Jutta Limbach

Jutta Limbach, born as Jutta Ryneck on 27th May 1934, is remembered as the first female president of the German Constitutional Court. She passed away on 10th September 2016. In her career she served as Senator for Justice for the Government of West Berlin from 1989-1994 and prior to that as Professor for Civil Law, Commercial and Business Law, and Sociology of Law at the Free University of Berlin.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Limbach as Senator for Justice faced the unexpected challenge of reunifying two justice systems within one city. West Berlin judges took over the East Berlin courts and had to keep up the legal services and tasks. Former judges from East Berlin were suddenly out of job, with the option to reapply for the judicial service.¹⁾ Limbach had to overview and direct these administrative procedures, that had no historic role model.

As the later president of the Constitutional Court, she faced a hostile atmosphere towards the court from parts of the society. The court had recently made some very controversial rulings e.g. about crucifixes in classrooms in Bavaria and the protection of free speech when criticising the military.²⁾ As an experienced politician she knew about the importance of media reporting and for the first time in the history of the court established the role of a Press Secretary. As a judge she participated in important decisions for example about the deployment of German military abroad or about the limitations to the right for asylum introduced into the constitution in 1993.

In her positions as senator and judge, Limbach was constantly in the public eye and had little influence on the questions she had to deal with. While she was still a rather unknown professor in Berlin, she had more individual freedom. During this time as a researcher, she published several articles especially about family law that show her strong feminist attitude. This post dives into this early work and then compares it with speeches she gave about 25 years later after she had retired from the Constitutional Court.

What were her thesis and topics? Did they change over time?

Copyright: Goethe-Institut/ Antje Meinen

Family Law in the 80s: A new understanding of marriage and the phenomenon of unmarried couples

During the 80s, Limbach’s publications on family law focused on the understanding of partnership and marriage. In July 1977, a new marriage and family law reform act had entered into force. Paragraph 1356 of the German Civil Code (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch – BGB) was rewritten. The model of the housewife marriage, which allowed the wife to pursue a career only as far as her household duties allowed it, was given up. The new wording of the paragraph gave a married couple the task to find their own agreement on how to handle housework and paid employment. Both had the right to purse employment, but both also had to take into consideration the interests of the partner and the family.³⁾

The new wording used was gender neutral, a major step forward for gender equality. However, changing the law does not automatically change people’s minds. In a speech at the 20th German Sociology Conference in Bremen in 1980,⁴⁾ Limbach complained that women were still seen as primarily responsible for takingcare of children. The official justification for the law, as well as many family law textbooks and leading commentaries on the Civil Code, still assumed that the housewife’s marriage was most appropriate when young children needed to be cared for in a family’s household.

“Women have a self-evident right in our constitutional state to be employed and to hold public office in the same manner as the male sex.”

Limbach argued that the reasons for this belief could not be further justified by facts. Especially the fear of a mother’s employment leading to a higher numbers of disturbed and abandoned children could not be proven by social sciences.

Besides the changing concept of marriage, family lawyers in the 80s also discussed another increasingly common phenomenon: Young couples living together in relationships without being married (in German: “Die nichteheliche Lebensgemeinschaft”). During a conference of the German Female Lawyers Association (“Deutscher Juristinnenbund”) held in 1986, Limbach and other female lawyers discussed the legal consequences for those couples. Limbach proposed that Paragraph 1570 BGB should also be applied to separated unmarried couples. The Paragraph gives divorced spouses a personal maintenance claim against the other partner in case he or she takes care of joint children at least up to child’s age of three years (dt. “Betreuungsunterhalt”). Limbach argued that the purpose this rule was to regulate the relationship between parents rather than the relationship between husband and wife.⁵⁾ Her proposal was controversially discussed among the participants of the conference. The female lawyers could not agree that it was possible for courts to apply the provision on unmarried parents without a formal change of law.⁶⁾ They did agree though that an unmarried parent – mostly the mother, had to be given a better right of maintenance when childcare currently (or in the past) prevented her from working.⁷⁾

In the new century: Progress is seen, room for improvement remains

In July 2007 Limbach gave a speech in Karlsruhe on a celebration for the 50-year jubilee of the Equal Rights Act, that had been passed in 1957. The manuscript is preserved in the German Federal Archive.⁸⁾ In her speech, Limbach appreciated that according to her observation, the understanding of the role of a mother had fundamentally changed among younger generations. More fathers expressed the desire to play a more active role in their children’s lives. However, she did not see this change in attitude translating into a change in the everyday contribution of family work. Only around 2% of fathers took parental leave or worked part-time. The prejudice that mothers abandon their children to selfishly pursue their own careers also seemed to persist.In her speech, Limbach briefly also touched upon the topic of maintenance, when saying:

“Every young woman and mother must keep her professional skills intact so that she can re-enter the workforce at any time. Even maternal maintenance after separation or divorce can no longer be relied upon in view of recent legal policy developments.”

She is possibly referring to a maintenance law reform that would enter into force by the end of 2007. On the one hand, this reform eliminated most of the differences between married and unmarried parents.⁹⁾On the other hand, the economic independence of the partners after the separation was increasingly assumed as soon as the children were 3 years old. ¹⁰⁾ Limbach criticised that “economically independent women” are seen as the norm even though in most cases a stronger dependence still exists.

In a speech given in 2011 on the occasion of 100 years of International Women’s Day[11], Limbach stressed another aspect important to her, when speaking about gender equality: In modern times, educated women in Germany have been able to have careers because they often delegate care work to other women, mainly from Eastern Europe, who are paid little and often have no social security such as pensions. She called on women to show more solidarity with each other and for an honest debate about the compatibility of work and family life.

Concluding Remarks

So much more could be said about a woman, who gave the highest German court a face for so many years. This post tried to focus on a time in her professional life that has not yet been very visible to the public. Her speeches in 2007 and 2011 show that Limbach kept an eye on the family law developments in Germany and a critical view on how gender equality is realised in practise.

As the citations at the beginning of the blog post show, Limbach wanted women to reach (especially high) positions in public service. Throughout her own career she always tried to encourage and promote other women. For example when working at the Free University of Berlin she was a colleague and supporter of Heide Pfarr, who also became one of the rare law professors later on. She appointed Uta Fölster, who later became President of the Court of Appeal in Schleswig-Holstein, as the first Press Secretary of the Constitutional Court, and hired Christina Stresemann as Research Associate for her team at the Constitutional Court, who later became a judge at the Federal Court of Justice.

In 1995 on a meeting of the German Women Council, Limbach summarised her definition of feminism as follows: “We, who – in the truest sense of the word – shamelessly call ourselves feminists, are united by the insight that women are human beings with an inviolable dignity. We despise and oppose relations of power and violence that turn women into objects. (…) Our work ethic is to support women – without imposing an image of femininity – on their path to independence.”

Further Reading

• „Jutta Limbach: Eine Biografie“ by Karen Deckenbach, Droste Verlag 2003
• „Der Rechtsalltag von Frauen“ by Jutta Limbach/Ute Gerhard, Edition Suhrkamp 1988
• „Juristinnen: Berichte, Fakten, Interviews“ by Margarete Fabricius-Brand/Kristine Sudhölter/Sabine Berghahn, Elfanten Press 1986

Further Sources

• Jutta Limbach, Paradies der Gleichberechtigung, Interview: https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/jutta-limbach-paradies-der-gleichberechtigung-100.html
• Jutta Limbach, Erlebte Geschichte, Interview: https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr5/sendungen/erlebtegeschichten/limbachjutta102.html