HAInews 2023/0280TH Birthday: In Memory of Alumnus Hans-Peter Kaul
Heidelberg alumnus Hans-Peter Kaul, who died in 2014, would have turned 80 on 25 July 2023. The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague can be considered the life's work of the international lawyer and diplomat: As chief negotiator of the German delegation from 1996 to 2002, he passionately fought for the establishment of the court, at which he eventually became the first German judge.
Hans-Peter Kaul studied Law at Ruperto Carola and passed both state examinations. The legal expert, who himself had been born in the middle of the Second World War, explained “the experiences of the unbelievable, and I emphasise this explicitly, the unbelievable factual and moral catastrophe that Germany brought upon the world and upon itself” as the impetus for his tireless commitment to the establishment of a world criminal court.
Before Hans-Peter Kaul became a judge in The Hague, he had worked for decades as a diplomat: In the Foreign Office he looked after the United Nations, later he worked in the German embassies in Israel, Norway and Washington as well as in the German representation of the United Nations in New York. In 2002, he was appointed Foreign Office Ambassador to the ICC, where he became a judge one year later. From 2004 to 2009, Hans-Peter Kaul served as Vice-President of the court, and in 2006, he was re-elected for a second term until 2015. In July 2014, however, he died after a short, serious illness four days before his 71st birthday. Influenced by his experiences, the reserve captain said shortly before his death that he had become a pacifist who could only tolerate the use of armed military force in absolutely extreme emergencies: “Because it almost automatically leads to crimes against humanity and war crimes. There is no military action without crime.”
