Religion and the Drafting of the Saxonian Civil Code

The materials of the Saxonian Civil Code of 1863/65 reveal an intensive debate about the importance of religion for private law. The Institutes for Legal History at Freiburg and Heidelberg University will fully publish these materials. The drafting of the provisions for matrimonial law shows the substantive infl uence of the Lutheran Evangelical Church. Large parts of the fi nal version of the matrimonial law in the Saxonian Civil Code were based on the ecclesiastical law of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The Civil Code also included special deviations from the Evangelical Lutheran law for Catholics and Jews. The Saxonian lawmaker chose a hybrid solution for matrimonial law: ecclesiastical law in the shell of civilian law. Such a solution was anachronistic since many particular laws in the German Confederacy had already introduced civil marriage to a certain degree. The most outdated Saxonian provision was the prohibition of matrimony between Christians and Jews. The Saxonian Act on Dissidents (1870) and the German Personal Status Act (1875) soon introduced civil marriage also in Saxony and eliminated almost all religious provisions in the Saxonian Civil Code.

the constitutional level to gain collective religious freedom.In opposition to this limited institutional protection of religious communities, section 32 of the Constitution granted personal religious freedom to every citizen irrespective of denomination or religion.Section 33 of the Constitution added that members of approved Christian communities had the same rights in the political sphere and in private law.Members of other Christian communities or other religions could obtain such rights only through special statutes.
In reality, nearly all Saxonians were members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which was the prototype of an approved Christian community.Only a small minority, 3%, of the Saxonian population had another denomination or religion.The Roman Catholic Church was the most important minority with 28,000 members in 1864. 2 It had also obtained the status of an approved Christian community.The Roman Catholic Church was organised in the Apostolic Vicariat of the Saxonian hereditary lands and in the Apostolic Prefecture of Meißen for Lusatia.After the Principal Conclusion of the Extraordinary Imperial Delegation (Reichsdeputationshauptschluss) in 1803, Saxony gained administrative control over the Catholic Church in its territory.The state also approved the Reformed Church and the German Catholics (Deutschkatholiken), which had very few members.Amongst other, non-approved Christian communities were Methodists and Baptists.Judaism had even fewer members -3,346 in 1871. 3The Constitution excluded Judaism from the circle of the approved Christian communities, but several statutes of which the fi rst was in 1849 granted the Jews the same rights as Christians. 4 In other words, Judaism became a second category of approved religious community.

III. Saxonian Civil Code: Genesis and public sources
Before the German Civil Code of 1896 entered into force in 1900, the Civil Code for the Kingdom of Saxony was the only modern codifi cation of private law in the territory of the present Federal Republic of Germany.Other states of the German Confederation -Prussia (1842), Darmstadt-Hesse (1842-1853) and Bavaria (last attempt 1861-1864) -failed to push their drafts on private law to the fi nal stage. 5Saxony was an exception.King Johann (1801-1873) and the contemporary Ministers of Justice Johann August Heinrich von Behr (1793-1871) and Ferdinand von Zschinsky (1797-1858) supported the project much more strongly. 62 Ibidem, p. 84. 3 Ibidem,p. 91 Frank L. Schäfer The Saxonian lawyer Gustav Friedrich Held (1804-1857), temporarily Minister of Justice in early 1849, delivered a fi rst draft in 1852. 7The draft consisted of 2,180 paragraphs and resembled in many aspects the General Civil Code of 1811/12 for Austria.Beside some so-called motives from the following year, little is known about the commission assisting Held and his method of drafting. 8Since the public and scholarly commentators heavily criticised the draft from 1853 on, 9 the entire project came close to failing.
That the Saxonian government made another attempt at all was a huge political success.The government summoned a commission to revise the fi rst draft at the end of 1855.Friedrich Albert von Langenn (1798-1868), President of the Upper Court of Appeal (Oberappellationsgericht), 10 presided over the revision commission, which held 245 sessions from 24 January 1856 to 24 May 1860.Eduard Siebenhaar, judge at the Upper Appellate Court, was appointed as referent and acted de facto as the editor of the code from the special parts of obligations on, 11 after Held died in April 1857 during the very early sessions of the revision commission.Siebenhaarʼs performance was so outstanding that the Saxonian Ministry of Justice appointed him to the commission of the Dresden draft of the law of obligation later.The small Thuringian states sent Friedrich Ortloff (1797-1868) and Karl Friedrich Ferdinand Sintenis (1804-1868) as prominent delegates.Both jurists were presidents of Upper Courts of Appeal and former law professors. 12An editorial commission supported the revision commission in 83 sessions from 31 May 1856 to 3 April 1860 in order to polish the system and wording of the Civil Code.The eff ort resulted in a second draft in the autumn of 1860. 13In the offi cial commentary on the draft, the so-called motives off ered only a short text, insuffi cient for understanding the new code. 14After a moderate parliamentary debate in 1861, which did not challenge the foundations of the project, the Civil Code was published on 2 January 1863.It came into force two years later, on 1 March 1865.
The new code governed relationships in private law in Saxony until the German Civil Code unifi ed the legal landscape and superseded the local code as national law in 1900.The smaller Thuringian states never introduced the code of 1863, although they had sent infl uential representatives into the Saxonian revision commission -such as Ortloff , who shaped the text of the general part of the law obligations in the code.It is also interesting to know that Siebenhaar published a private commentary on the Saxonian Civil Code, which for the most part echoed the unpublished protocols and the public motives.15

