PROFESSOR WOLFGANG FRIEDMANN
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1973.tb01349.x |
| Published date | 01 January 1973 |
| Date | 01 January 1973 |
THE
MODERN LAW REVIEW
Volume
36
January
1973
No.
1
1'ROFESSOlt WOLFGANG FRIEDMANN
PROFESSOR
Wolfgang Friedmann died in New York City on Sept-
ember
20,
1972,
victim of
a
violent robbery. All readers of the
Modern
Law
Review
knew him as one of the foremost legal scholars
and teachers of our time-but he was above all else
a
man who had
intellectual initiative, and that rarest of all virtues, moral and
intellectual courage. He was a man of great sensitivity, and
at
the same time of absolute fearlessness-a rare combination, and
perhaps the mainspring of his great achievement.
It
was largely due
to
his initiative that this
Review
came into
being in
1937.
The idea of founding
it
was
"
in the air." In the
middle thirties the University of London Law Society urged that
a
law review be started, and this was supported energetically by
Wolfgang Friedmann, whose infectious zeal provided most of the
drive required to get the enterprise going and to shape its form.
He was not the only one
to
see that English academic legal
thinking was in need of rejuvenation but one cannot think
of
anyone who through his teaching and through his writing has done
more to bring it to fruition. His close connection with the
Modern
Law
Review
continued after he had left England and gone
to
Australia, later to Canada, and then
to
the United States. His
help remained invaluable through all this time.
T,he whole of his work bears witness
to
the breadth of his vision
and boldness of his thinking-no matter whether he directed his
attention to the transformation of private law, to the changing
function of international law,
or
to
the evolution of international
commercial organisation. Few saw as clearly as he did the impact
of
social change on the law
or
did more to make a sociological
approach to law familiar to scholars and to students. The world
of
legal learning has suffered an irreparable
loss.
To many of the members of the Editorial Committee, Wolfgang
Friedmann was
a
personal friend, and we have
a
feeling of bereave-
ment we cannot adequately express. He was a warmhearted and
lovable person, a faithful and generous friend-his memory
will
live
among all those who had the happiness to be close to him.
It
will
also live among generations of students in many lands whom he
helped through his writing, his teaching and his example.
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