Why is Socrates suitable as a guarantor for a professional oath for teachers?

It may come as a surprise that Hartmut von Hentig, when he first published the Socratic Oath in 1991, did not give any reasons for choosing Socrates as the guarantor of his reflections. ¹ A look at his biography gives an idea of why: As an ancient coin philologist, Hartmut von Hentig knew Greek antiquity in detail, and after almost thirty years as a professor in Göttingen (Germany), it was apparently more than natural for him to choose Socrates. ²