German legal scholar, university lecturer, and politician (DDP, DVP) who came from a noted family. Gerland published ten books including a number of monographs and treatises on criminal and procedural law, general jurisprudence, and English law compared to German.
He was the son of geographer Georg Gerland (1833-1919) and his wife Wilhelmine (1838–1885), née Henke. His maternal grandfather was the theologian Ernst Henke (1804-1872), and his paternal grandfather a Kurhessian major general (1795-1861). A brother of his father was the physics historian Anton Gerland, a cousin of the historian Ernst Gerland.
Gerland studied law from 1893 to 1896 at the University of Strasbourg and at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. In 1896 he passed the first state examination in law in Colmar. In 1901 he received his legal doctorate in Strasbourg. A year later he habilitated in Jena for criminal and procedural law. The second state examination in law followed in 1903.
From 1906 he taught as an associate professor at the University of Jena. In 1910 Gerland became a full professor in Jena, and in 1925-1926 served as rector.
After World War I, Gerland helped found the German Democratic Party (DDP), becoming its deputy chairman. In the Reichstag elections of May 1924, Gerland was elected to the Reichstag, where he represented constituency 12 (Thuringia) until December of the same year. In the same year he left the DDP to join the more right-wing German People’s Party (DVP).
After 1933, Gerland was banned from political activity by the National Socialist regime. Immediately after completing his 65th year, he retired on 1 October 1939. During the Second World War he took part in the resistance of the Neubauer-Poser group in Jena. He died on 28 December 1944 in Jena at age 70 a few months before the end of World War II.
Link to Wikipedia biography (German)