Marietta Auer appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board

Here, prominent and influential scholars engage in constructive dialogue: The Scientific Advisory Board of the Foundation for Family Businesses oversees the foundation’s scholarly work, provides input, and sparks debates—and in the future, it will also benefit from the strong voice of Marietta Auer (53), professor of legal history and legal theory at the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt.

Photo © Max Planck Institute for the History and Theory of Law / Sandra Hauer

Munich, July 31, 2026. The significance of family businesses in Germany and the specific conditions they need to succeed are now the subject of extensive academic research and have garnered significant attention in the media, society, and politics—a testament to the work of the Foundation for Family Businesses, established nearly 25 years ago to promote academic research.

For the past 12 years, the foundation has had a Scientific Advisory Board composed of distinguished economists and legal scholars who meet regularly and also contribute their own research. Effective August 1, 2026, the Advisory Board has now appointed Professor Marietta Auer as a new member.

The members look forward to engaging with Professor Auer, who is not only one of the most significant legal theorists but also has a broad range of interests—with impressive expertise in many economic and sociopolitical topics.

Versatile and a recipient of numerous awards

Marietta Auer is from Munich. She studied law, philosophy, and sociology in Munich and at Harvard, earned doctorates at both institutions, and was admitted to the bar in New York in 2001. From 2013 to 2020, she was a professor of civil law and legal philosophy at the University of Giessen, serving as dean from 2016 to 2019.

Since 2020, she has been Director at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt, while continuing to teach in Giessen. The professor has received numerous awards for her research and teaching, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation in 2022. She was also a Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study Berlin).