NATIONAL FEELINGS
No matter how strongly scholars disagreed about the merits of native vs. Roman law, their contest would not have been so draÂmatic if other, unacademic, i.e. political, considerations had not been involved.
The quarrel was so violent because it concerned political feelings. It was all about the very touchy issue of naÂtional against foreign law: what could have been more burning in the young, proud nation state? National pride, the ethnic inÂterpretation of history and the romantic Volksgeist theory formed a potent current from the late eighteenth century onwards. It was opposed to the rational cosmopolitanism of the EnlightenÂment. Moser, Herder and Hegel come to mind in Germany, and in France Montesquieu believed that the French aristocracy, to which he belonged, descended from superior Frankish warriors, whereas the peasants proceeded from the vanquished inhabiÂtants of Roman Gaul. And although the gemeines Recht had been predominant in Germany for a long time, the old native tradition was far from extinct, particularly in Saxony, an ancient princiÂpality which became a kingdom in Napoleonic times: Saxon law was partially accepted as a subsidiary norm (gemeines Sachsenrecht) right up to the BUrgerliches Gesetzbuch.[120] So both camps could legitimately appeal to the past.
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