Born in 1937 in Frankfurt am Main, Martin Fincke began – after a brief period studying Russian and American English at the Interpreting Institute of the University of Mainz in Germersheim – to study law in Tübingen in 1958. After spending time at several universities in Germany and abroad, he transferred in 1961 to the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He passed the First State Examination in Law there in 1963. His doctoral thesis, titled Die aufsichtliche Überprüfung rechtskräftiger Strafurteile im Sowjetrecht (“The Supervisory Review of Final Criminal Judgements in Soviet Law”, 1966), and the Second State Examination in Law (1967) also followed in the Bavarian capital. In 1974, after completing his habilitation thesis on Die Begründung der Beschuldigtenstellung im Strafprozeß. Versuch einer Inkulpationslehre (“Establishing the Status of the Accused in Criminal Proceedings: An Attempt at a Theory of Inculpation”), he was granted the venia legendi for criminal law and procedure as well as Eastern European law.
Eastern European law had always been among Martin Fincke’s main research interests. Even at school he had a keen interest in politics, which among other things prompted him to learn Russian. His transfer to the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich was motivated by his wish to continue his studies under Professor Reinhart Maurach, who headed the Institute for Eastern European Law and taught Soviet constitutional law, among other things. Through a seminar on aspects of Eastern European law, Martin Fincke indeed succeeded in becoming one of Reinhart Maurach’s students.
In October 1976, the University of Bielefeld appointed him lecturer and professor, and on 1 August 1978 he became one of the first full professors of the Faculty of Law at the newly founded University of Passau. There, he played a leading role in establishing and expanding contacts with Eastern Europe, in particular with the law faculties of the universities of Odesa (Ukraine) and Krasnoyarsk (Siberia; which appointed him an honorary professor in 1999) as well as the law faculties or legal institutes of the universities of Tomsk, Omsk, Barnaul, Kemerovo and Irkutsk. Since then, countless students, postgraduate researchers and professors have studied, conducted research and taught at the respective partner universities as part of the exchange programmes he helped establish. Many of them successfully completed the LL.M. German Law for Foreign Graduates degree programme in Passau, which Martin Fincke initiated, earning their Master of Laws degree here. Even after his retirement in 2006, Martin Fincke continued to oversee relations with Eastern Europe, thereby contributing significantly to the internationalisation of the University of Passau. It is therefore no surprise that Passau’s subject-specific foreign language programmes, long a hallmark of the University of Passau, are to a large extent his creation.
In 2002, he received an honorary doctorate from St Petersburg State University for his repeated, committed and critical advocacy of legal reform in Russia. In 2003, he received the Award of the Bavarian State Minister for Science, Research and the Arts for outstanding services to the internationalisation of Bavarian universities.
Not least of all, students around the world – and especially those from Passau – will remember Martin Fincke as a dedicated and empathetic university lecturer who always took their interests seriously with a distinctive blend of kindness and rigour and who, despite his eruditeness, cosmopolitan outlook and remarkable linguistic talent, never considered it beneath him to support them in the practical details of legal work – namely, case analysis. He will remain in their fond and honourable remembrance.