Professor Rolf Knieper - a university lecturer within the Faculty of Law at the University of Bremen until 2006 - has been awarded the Gold Medal of Tbilisi State University. This is the highest award that the university in the Georgian capital can bestow.
Rolf Knieper was awarded an honorary doctorate from Tbilisi State University in 2002. He has now received the Gold Medal for his "outstanding contribution to the development of the modern law of the independent Georgian state and the Georgian Civil Code, as well as for the introduction of European values in Georgian law," according to the award certificate.
Lado Chanturia, former ambassador of Georgia to Germany, presented the medal to Knieper. Chanturia now works as a judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg and is still a professor at Tbilisi State University.
The renewed honor for Knieper is no coincidence. The internationally renowned professor of civil and commercial law is highly respected, especially in numerous states of the former Soviet Union. There, he has rendered great services in the development of civil and economic legislation.
Numerous Awards for His Work
This commitment has been recognized many times: in 2002, he was also awarded an honorary doctorate from Moldova State University. In 2004, Knieper was awarded the title of honorary professor by the Kazakh University of Humanities and Law in Almaty. Another two years later, the Bremen legal scholar was awarded the Symbol Medal by the Minister of Justice of the Republic of Azerbaijan. This honor was in recognition of his support for legal and judicial reform in Azerbaijan.
With his decades of advisory work in establishing constitutional and judicial systems based on the rule of law in many parts of the world - including on behalf of the World Bank, the “Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit,” and the Foundation for International Legal Cooperation - the legal scholar made an invaluable contribution to Germany's cooperation with many other states around the world. For this, he was awarded the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2006 by the then Federal Minister of Justice Brigitte Zypries.
