Academic literature on the topic 'Draft – Germany – Prussia'

In 1762 and 1763, manifestos were issued by Catherine II, and later were extended further by her son Paul I, inviting foreign artisans and others to settle in far-flung rural areas of the Russian Empire in order to help strengthen the economy. Under a policy somewhat similar to the later US Homestead Act, under the manifestos German and other foreign-national settlers and their descendants were offered Russian citizenship, land ownership after three years, religious tolerance (including, in the case of Germans, German clergy and German-language churches), and exemption from the military draft—although by the end of the nineteenth century the last of these had been rescinded. The call was not restricted to Germans, but Germans comprised the largest group to take advantage of it, settling for the most part in Ukraine, Bessarabia, and the mid-Volga region. Those who participated in the migration, known as the Auswanderung, and their descendants are often referred to in English as “Russian Germans” or “Germans from Russia” (rossiiskie nemtsy). A second wave of German immigration occurred in 1894, when some Germans who had settled in Prussia moved across the border into Russia. By 1897, there were over 2 million German immigrants and descendants in the Russian Empire.

The author of this article analyzes the process of codificaton of private law (civil law and commercial law) in the light of the thought of Andrés Bello (1781–1865), the humanist thinker and expert of codification in Chile. The intellectual background of Andrés Bello, born in Venezuela, comprised history, philosophy, linguistics, literature, mainly poetry, education as well as law. It also deserves to be mentioned that Bello was the first rector of the State University of Chile founded in 1842. According to the idea of Andrés Bello Roman law (ius Romanum or ius civile) constituted the background of legal education as well as the primary source of the codification of private law in Chile. The author of the study points out that Bello had no legal education. In the field of philosophy he was substantially influenced by the scholastic tradition. In his works he put special emphasis on morality in compliance with the plurisecular tradition deeply rooted in natural law (derecho natural). This article provides also an insight into the partial influence of the German Historical School of Law (Historische Rechtsschule) on the law related ideas of Andrés Bello. The author emphasizes the decisive influence of Johann Gottlieb Heineccius on Andrés Bello. Andrés Bello was regarded as a major authority regarding his principles of international public law both in Europe and in most countries of Latin America. He spent 19 years in the United Kingdom, in London. His work Principios de Derecho de Gentes, published in 1832 was with no doubt fundamental in particular as far as sovereignty of State was concerned. Andrés Bello was a committed advocate of the Solidaridad americana pointing out the specific features i.e. characteristics of the Spanish speaking states in America. In the field of the codification of private law (civil law and commercial law) in Chile the role of Andrés Bello was determinant. The first step towards codification was the consolidation of the law of the country. The process of consolidation ended in 1833 when the first constitution of Chile was promulgated and came into effect. During the second period, encompassing the period between 1834 and 1838, Andrés Bello took into consideration the French Civil Code, the Austrian General Civil Code and the Civil Code of canton Bern (Switzerland) prepared by Samuel Ludwig Schnell. During the third period (from 1838 through 1849) Andrés Bello contemplated the structure and the contents of the draft Civil Code of Chile. It has to be notes that on the territory of Chile several compilations, namely the Breviarium Alaricianum, the Fuero Juzgo, the Fuero Real, the Siete Partidas, as well as the Ordenamiento de Alcalá were implemented. Moreover, the Nueva Recopilación, promulgated in 1567, the Recopilación de las Leyes de las Indias, promulgated in 1680 as well as the Novísima Recopilación, promulgated in 1805 were in effect. The author of the article emphasizes that the Civil Code of Chile prepared by Andrés Bello influenced the codification of civil law in most countries of Latin America. Therefore, as the author puts it, Andrés Bello can be regarded as a ‘father of codification of civil law’ in Latin America. The Civil Code of Chile was completed in 1855 and promulgated by the National Congress in the following year. The Civil Code of Andrés Bello came into effect in 1857. The Code is still in effect, with minor amendments i.e. modifications. The Civil Code of Chile follows partly the French Civil Code. However, the Código de la República de Chile, albeit does not contain a General Part (parte general), differs from the French model regarding its structure. Compiling the Code, Andrés Bello took into consideration the Spanish legal dogmatics based mainly on Roman law traditions (acervo jurídico romano). He also availed himself of the doctrine developed by the representatives of the German Pandectist Legal Science with particular regard to the thoughts of Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779–1861). Several legal institutions regulated in the text of the Civil Code of Chile testifies the influence of the works of Jean Domat (1625–1696), Robert-Joseph Pothier (1699–1772), Merlin, Favard de Langlande, Jean-Etienne-Marie Portalis ((1745–1807), Raymond Théodore Troplong, Pardessus and Carl Salomo Zachariae von Lingenthal (1769–1843). Andrés Bello took into consideration first of all the French Civil Code, the Austrian General Civil Code (Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, ABGB), the Louisiana Civil Code, the Prussian General Land Code (Allgememeines Landrecht) as well as the Dutch Civil Code (Burgerlijk Wetboek), promulgated in 1838. In the last part of his study the author emphasizes that the Civil Code of Chile does not contain a General Part (Parte General). The structure of the Civil Code of Chile is as follows: the Preliminary Title (Titulo preliminar), containing general dispositions, the Law of Persons, the Rights In Rem, The Law of Succession (Law of Inheritance) and the Law of Contractual Obligations.

