Tbilisi, May 28, 2025
Dear Professors Heger, Heinrich, Alwart, and Schramm:
We are writing to formally request that you return your honorary doctorates of Tbilisi State University (TSU). These aren’t doctorates of honor. They are symbols of a misguided engagement amidst an all-out assault on the rule of law in Georgia. You stand near complicity to this assault.
When they received their honorary doctorates, Professors Martin Heger (HU Berlin) and Bernd Heinrich (Tübingen) knew that one of their main hosts, ruling party politician Anri Okhanashvili, had a proclivity for violence. Professor Heger: you had been informed about a physical assault by your former doctoral student on a member of the opposition in April 2023. A few months later, you nevertheless both came for an event which your hosts instrumentalized on Facebook and on the website of the Georgian Parliament.
You never distanced yourself from the repressive assault of the Georgian Dream regime, to which you had contributed by advising on the supposed reform of the code of administrative offenses, under Anri Okhanashvili’s leadership. This code has now been used to harass peaceful protesters, including some of us signatories. When challenged on your proximity to the perpetrators, you reacted with outrage as if you were victims, rather than professionals bound to consider ethical standards.
Professor Heiner Alwart (Jena): you stand in implication also. In a Festschrift published in December 2024, a time that saw women journalists viciously torn to the ground by state-sponsored criminals (Peter Fischer, the German Ambassador: “attacking and harming the media and others by gangs of bandits is unacceptable”), you published a laudatory piece to Merab Turava, one of Georgia’s most prominent judges and then Chair of the Constitutional Court. Here is the key quote: “One could always rely one hundred percent on Turava, his professional voice, his humanitarian wisdom and warmth, his humor, as well as his natural authority.”
You must have known that Turava was no figure of integrity. When you wished that in the future he would “be able to keep at a distance any attempts at unconstitutional political influence on impartial legal practice”, you omitted that as a judge he had not once challenged the repression and massive vote-rigging of the Georgian Dream. Turava, the doyen of regime-aligned lawyers, has also been reprimanded for poor professional conduct by the European Court of Human Rights.
In fact, the person you praised plays a key role in dismantling democracy, as the Georgian Dream recently said it would ask the Constitutional Court to ban opposition parties. The regime asserted this undertaking with confidence as Turava, known to be polite to the point of servility, has turned the country’s most important court into an eager tool of authoritarian designs.
If this wasn’t grim enough, Professor Edward Schramm (Jena) added to the awful spectacle by accepting an honorary doctorate from TSU just a few weeks ago, on March 25, on a trip funded by German taxpayers. Professor Schramm: the word incongruous cedes to grotesque to best describe that you were celebrated for your work on human rights by the faculty that supplies the lawyers supervising mistreatment bordering on torture. (Human Rights Watch: “The level of the authorities’ violence against largely peaceful protesters is shocking, blatantly retaliatory, and violates Georgia’s domestic laws and international norms.”) Several students of TSU, including a 19-year old from that very faculty, are sitting in jail threatened with multi-year sentences under flimsy allegations while you stood in a festive gown.
In the group photos, again advertised by TSU, you stand right next to Turava. You must be aware that Turava has been sanctioned by an EU country for gross human rights violations. You are merely an arms’ length away from a Deputy Minister of Justice driving legislation that has been condemned by practically all major human rights organizations.
All four of you are prominently listed as editors of a journal, the Deutsch-Georgische Strafrechtszeitschrift, the German-Georgian Journal for Criminal Law (https://www.dgstz.de/). The nepotistic character of that venture, headed by a rogue’s gallery of Georgian jurists including Anri Okhanashvili, until recently the Minister of Justice and now appointed to head Georgia’s KGB, is widely known. Okhanashvili’s wife runs the journal. You tarnish the reputation of German legal scholarship by continuing to lend your names to this cooperation.
It remains legitimate to work with people in imperfect democracies or even authoritarian systems, as long as some good faith effort at genuine scholarship is in place. There can be tricky trade-offs. By plausible standards, however, it is patently not acceptable to go on supporting people who take apart the institutions that they are tasked with guarding.
The return of the honorary doctorates will be a reassertion of a basic norm, though it will not undo the damage you have already wrought. You should have acted in April 2023, when several of you were addressed and when Georgia’s de-democratization was discernible. In May 2024, you disparaged another public appeal sent to you by dozens of Georgians, including former ministers, ambassadors, and respected scholars. That you missed these chances is not an excuse for inaction now.
Especially in the wake of Rolf Hochhuth and Furchtbare Juristen, there has been significant introspection on what lawyers in Germany’s past have done under various forms of duress. That appears to have obscured the more immediate question of what some German lawyers continue to do of their own free will right now. A rudimentary concept of justice is broken if a law professor decides to characterize Turava as someone that “one could always rely one hundred percent on” (Alwart, cited above). Any decent person knows these are not the words to describe a judge who fails to defend the rule of law.
What happened in Georgia, with German-trained lawyers as the chief perpetrators of a coup (as Prime Minister; Chair of Parliament; Minister of Justice and more, see Reinhard Veser: Wie die Deutschen Doktoren von Tiflis die Demokratie zerstören, FAZ, June 2024), is a debâcle of staggering magnitude. To highlight just one small part: over the years, Merab Turava and his family received close to half a million Euro in funding from German taxpayers, in the vain hope that he would champion the rule of law. It was optimistic to believe he would develop a moral compass when too many German professors cannot seem to find theirs.
