Friedrich Maassen

Friedrich Bernard Christian Maassen (24 September 1823 – 9 April 1900, age 76) was a German jurist, professor of law, and Roman Catholic scholar.

Maasen was born in Wismar, Mecklenburg-Schwerin. After studying the humanities in his native city, he studied jurisprudence at Jena, Berlin, Kiel and finally , where in 1849 as an advocate, he took his degree at the university there in 1851. He was active in the constitutional conflict of 1848 between the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the Diet, defending the rights of the representatives in three pamphlets, and, together with Franz von Florencourt, founded the anti-revolutionary "Norddeutscher Korrespondent". Shortly after his graduation he became a convert to Roman Catholicism. Later realizing that, as a Catholic, he was no longer eligible for public office in his native town, he travelled to Bonn, where he devoted himself to academic teaching.

Maassen's magnum opus, Der Primat des Bischofs von Rom und die alten Patriarchalkirchen (Bonn, 1853), dealt with two important questions: whether the Roman primacy had existed in the first centuries, and whether the much-discussed sixth canon of the First Council of Nicaea bears witness to the primacy. This work won immediate recognition among scholars, and Count Thun invited him to Pesth in 1855 as professor extraordinarius of Roman Law. Several months later, he was given a professorship of Roman and canon law at Innsbruck, one at Graz in 1860, and one in 1871 at Vienna, where, until he retired in 1894, he attracted many pupils.

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