IV. Saxonian Civil Code: Edition
Members of the Institute for Historical Legal Scholarship at Heidelberg University (Christian Hattenhauer) and the Institute for Legal History and Comparative Legal History at Freiburg University (Frank Schäfer) will publish the complete material on the Saxonian Code in 2018.The project started in spring 2008.The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) supports the project under the title "edition of the material on the Saxonian Civil Code of 1863/65" (Edition der Materialien zum sächsischen BGB von 1863/65).The edition will contain all published and unpublished materials and nearly all literature on the code from 1852 to 1865.It starts with the text's fi rst draft from 1852 and stops with Siebenhaarʼs commentary on the new Civil Code.The sources before the fi rst draft from 1800 to 1851 are not included, since the early sources do not reveal anything about the drafting of the fi rst draft or the reason for writing it.Luckily, nearly all unpublished materials on the draft survive in the Central State Archive in Dresden, in the Saxonian State-and University Library in Dresden, in the library of the Imperial Court in Leipzig and other places like the Court of Appeal in Jena.The result is a huge data volume: The sources on the Saxonian Civil Code are approximately 12,000 computer pages long.
The edition will present these materials in diff erent ways: fi rst, as an online database with free access, which relies on the technology of the commercial Juris-database.The edition will assign the materials to units containing single paragraphs or small paragraph groups of the fi nal code and present the materials in each unit in chronological order.Parallel to the Historical-Critical Commentary on the German Civil Code, the user can follow the history of each provision from the fi rst draft of 1852 through all later stages in systematic and chronological order.Second, the database will contain the unsorted texts of the materials in full length.Third, the database will include digital pictures of the original texts.Fourth, we will publish the materials as books by print-on-demand to guarantee the sustainability of the publication eff ort.

Frank L. Schäfer
The protocols of the revision commission from the Saxonian State and University Library in Dresden resemble the core of the edition. 16These unpublished protocols are far longer than the published offi cial motives or Siebenhaarʼs commentary.The digital pictures of these protocols are available via www.sachsendigital.de.The working groups in Freiburg and Heidelberg transcribed every single page and formatted the pages.Overall, the protocols of the revision commission consist of 9,500 pages and the protocols of the editorial commission of nearly 4,000 pages.17Despite their massive size, the overall size of the protocols is far smaller than the later protocols on the German Civil Code.However, we include materials such as parliamentary protocols, correspondence and contemporary literature, so the overall size matches the edition of the materials on the German Civil Code.18

V. Saxonian Civil Code: Provisions on religion 1. Overview
The norms on religion in the Saxonian Civil Code start in section 51.The provision lays down the principle that there shall be no diff erentiation by religion in private law.In present terminology, this paragraph forbade religious discrimination in principle.Section 51 Saxonian Civil Code extended section 33 of the Saxonian Constitution to apply to citizens belonging to a non-approved Christian community or to a non-Christian religion, mainly Judaism.Since section 51 only stated a principle, it was open to exceptions, as we will see soon.
The next provision, section 879 of the Saxonian Civil Code, declared any promise to change religion or denomination null and void.The similar rule in the fi rst draft of 1852 (section 714) had been limited to a change of religion. 19It is clear that the Saxonian Civil Code made a distinction between the words religion and denomination.It is important to know for the following provisions, that the Christian denominations were seen as a single religion.On the other hand, Judaism under this scheme was not just a denomination of Christianity, but a diff erent religion.Religion and the Drafting of the Saxonian Civil Code

