Hans Thieme

| birth_date = 10 August 1906 | birth_place = Naunhof (Leipzig), Saxony, German Empire | death_date = 3 October 2000 | death_place = | occupation = Jurist
Legal historian
University professor | party = | known_for = | alma_mater = Basel
Munich
Berlin
Leipzig | spouse = Ursel Rauch (1912–1997) | father = Karl Thieme (1862-1932) | mother = Jenny Respinger (1879–1944) | children = 5 }}

Hans Thieme (10 August 1906 - 3 October 2000) was a German jurist and legal historian who became a university professor in 1938. His published output was, in aggregate, considerable, although he tended to prefer to present his research conclusions in articles - sometimes lengthy articles - published in learned journals, rather than in textbooks or monographs. Themes on which he focused included legal history in the context of German history, both medieval and modern, along with European humanism, law codifications and (German) Natural Law theory.

Within the universities sector Thieme was widely respected for the excellence of his teaching, reflected in the number of his students who themselves later achieved eminence as university professors and/or legal historians. He came to wider public attention as a result of a letter he wrote to the national news magazine Der Spiegel in 1957, in which he made public the alleged war crimes committed at the time of the Warsaw uprising by former SS commander Heinz Reinefarth, who had been (indirectly) Thieme's commanding officer during the later war years. Reinefarth launched a legal action for insult and defamation against Thieme. The legal action failed, but the West German prosecuting authorities launched an investigation against Reinefarth which lasted several years: the accumulating weight of accusations and suspicion forced the former SS-officer to abandon the post-war political career on which he had by this time embarked. Provided by Wikipedia