The Making of a German Constitution A Slow Revolution [Hardcover]

The Making of a German Constitution is one of the first books to explore the important place of the theory and practice of private law (civil law) in the transformation of Modern Germany's fin-de-si?cle constitutional arrangements. Reading sources from early nineteenth-century private law scholarship, the book offers a thought-provoking and novel understanding of German political development. The author argues that the German idea of sovereignty grew out of a dual conception of law not only as the product of socio-political transformation, but also as a means to it. In the short term, a modern social and political system in Germany was attained through non-violent means and the domestic authority of the Kaiser was severely limited by law. However, the exclusive bourgeois socio-political arrangements that were installed in this era led to considerable discontent in German society, particularly with regard to gender and class tensions. The slow B?rgerliche Revolution thus contributed to the traumatic ruptures that mark German history in the first third of the twentieth century.

Introduction: Transforming the Reich: Toward a New Political History of Modern Germany * Prelude to Modern Germany: Iurisdictio and the German Idea of Sovereignty * Toward a Modern Nation: Friedrich Karl von Savigny and the Growth of Modern Legal Politics * Images of the Gemeinwesen: The Germanists and the Growth of German Customary Law Constitutionalism * Undermining Absolutism: The Path of Legalism and Constituting the Nation 1848-1879 * A Century of Promise: Eheliches G?terrecht, Women's Wealth and Independence in Nineteenth Century Germany * The Last Bastion: The B?rgerliches Gesetzbuch and the Transformation of German Society * Discontent in the B?rgerliche Republic: Exclusion and Popular Resentment 1900-1933 * Conclusion: The German Idea of Revolution: Some Final Thoughts

Reconnecting the socio-political history of modern Germany with legal history, Crosby offers an extraordinl#-