Artykuły -Articles
The bulk of religious provisions dealt with matrimonial law, since this area was the historical core topic of canon law. 20Sections 1588 and 1620 stated and secured that the form of the wedding ceremony and the authority responsible for the wedding ceremony must follow religious rules.As consequence of this legislative decision, the wedding ceremony took place in front of a priest or a rabbi.The next provision, section 1591, created a specifi c rule for Catholics.It laid down a matrimonial impediment for Catholics.Canon law did not allow divorce and a new marriage after an illegal divorce.Section 1591 ensured that Catholics could not marry again after divorce.The rule extended to a divorced non-Catholic person who wanted to marry a Catholic.Section 1766 was again a specifi c provision for Catholics.Since canon law did not allow divorce, the Civil Code opted for mere so-called separation of board and bed.Sections 1619 and 1770 provided general clauses to include religious norms in the code.The fi rst provision opened civil matrimonial law for additional religious marriage impediments, if an approved religious community did acknowledge them for their members.For the same reason, the second provision opened matrimonial law for additional religious causes for divorce.Vice versa, the provisions also opened civil matrimonial law for religious restrictions in both cases.Section 1617 abolished marriage between Christians and Non-Christians.We will discuss this provision, which discriminated against Jews, in full detail.In its fi nal version section 1744 allowed divorce if one member of the couple changed religion.The revision commission had rejected such a reason, but was overruled for political reasons. 21It is important that mere conversion amongst Christian denominations did not suffi ce as a cause for divorce. 22Section 1769 solved the issue of mixed Christian marriages in case of divorce.The provision stated that the denomination of the defendant decides the rules on divorce.
All these provisions did not specify the court responsible for matrimonial disputes, for example in the case of divorce.A special statute from 1835 governed this issue. 23ollowing the provisions of this statute, the Courts of Appeal were responsible in the fi rst instance for Lutheran Evangelical couples and mixed Lutheran Evangelical-Catholic couples.Clerics acted as equal members of the court in the case of conciliation hearings, resolutions and other matters. 24Upper Lusatia retained special regulations for Frank L. Schäfer mixed couples. 25The Upper Court of Appeal in Dresden provided the second instance. 26he Catholic Consistories in Dresden and the Consistory of the Cathedral chapter Saint Petri of Bautzen were responsible for Catholic couples in the fi rst instance and the Vice Vicariat Court of Dresden in the second instance. 27The Jewish population had the privilege of special religious courts as well. 28he fi nal code did not include section 1510 of the fi rst draft of 1852, which had referred to special statutes for religious education in mixed marriages. 29Since section 1802 of the Saxonian Civil Code granted the father the right to determine the childʼs education, if he disagreed with his wife he had the fi nal say on the childʼs religion.