Collegiality should never extend to covering for complicity. For that reason this is an occasion to commend the integrity of Professor Otto Luchterhand who in May 2024 had urged his former student, then Minister of Justice, to reconsider what he was doing. Rati Bregadze left government a few months later, and while still broadly aligned, at least deserves recognition for not serving as an active perpetrator, and for telling various people that he is relieved to no longer be involved. Earlier this year, Donald Rayfield, a British historian with decades of distinguished scholarship on Georgia, publicly refused to accept a ruling-party sponsored award.
We realize this is not a charming letter. As it goes, these aren’t friendly times. When good people – among others, the German ambassador, who has conducted himself with great integrity – are under assault, we should help them and not the perpetrators. This is why you must now return the honorary doctorates and resign from the board of the DGStZ. Otherwise, this has to become an even more public issue in your institutions and beyond.
It is likely that some of us will face retribution by the Georgian Dream regime for signing this letter, which is why we had to write it. At a time like this, people should speak up if they want to retain a measure of self-respect.
Sincerely,
[in chronological order]
Dr. Hans Gutbrod, Professor, Ilia State University, Tbilisi
George Melashvili, Lecturer of International Relations, Free University, Tbilisi
Dr. Zaal Andronikashvili, Researcher at Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung; Berlin, Professor, Ilia State University, Tbilisi
Zaza Bibilashvili, Senior Partner, BGI Legal; Chairman, Ilia Chavchavadze Center for European Studies and Civic Education
Dr. Beka Kobakhidze, Professor, Ilia State University, Tbilisi
Dr. Tornike Metreveli, Docent (Associate Professor) in Sociology of Religions, Lund University, Sweden
Davit Zedelashvili, Research Fellow and professorial Lecturer, University of Georgia, School of Law, Research Institute Gnomon Wise
Dr. Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne, Social Anthropologist
Ana Khurtsidze, Dean of Law School of the University of Georgia, President of the Research Institute – Gnomon Wise,
Dr. Giorgi Astamadze, PhD in History from the University of Karlsruhe (KIT) and Invited Lecturer at Ilia State University (Georgia)
Ted Jonas, JD Cornell (1991), International Business and Environmental lawyer, Tbilisi Dr. Anna Dolidze, SJD (Cornell)
Dr. Mamuka Andguladze (Saarland University), Professor at Caucasus University
Dr. Oliver Reisner, Professor in European and Caucasian Studies, Ilia State University Tbilisi
Lasha Bughadze, writer
Tamar Gurchiani, Associate Professor, Ilia State University School of Law
Dr. Nodar Ladaria (Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, Rome, Italy), Professor at Ilia State University, Tbilisi
Nona Tsotsoria, former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights
Dr. Ketevan Gurchiani, Professor of Anthropology, Ilia State University, Tbilisi Dr. Malkhaz Saldadze, Assistant Professor, George Mason University Korea
Dr. Malkhaz Nakashidze, Professor, Jean Monnet Chair, Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University, Georgia
Tengiz Kirtadze, Lawyer, Freiburg i. B., Germany Hubertus Jahn, MA, PhD, Dr. phil.habil.
Professor em. of the History of Russia and the Caucasus, University of Cambridge
Fellow, Clare College, Cambridge
Chair, Friends of Academic Research in Georgia (FaRiG) Dr. Sergi Kapanadze, Professor, Ilia State University
Clement Girardot, freelance journalist, France [deported from Georgia February 2025]
Dr. Kornely Kakachia, Professor of political science, Jean Monnet Chair, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University
Lia Tsuladze, Associate Professor of Sociology, Tbilisi State University
Dr. Tamar Tsopurashvili (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Professor at Ilia State University Giorgi Mshvenieradze, Assistant Professor, Free University of Tbilisi
Ambassador Gigi Gigiadze, Senior Fellow at the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC)
Giorgi Meladze, Associate Professor of Public Law, Ilia State University
Ambassador Giorgi Badridze, Senior Fellow, Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies,
Expert, Research
Ghia Nodia, Professor, Ilia State University
Aaron Erlich, Associate Professor of Political Science, Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, McGill University
Ambassador Mamuka Kudava, previously at Georgian Embassy to France
Sandro (Vasil) Bibilashvili, LLM (Duke Law School, 2011), Partner, BGI Legal; Lecturer, Free University of Tbilisi
Lia Abuladze, Dr., Lecturer, University of Muenster
Giorgi Kldiashvili, Director, Institute for the Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), Tbilisi
Gerald Knaus, Chairman, European Stability Initiative (ESI)
Professor Stephen Jones, founder of the Program on Georgian Studies, Davis Center, Harvard University. Professor of Modern History, Ilia State University
Irakli Kordzahkia, Attorney of Law, Member of the Group of Independent Lawyers
Tamara Laliashvili, Member of the Group of Independent Lawyers; former Judge of the Supreme Court of Georgia; Professor, New Vision University
Irakli Porchkhidze, Associate Professor, Ilia State University
Maia Otarashvili, Director of the Eurasia Program, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia
Dr. Iago Kachkachishvili, Professor, Department of Sociology and Social Work at the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU), Georgia; head of the “Institute of Social Studies and Analysis” (ISSA)
Dr. Elguja Khokrishvili, Non-resident Fellow at the Georgian Institute for Politics (GIP) Non-resident Fellow at the International School of Economics at TSU (ISET), earlier Ambassador of Georgia to Germany
Dr. Stefan Applis, Professor, Department of Philosophy at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg
Dr. Beril Ocaklı, Senior Researcher, University of Vienna, Austria
Dr. Lasha Bakradze, Professor, Ilia State University, previous Director Giorgi Leonidze National Museum of Georgian Literature, Tbilisi, Georgia
