Franz Exner (criminologist)

Franz Exner (9 August 1881 - 1 October 1947) was an Austrian-German criminologist and criminal lawyer. Alongside Edmund Mezger, Hans von Hentig and Gustav Aschaffenburg, he was a leading and in some respects a pioneering representative of the German school of criminology (which at that time tended to treat criminology as a branch of Jurisprudence, rather than as a branch of the Social sciences) in the first half of the twentieth century. During the 1920s and 1930s Exner produced pioneering work on the interface between Criminology and Sociology. He became a controversial figure among subsequent generations because of the extent to which during the 1930s and 1940s his ideas evolved towards National Socialist ideology, notably with regard to so-called "criminal biology", which, by more recent criteria imputed excessive weight to the role of hereditary factors (as opposed to environmental influences and pressures) as causes of criminal actions.