In detail: Religious or civil marriage
The Saxonian Civil Code made a twofold decision.Firstly, it installed a hybrid concept for matrimonial law between civil and religious law, basically ecclesiastical law.The new Civil Code opted neither for religious nor for civil matrimonial law as a pure legislative concept.The core of matrimonial law consisted of Lutheran Evangelical rules, which the lawmaker adopted as codifi ed private law.These ecclesiastical norms were only slightly modifi ed, e.g. in the case of incorrigible alcoholism as a cause for divorce (section 1733, Saxonian Civil Code). 30The adoption of these rules had two main applications: impediments to marriage and reasons for divorce.Religious, mainly ecclesiastical law as a legal source in its own right came into play for the form and the responsible offi ce of the wedding ceremony.Religious rules also could modify the impediments to marriage and the reasons for divorce.In these instances, the lawmaker used the technique of explicitly referring to religious norms.
If one compares the Saxonian solution to other contemporary civil codes, it becomes clear that such religious diff erentiations had been outdated for decades.The French Civil Religion and the Drafting of the Saxonian Civil Code Federation and some older statutes chose a hybrid solution or assigned matrimonial law entirely to ecclesiastical law: the areas of the ius commune in the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Prussia, the Kingdoms of Hannover and Wurttemberg, the Grand Duchies of Hesse and Oldenburg, the Duchy of Nassau, the Electorate of Hesse, also next to Saxony the Duchies of Saxe-Altenburg and Saxe-Gotha and the Principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. 32 Secondly and a fortiori, the Saxonian matrimonial law opted against civil marriage where the wedding took place in front of a public registrar, and the rest of matrimonial law consists of secular norms.In this respect too, the Saxonian solution trailed behind contemporary legal politics.Since §150 of the failed Frankfurt Constitution of 1849, civil marriage had been on the agenda of the constitutional and democratic movement.The constitutions of the Kingdom of Prussia (1848/1850), the Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg (1849) and Oldenburg (1849), the Principality of Waldeck ( 1849) and many other political entities promised civil marriage in private law.As often, such political promises failed to materialize.Only a handful of jurisdictions introduced civil marriage in its general obligatory or mandatory form before German unifi cation: The area governed by the French Civil Code and its Swiss derivates, the Free Imperial City of Frankfurt am Main (1850), the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg ( 1855) and the Free Imperial City of Hamburg (1865).The Electorate of Hesse (1848-1853) and the Duchies of Anhalt-Dessau and Anhalt-Köthen (1849-1851) introduced it temporarily.The Kingdom of Prussia (1847/48), the Free Imperial Cities of Hamburg (1849) and Lübeck (1852), the Elecorate of Hesse ( 1853), the Kingdom of Wurttemberg (1855), the Grand Duchy of Baden (1860/1869), the Duchies of Nassau ( 1863) and Sachsen-Weimar (1864) and last but not least the Empire of Austria (1868/70) opened the gates to civil marriage at least in a limited form for dissidents and Jews. 33eyond the surface of the offi cially published materials on the code, the unpublished protocols of the revision commission reveal a long and intensive debate on the general question of whether religious norms should be included in matrimonial law at all.In essence, in 1859 the revision commission debated three options: fi rst, a purely civil marriage, second, a purely religious marriage and third, a hybrid solution as a middle path.
Robert Schneider (1807-1871), president of the Court of Appeal in Dresden and later Minister of Justice, 34 pleaded to exclude the provision on entering and leaving marriage from the Civil Code. 35Despite the close relationship between the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the state, Schneider argued, the Evangelical Lutheran Church was autonomous and could rely on religious freedom to protect it in cases of infringement of state legislation.He did not accept the status of the Evangelical Lutheran Church as a de facto state church.Schneider suggested two ways to avoid any religious and political confl ict with the Evangelical Lutheran Church: either no regulation of matrimonial law in the code or the institution of civil marriage.Since Schneider clearly condemned civil mar-Frank L. Schäfer riage, the exclusion of matrimonial law remained as the only possible solution.However, the majority in the commission voted against Schneiderʼs proposal. 36They argued that marriage had the character of a mixed legal institution, containing aspects of both religion and public morality.The majority did not contemplate civil marriage as a serious option.

In detail: Culture clash? The Catholic Church
The position of the Roman Catholic Church also deserves some detailed study.Compared with the Catholic Church, the infl uence of the Evangelical Lutherans was overwhelming.Carl Adolph Eduard von Zobel (born in 1801) was a member of the revision commission as a deputy of the Ministry of Culture and Education. 37The Evangelical Lutheran Church dominated this Ministry, which dealt with religious matters.The church also directly infl uenced the drafting process through its Evangelical General Consistory and the State Ministers in Evangelicis, which presided over the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Saxony.These two institutions and the Ministry of Culture and Education had to be consulted at every step of the drafting. 38Note that the representatives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and single clerical voices agreed with the general concept of the new matrimonial law, but not in every detail. 39he Catholic infl uence, on the other hand, was nearly invisible, since the Catholic Church represented less than 2% of the Saxonian population.There was no sign of a Kulturkampf between the kingdom of Saxony and the Catholic Church on matrimonial law, since the Vatican itself kept silent.The Saxonian codifi cation was not signifi cant enough to produce a religious dispute between the church and the state.The only visible Catholic critique of the code came from the vicar apostolic for Saxony.In 1853, Vicar Apostolic Joseph Dittrich (1794-1853) rejected the matrimonial law in the draft as an intervention against the inner constitutional sphere of the Catholic Church. 40He argued that a Catholic priest should not be forced to apply rules on weddings which contradict canon law.Dittrich also pointed out that a change of religion was no reason for divorce under canon law, but opened the door to abuse.Consequently, his apostolic successor Religion and the Drafting of the Saxonian Civil Code