Defence date: 9 December 2002
Examining board: Prof. Étienne Balibar, Université Paris-X, Nanterre ; Prof. Peter Becker, European University Institute, Florence ; Prof. Annie Crépin, Université d'Artois, Arras ; Prof. Bo Stråth, European University Institute, Florence (Supervisor)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017
Le service militaire obligatoire repose sur une contradiction. En tant que mode privilégié de la participation du citoyen aux affaires de la cité, il est à la fois élément et garant de sa liberté politique. En tant qu'institution disciplinaire, il le soumet à un système coercitif et l'isole de la société civile. La nationalisation de la force armée par la conscription introduit donc une tension irréductible entre citoyenneté et discipline, et pose concrètement le problème de la liberté politique. Egalitaire dans son principe, le service militaire ne concerne pourtant que la frange masculine de la population, l'absence des femmes dans l'armée répondant à leur exclusion des droits civiques. L'universalité de l'obligation se trouve par ailleurs contrecarrée par les stratégies de certains groupes sociaux pour négocier des conditions favorables. Plutôt que d'opposer le modèle de conscription républicaine à la française au militarisme prussien, cet ouvrage s'attache à montrer comment la Prusse a répondu de manière dialectique à l'institution révolutionnaire de la violence de masse. La Révolution française et la Réforme prussienne sont ainsi appréhendées comme deux moments d'un processus intrinsèquement transnational. Cet ouvrage entend mettre à l'épreuve de l'Histoire le problème politique tel que l'ont formulé Rousseau et Kant, en s'appuyant sur des sources officielles, des autobiographies, lettres, chansons, conçues comme des articulations subjectives de la modernité politique.

Bismarck’s struggle against political Catholicism and dissatisfaction with the supervision of the schools in the Polish-speaking areas of Prussia propelled the school administration on to a new course after 1870. His choice of Adalbert Falk brought to the head of the Ministry of Education on January 22, 1872 a judicial official who was philosophically close to the National Liberal party. During his seven years in office, Falk broke with the practices followed by his predecessors and introduced measures to dissolve the traditional bonds between the church and the school. The objectives of the school reforms were to professionalize school supervision by the appointment of full-time school inspectors in place of the clergy, to weaken the church’s influence in the school system by curtailing its right to direct the instruction of religion, and to merge Catholic and Protestant public schools into interconfessional schools, providing an education that would dissolve religious particularism and cultivate German national consciousness and patriotic feeling. These innovations thrust school politics into the foreground of the Kulturkampf in Prussia. School affairs became a matter of high politics for Bismarck when groups whom he regarded as enemies of the German Empire coalesced into a Catholic political party in 1870. Opposition in the Catholic Rhineland to Prussia’s aggressive war against Austria in 1866 led him to question the political loyalty of the Catholics, and the political behavior of the Catholics after the founding of the North German Confederation confirmed his suspicion. While the Polish faction in the Reichstag of 1867 protested the absorption of Polish Prussia into a German confederation, other Catholic deputies took up the defense of federalism and criticized those articles in Bismarck’s draft of the constitution that created too strong a central government. In the final vote the Catholics formed part of the minority that rejected the constitution. This act reinforced his image of political Catholicism as an intransigent and unpatriotic opposition. The organization of the Center party was a defensive response to the vulnerable position of the Catholic minority in the new empire, which had a political climate of liberal anticlericalism and Protestant nationalist euphoria that seemed to threaten the rights and interests of the Catholic church.

More than half a century passed before the promise of a school law contained in the Prussian constitution of 1850 was fulfilled. The dissatisfaction of the Catholic bishops with Adalbert von Ladenberg’s draft of a school law in 1850 and the unhappy fate of Heinrich von Mühler’s school bills of 1868 and 1869 revealed the deep division of opinion within Prussian society on the school question and the conflicting interpretations that state officials, church leaders, and the liberal parties gave to those articles in the constitution that provided the fundamental principles for a school law. The experience of the Kulturkampf engendered in the Catholics an enduring distrust of the school administration, and in the following years a school law was always one of the prime concessions that the Center party sought as a quid pro quo for their support of government bills in the Reichstag. Catholic politicians looked to a school law to provide a secure foundation for a confessional public school system and solid protection for the rights of the church and confessional minorities in school districts. The possibilities of winning such a concession were enhanced after 1890 when the massive electoral vote of the Social Democrats increased the strategic value of the Center party’s seats in the Reichstag, which now held the balance between the Left and the Right. Assuming that this pivotal position gave the Center party more political power than it actually had, historians have generally seen the School Law of July 28, 1906 as a reactionary, Clerical measure, which was introduced by the government as a concession to the Center party and passed by a coalition of parties strongly motivated by antisocialism.1 An examination of the making of the school law from 1890 to 1906 produces a more detailed and complete picture of what happened and a more profound view of the society of imperial Germany. No progress was made in putting the school system on a modern legal foundation during the 1880s because of Bismarck’s political objections to the reform of school maintenance.