Der vorliegende Kommentar behandelt die in den 1990er und 2000er Jahren von den sog. neuen Ländern mit den evangelischen Landeskirchen und dem Heiligen Stuhl geschlossenen Verträge auf der Basis des Wittenberger Vertrages von 1993, der - stil- wie inhaltsprägend - zum Modell für alle weiteren staatskirchenrechtlichen Verträge der dritten Generation geworden ist. Damit wird das in seiner Bedeutung teils über- teils unterschätzte Vertragsstaatskirchenrecht der jüngsten Generation erstmals in der klassischen Form der Kommentierung rechtsdogmatisch durchdrungen und zugleich praxisgerecht aufbereitet. Kommentiert wird unter Berücksichtigung seiner Entstehungsgeschichte in erster Linie der Wittenberger Vertrag. Die vergleichbaren Bestimmungen der übrigen Verträge werden ergänzend herangezogen. Eine vorangestellte Synopse erleichtert das Auffinden der jeweils einschlägigen Regelungen.
Christian Hillgruber studied law in Cologne. He received his doctorate from the University of Cologne in 1991. He was a research assistant at the BVerfG. In 1997 he habilitated in Cologne. He then became a professor of public law at the University of Heidelberg (1997/98). This was followed by a move to the Chair of Public Law, International Law and Philosophy of Law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (1998 to 2002). Since 2002 he has held a chair in public law at the University of Bonn, and since 2016 he has also been director of the Institute for Ecclesiastical Law there. Hillgruber has been a deputy member of the Constitutional Court of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2006. Axel Vulpius, 1926-2023, studied law at the universities of East Berlin, Freiburg and Bonn from 1947 onwards. After completing his doctorate under Wilhelm Grewe, he became a federal civil servant, initially in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, and from 1969 until his retirement in 1991 in the Federal Ministry of Education and Science. After that, Axel Vulpius worked for five years as an advisor on church matters for the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs of the State of Saxony-Anhalt. For this ministry, he negotiated the state-church agreements with the six Protestant churches in Saxony-Anhalt, with the Catholic Church and with the Jewish community.