Artykuły -Articles
Ludwig Forwerk (1816-1875) voted against the fi nal draft of the Civil Code in the Upper House of the Saxonian Parliament. 41

In detail: Emancipation of Jews?
The matrimonial rules were a clear setback for the emancipation of Jews in the Kingdom of Saxony.Nevertheless, the lobbying of the Jewish community in Leipzig and Dresden against discrimination during the year 1861 was partially successful. 42On the one hand, the fi nal version of the Civil Code omitted any restrictions for Jews who noted in guardianship (Vormundschaft). 43In that respect, the fi nal code followed section 1585 of the fi rst draft of 1852 and the Austrian example.In opposition to this, section 1918 of the draft of 1860 had stated that Non-Christians could not act as guardians of Christians. 44Unlike the fi rst draft of 1852, the fi nal version of the code also no longer contained any specifi c regulation for Jewish marriages.Section 1488 of the fi rst draft had regulated the separation of Jewish spouses, section 1489 the separation from bed and board plus the execution of divorce, sections 1490 and 1491 the consensual divorce letter and section 1492 the contested divorce.
On the other hand, the verdict against a Christian-Jewish marriage remained in section 1617 of the fi nal code.The revision commission implemented this provision, which had already been in the fi rst draft of 1852, without any reasonable juristic explanation. 45he Jewish community could point out later that several acts had already granted them religious freedom and equal status in public and private law since 1849.On that legal basis they criticized the reasoning of the offi cial motives of the second draft of 1860, which claimed that the constitution limited equal rights to the various Christian denominations.The Jewish community was right to conclude that the ban of mixed marriages was unconstitutional.They also pointed to Prussia where mixed marriages had been allowed since 1847 in the form of civil marriages.Even the Duchy of Saxe-Eisenach (1850) had opted for this solution. 46Therefore, the Jewish community proposed, Saxony should also introduce civil marriage to allow mixed marriages.
The liberal segment of the Saxonian Parliament sympathised with the arguments of the Jewish community.Those arguments did not, however, convince the majority of both Frank L. Schäfer Houses.The majority argued that the ban was necessary to secure religious freedom and was consistent with section 33 of the Constitution. 47As long as marriage was at least in part a religious institution, they considered the ban to be consistent even with the religious freedom of the Jewish community.As we can see, the questions of civil marriage and Jewish emancipation were closely interconnected.

VI. Aftermath 1. Saxonian Act on Dissidents (1870)
The hybrid concept of the Saxonian Civil Code between civil and religious norms was outdated very soon.After just fi ve years, the liberal movement in the Saxonian Parliament achieved a partial victory.The Act on Dissidents of 1870 introduced civil marriage for citizens without any denomination. 48Section 1 of the act laid down the basic principle: "The civil register at the lower civil court (register on civil status) documents the births, deaths and marriages of persons who are not members of a denomination approved by the state."Sections 16 and 17 extended civil marriage to couples with mixed Christian denomination provided their churches refused to wed them.Furthermore, section 19(1) of the Act repealed section 1617 of the Civil Code.Jewish citizens could now marry Christians by means of civil marriage (sections 16, 17 of the Act).Section 19(3) of the Act excluded the application of other religious provisions: sections 1588 (form of wedding ceremony), 1591 (special impediment to remarriage after divorce for Catholics), 1619 (variations on impediments to marriage), 1620 (nullity of marriage for breach of section 1588), 1769 (divorce of mixed marriages) and 1770 (variations on causes for divorce).Besides that, the impediments to marriage, the causes for nullifi cation of marriage and causes for divorce were applicable to the new civil marriage (section 19[2] of the Act) because these provisions lacked any specifi c religious content.

