Milestones

DIED. Carl Schmitt, 96, controversial German legal and political philosopher, sometimes called the Crown Jurist of the Third Reich, whose pro-authoritarian theories of government profoundly influenced the course of his country; in Plettenberg, West Germany. From 1929 to 1933, he provided legal and theoretical justifications for the Hindenburg government's dictatorial emergency decree system. Schmitt warned against a Nazi takeover, but his right-wing views became identified with the movement, and when Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, Schmitt opportunistically switched with the tide, becoming Prussian state councilor under Hermann Goring. He avoided prosecution as a war criminal at Nuremberg and later largely kept his vow to retreat "into the security of silence."