Prof. Dr. Christoph Safferling

Professor Dr. jur. Christoph Safferling (LL.M.) has held the Chair of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Law, International Criminal Law and Public International Law as well as Director of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy since 2015. He studied law in Munich and London and received his doctorate from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1999 and his habilitation from the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2006. He was a professor at the Philipps University of Marburg and director of the Research and Documentation Center for War Crimes Trials there.

He has written books on international criminal law and criminal procedure law (including International Criminal Procedure, Oxford 2012; Internationales Strafrecht, Springer 2011). He is volume editor of the Munich Commentary on International Criminal Law and International Criminal Law. From 2012 to 2017, he was a member of the Independent Scientific Commission at the Federal Ministry of Justice for the Reappraisal of the Nazi Past. (Final report: The Rosenburg File. The Federal Ministry of Justice and the Nazi Era).

From 2017 to 2021, he investigated how the Federal Public Prosecutor General dealt with the Nazi past (Final report: Staatsschutz im Kalten Krieg. The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office between the Nazi past, the Mirror Affair and the RAF). His most recent book analyzes the state of democracy on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (Der Streitfall. Wie die Demokratie nach Deutschland kam und wie wir sie neu beleben müssen, 2024; co-author Friedrich Kießling).