THE CIVIL CODE BECOMES LAW

Germanist criticism eventually proved of no avail against the promulgation of the German Civil Code, not even, as we have

¹¹ Published in the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, vol.

¹² See on all this the detailed analysis by M. Reimann, �?“In such forests liberty was nurtured”. Von den germanischen Wurzeln der anglo-amerikanischen Freiheit’, in G. Kobler and H. Nehlsen (eds.), Wirkungen europaischer Rechtskultur Festschriftfur Karl Kroeschell (Munich, 1997), 933—51. seen, the protest by Otto von Gierke. The process of codifica­tion had begun in ι 874, barely three years after the proclama­tion of the second Reich. By ι 888 a first draft was ready in the Reichstag, but it was criticized for being too professorial. It was indeed heavily indebted to Roman law in the guise of the Pandectists, led by Bernhard Windscheid, who taught at Leipzig from 1874 to his death in ι 892 and was a prominent member of the first Commission for the Civil Code from 1874 to 1883 (some critics called its project the �?little Windscheid'). However, when the Code was finally passed by the German Parliament in i 896, it appeared not to differ substantially from the initial draft. Generally speaking the Code was most strongly supported by learned jurists, the top officials in the Department of Justice and the industrialists, who liked its bias towards the freedom of contract. Its technical qualities were undeniable but, unlike the Code civil, it was a learned code for learned judges and lawyers and not meant to be bought in pocket-sized editions by masses of enthusiastic citizens (as had been the case in France in i 804). The only consistent opposition in the Reichstag had come from the social democrats. Their attitude had been not obstructionist but constructive, as they had proposed ninety-four amendments, mostly based on Gierke's ideas. They failed, however, to get any of their main objectives on to the statute book.^[123] The German Civil Code, effective in the last year of the nineteenth century, was the result of opposing political convictions and scientific arguments.^[124]