German Personal Status Act (1875)
The so-called Kulturkampf, the power struggle between the new national constitutional state and the Roman Catholic Church, drew a clear division between public and private law on one hand and the norms of religious groups on the other.As a result, both the Kingdom of Prussia and the Swiss Confederation introduced obligatory civil mar-  49 The Imperial Parliament followed one year later by enacting the Personal Status Act in 1875. 50Not religious norms, but liberal private law now governed the conditions and form of a wedding.Section 1 of the Personal Status Act stated: Public registrars have the exclusive power to certify births, marriages and deaths in a public register with eff ect to private law.Section 39 of the act added: All provisions which restrict the right of wedding beyond this act, are repealed.Sections 82 made clear that civil marriage does not abolish ecclesiastical marriages but denies the latter any eff ect on private law.Furthermore, section 67 secured the chronological primacy to civil marriage by fi ning a religious pre-wedding.
In reaction, the Saxonian Parliament modifi ed the Saxonian Civil Code far beyond the scope of the Personal Status Act.The Saxonian Parliament not only repealed sections 1619 (variations on impediments to marriage), but also erased most religious elements in the rest of matrimonial law: sections 1766 (separation of board and bed for Catholics), 1769 (divorce of mixed-marriage couple) and 1770 (variations of causes for divorce) of the Saxonian Civil Code. 51Section 1744 (change of religion as a cause for divorce) remained.Sections 1588 (form of wedding ceremony), 1591 (special impediment to remarriage after divorce for Catholics) and 1620 (nullity of marriage for breach of section 1588) of the Saxonian Civil Code had no function in any case and did not need explicit repeal.The Imperial Code on Civil Procedural Law came into eff ect four years later.It assigned matrimonial trials to the civil courts, thus securing civil marriage on the procedural level.

German Civil Code (1896)
The Civil Code of the German Empire of 1896 completely abandoned the hybrid concept of mixing private law and ecclesiastical law in matrimonial aff airs.Although the section on matrimonial law still followed the Christian conception of marriage in many ways, the provisions themselves lacked any reference to religion or specifi c religious communities.The legislature completely separated ecclesiastical law and civil law.Section 1588 of the Civil Code repeated section 82 of the Personal Status Act, thus implementing the separation of the two realms as a basic principle of the German legal system.The provision reads as follows: Church duties with regard to marriage are not aff ected by the provisions of this division.Section 1588 is also called the Kaiserparagraph (emperor paragraph), with possible reference to Matthew 22, 21: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesarʼs; and unto God the things that are Godʼs." 52Frank L. Schäfer The procedural provisions of 1875 remained in the Personal Status Act.Section 67 of this Act secured the chronological primacy of the civil wedding.Thereafter, a religious wedding could not take place before or without a civil wedding.Section 67 was not revised until 2009.At the substantive level, however, a religious wedding is still irrelevant for private law.

VII. Conclusion
If we look back to the drafting of the Saxonian Civil Code of 1863/1865, we can answer the questions raised in the beginning as follows.
First, the various religious groups participated in the process of drafting the legislation in very diff erent ways.Since the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the de facto state church of the Kingdom of Saxony, it had by far the greatest infl uence on the code.Not only the ministers in Evangelicis, but also the Ministry for Cultural Aff airs and Education represented the state church in a comprehensive manner.The Catholics, by contrast, had only the bishop representing the Apostolic Vicariat of Saxony as a single voice outside the offi cial hierarchy when it came to the drafting of the Civil Code.
Second, nearly all provisions in the fi nal civil code concerning religious matters were about matrimonial law.The Saxonian Civil Code no longer distinguished between denominations and religions when it came to general status and personal rights.Following equality as a key principle of liberal private law, every Saxonian citizen had equal status and equal rights.Religion however, had a last sanctuary in matrimonial law.
Third, the legislator enacted the Saxonian Civil Code to become a juridical monument for many generations.Actually, almost none of the religious provisions in the code survived their fi rst ten years.The reason was simple: The concept of hybrid law in the Saxonian Civil Code was outdated from the very beginning.The Code was visionary in many aspects but in the case of matrimonial law it hung on to very old concepts, which were already outdated around 1800.The inclusion of religious elements no longer suited the national liberal movement and its conception of liberal private law.It was liberalism and not conservatism which dominated the fi rst decades of the New German Empire shortly after the enactment of the Saxonian Civil Code.

Bibliography Archival sources
Saxonian General State Archive, Dresden