Project Details
Projekt
Edition of the Legislative Materials of the Saxon Civil Code of 1863/65
Subject Area
Principles of Law and Jurisprudence
Term
from 2011 to 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 198627044
The project aims at creating an edition of the legislative materials of the Civil Code of the Kingdom of Saxony (1864/65). The Saxon Civil Code is essentially important to the history of civil law in the 19th century for three reasons. First, it is the main link between the early "Pandektenwissenschaft" around Friedrich Carl von Savigny and the wave of codifications in the mid-19th century which led up to the German Civil Code of 1896/1900. For example, the Saxon Civil Code was the first German civil law codification that implemented the separation principle ("Trennungsprinzip") and the abstraction principle ("Abstraktionsprinzip"). Second, it was the only civil code to be enacted in the 19th century within today's borders of the Federal Republic of Germany prior to the German Civil Code of 1896/1900. Third, the handwritten legislative materials of the Saxon Civil Code are almost completely preserved. This is not the case with other civil code projects, e. g. in the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Grand Duchy of Hesse. Despite their eminent significance, the handwritten legislative materials, archived mostly in Dresden, have not yet been systematically edited. Since the German reunification they have been available for some time. So far, only fragments of early drafts and of the legislative commission's records have been have available through a monograph concerned with the creation of the Saxon Civil Code and through a few other studies. The edition is set to combine the handwritten materials with selected printed materials and sort them by paragraphs. This way, a considerable gap in the knowledge of legal history of the 19th century can be filled.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
