Rudolf Smend --"the Elder"-- was a German theologian born in Lengerich, Westphalia. He was an older brother to theologian Julius Smend (1857–1930), and the father of Carl Friedrich Rudolf Smend (1882–1975), an authority on constitutional and ecclesiastical law, and the grandfather of noted Old Testament historian Rudolf Smend who spent his life at the University of Goettingen as one of two chairs of Old Testament (1971-1998).
