Rudolf Steinberg (born 23 June 1943 in Cochem, Rhine Province) is professor emeritus for public law and from 2000 to 2008 was president of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.
In 1977 he published his habilitation thesis entitled Politik und Verwaltungsorganisation: zur Reform der Regierungs- und Verwaltungsorganisation unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Obersten Bundesbehörden in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (Politics and administrative organisation: reform of governmental and administrative organisations with special consideration of the highest federal authorities in the United States of America.
[1] At that time, Frankfurt university began to move from its former campus at Bockenheim to its new location in the Westend district, where the U.S. army had just handed back the former IG Farben Building to German authorities.
[3][4] Steinberg was blamed for favouring the legal and the economics department over sociology and the humanities,[3] while a so-called cluster of excellence co-funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft on The formation of normative orders (Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen) was created, comprising also philosophers and social scientists.
Rudolf Steinberg was awarded two civil medals for his lifetime achievements, the Hessischer Verdienstorden of the State of Hesse in 2009, and the Ehrenplakette der Stadt Frankfurt am Main in 2012.