Theodor von Reinkingk

Dietrich Reinkingk (in Latin sources Theodor Reinking (10 March 1590 – 15 December 1664) was a German constitutional lawyer and politician, much of whose career was adversely impacted by the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).

He was also an important early contributor to the Reichspublizistik movement, which sought to document and thereby promote and legitimise the constitutional arrangements and processes that operated in the Holy Roman Empire.

Life Dietrich Reinkingk was born in 1590 in Windau (Ventspils), a port city and commercial centre now in Latvia, then in the Duchy of Courland, a vassal duchy of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. His father, Otto Reinkingk, came from a well established Lutheran family of army officers and government officials. His mother, born as Hedewig von Lambsdorf, died in 1603 while Dietrich was still a child. It was also in 1603 that the boy was sent away from home, in order to escape from a plague epidemic. He ended up living with relatives in Osnabrück, where his grandfather had once been an alderman, and which is where he attended secondary school. Soon after this he was working at the Lutheran University of Giessen.

In 1617 Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt had Reinkingk appointed to an associate professorship at the Law Faculty of his new university in Giessen. However, Reinkingk left the faculty in 1618 when he was appointed a "Court Councillor" ("Hofrat") at Giessen. Jus feciale Armatae Daniae. Kopenhagen 1657. Der verjüngte Römische Reichsadler, samt der Macht und Herrlichkeit des Reiches über alle Reiche. Hrsg. Johann Diedrich von Güling. Göttingen 1687

Personal Dietrich Reinkingk married Catharina Pistorius on 3 October 1616. She predeceased him on 24 October 1661, by which time their 45-year marriage had produced 11 recorded children. His second marriage, on 25 February 1663, was to Dorothea, born Dorothea Schiele/Scheele and by now the widow of Johann Vieth (1581-1646). which still (2015) exists.

Writings and teachings The survival of Dietrich Reinkingk's notability is in large part the result of his written work. In the context of what later came to be known as the Reichspublizistik movement, Reinkingk was the most prominent advocate of imperial conservatism. He rejected rationalist contemporary theories that favoured a distancing from Imperial authority. Reinkingk imputed to the old Roman sources of the law a level of authority equal to that of Holy Scripture, eternal theological fundamentals and Lutheran dogma. His legal teaching was influenced by Lutheran ethics and by biblical theology, but tending towards a unified post-confessional constitutional order.

His objective was to preserve the threatened order spelled out in 1555, and to anchor it constitutionally. He savagely dismissed countervailing modern trends: "Modern "Reasons of state" are Reasons of the Devil. God's Laws and observance of them, by contrast, provide the best rationale and preserve the state."