Digest Lemon and Lotus Flower

Where do we have to seek the reasons for the study of Roman law acquiring an exclusively historical character and superseding pandectist scholarship so radically and conclusively? Not, at any rate, in the fact of codification as such, for the change of perspective started before the BGB came into effect and it did not happen in the same, or a similar, manner under the codifications preceding the BGB.

It had thus become possible to advance far beyond the standard canon of legal sources dominated by the texts of the Corpus Juris. These texts had by now been scrutinized ever more closely, under doctrinal auspices, for many decades: a process which ultimately resulted in a certain weariness, or even boredom and satiety. These feelings are apparent from many contemporary statements.^[118] Typical for the mood prevailing among the younger generation of scholars, born in the second half of the nineteenth century, is a comment by Otto Gradenwitz: he expressed his delight in having in the person of Ludwig Mitteis such an eminently talented colleague 'who cheerfully distributed a fresh fruit, a lotus flower, while the rest of us were busy extracting from the squeezed-out old Digest lemon, by find­ing different pressure points, a few more drops of liquid'.^[119] There appears to have been an idea that the end of an epoch had been reached. About every famous jurist of the nine­teenth century had set out his views (usually by way of writing a monograph) on the nature of the concept of possession,^[120] the sheer quantity of literature that had been produced since 1827^[121] on the distinction between (simple) solidarity and correality was surpassed only by its absolute barrenness, and many other examples could be mentioned where ever more refined discussions had given rise to 'doctrinal hot-house plants,... to bastards of logic and erudition with law, to unsound lecture-room jurispru­dence'.^[122] The time had come to cut the Gordian knot by means of a decision by the legislature. The services of the legal historian were no longer required, he could now turn his attention to the lotus flowers.

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