Zusammenfassung / Abstract
„Hans Peters, the Görres Society and the Kreisauer Kreis“ – Hans Peters was president of the Görres Society from 1940 until the suppression of the Society in 1941 and after its re-establishment from 1945 to 1966. He was university professor of constitutional law in Berlin and Cologne and was politically active both in the Weimar Republic and in the Federal Republic of Germany at the central and municipal levels. He was a member of the Kreisauer Kreis, a resistance group around Helmut James Graf von Moltke, which met with about 30 people from 1938 to 1943 at the estate Kreisau near Breslau and wrote several programmatic memorandums on the reconstruction of Germany after the expected end of the National Socialist regime. Peters was one of the most influential members of the circle. He represented the basic values of the Görres Society stimulatingly and effectively in difficult times. The Kreisauers’ plans dealt with the „restoration of the human image in the hearts of the citizens“, with the institutional problems of the reconstruction of Germany and with the position of post-war Germany in the world. Important considerations of the Kreisauer Kreis were incorporated into the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany.