Claas Friedrich Germelmann was born in Berlin, Germany. He studied law at the Freie Universität Berlin from 1998 to 2003, specialising in European Union and public international law. After his first state examination, he took part in the LL.M. programme at the University of Cambridge being a member of Queens‘ College. From 2004 to 2006, he returned to Berlin for his professional training (Referendariat) at the Higher Regional Court of the Land of Berlin (Kammergericht). From 2003 to 2006, he was a research assistant and assistant lecturer at the Freie Universität Berlin.
From 2006 to 2008, he did his doctorate at the Freie Universität Berlin under the supervision of Professor Dr. Helmut Lecheler and was awarded the Dr. iur. His PhD thesis deals with the principle of res judicata in European Union law based on a comparative study of the corresponding German, English and French principles. In 2008, Claas Friedrich Germelmann took up the post of a research fellow and assistant professor at the University of Bayreuth with teaching responsibilities in European Union law, public international law and German constitutional law. From 2008 to 2012, he worked on his Habilitation, the German qualification for a teaching career in higher education, which was supervised by Professor Dr. Jörg Gundel. In 2012, Claas Friedrich Germelmann was awarded the venia legendi (formal authorisation to teach in university education) for German constitutional and administrative law, European law, public international law and comparative law.
In his Habilitation thesis, he deals with German cultural law from a constitutional and administrative law perspective. From 2012 to 2014, he served as a substitute professor at different German universities. In 2014, he was appointed full professor of public law and European law at the Leibniz Universität Hannover. Since 2014, he has also been the managing director of the Institute of International Law at the University of Hannover. Since 2017, he has been responsible for the international relations and the external exchange programmes of the Law Faculty, particularly for the LL.M. programme “European Legal Practise (LL.M. Joint Degree)”. He is also the representative of Hanover in the international ELPIS network. Claas Friedrich Germelmann’s research interests lie in the fields of German constitutional law with questions of federalism and cultural law, in the area of European Union law with its relationship to the legal orders of the member states, as well as in public international law, specifically international trade and investment law. He furthermore specialises in German, European and international energy law. He is currently teaching European Union law, energy and regulatory l
