21 April 1906 - 13 January 1997) was a German professor of Jurisprudence who taught successively at the universities of Münster, Hamburg and Salzburg.
His text books on Roman civil law and modern civil procedure (for many purposes outside Anglo-American common law precepts) break new ground in presenting the historical evolution of legal concepts and principals, incorporating analyses and commentaries on written sources, and using research techniques that he himself (with others) developed.
Soon after his birth his father accepted an appointment which included an extraordinary professorship at the University of Graz, and the family relocated to that city.
In 1914 the family moved again when Dr.Kurt Kaser accepted a full professorship at the University of Czernowitz (as it was then known), a couple of hundred kilometers south-west of Kyiv.
[3] A student contemporary at Graz was Walter Wilburg who later achieved eminence as a legal scholar and lawyer, and who also became a life-long friend.
[3] The primary focus of his research was a question arising from the Roman civil law of property which two years later formed the based for Kaser's habilitation and his book "Restituere als Prozeßgegenstand" (1932: republished with extensive further notes in 1968).
Erna Kaser proved a highly competent administrator, running the house - even to the point, slightly unusually for a "housewife" at that time, of taking care of the family's annual tax declaration - leaving her husband to concentrate on his work at the university.
[2] Three of his personally supervised habilitation students from his time at Hamburg subsequently achieved eminence as university professors of jurisprudence.
[3][a] One of these, Dieter Medicus, later wrote an affectionate obituary in which he surmised that Kaser's decision to retire from his professorship at Hamburg had been accelerated by the student unrest of 1968 and its aftermath.
Whatever the truth of the matter, his retirement from Hamburg certainly did not mark an end to an active career as a law professor at a top university.
[2] Between 1971 and 1976 Kaser held a special professorship at the University of Salzburg, occupying the teaching chair for Roman and Civil law.
He let it be known to his friends that he very much relished the chance to teach Roman law to students who were not motivated by the tightly prescriptive regime under which study and exams were operated in the German system.
[4] Between 1954 and 1972 Max Kaser was a co-producer of the prestigious Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte (ZRG), a venerable specialist journal for scholars and students of historical jurisprudence and related topics.
The seminar's library, set up in 1966, consists of books, newspapers and other printed material by Ernst Levy, Erich Sacher and Max Kaser himself.