The lawyer and Kronsyndikus was one of the most vital German jurist of the 19th Century. The son of a wealthy Huguenot family, he turned to 16-years of jurisprudence, and then to perform amid the turmoil of the Napoleonic era rule a meteoric career in law and in the Prussian civil service. At the University of Berlin, Friedrich Carl von Savigny, became the founder of the Historical School of Law. Scientific milestones set Savigny mainly in the field of legal history, which he with his “History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages” (1815-1831 and 1834-1850) also from a methodological point lasting until the 20th Century shaped into …
Friedrich Carl von Savigny was on 21 Born February 1779 in Frankfurt / Main as the son of a noble Huguenot family.
Savigny lost his parents early on. He started in 1795 to study law at the University of Marburg, where it contacts including talked to the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. He completed a semester in Göttingen. In 1800 he received his doctorate in Marburg. With his first paper on “The right of possession” Savigny gained wide recognition in 1803 in the professional world. This earned him an appointment at the University of Marburg, where he taught law. 1805 Savigny married Kunigunde Brentano.
Savigny broke off his Marburg teaching and traveled through Europe in the following years, several countries in order to pursue legal historical studies. He was then appointed in 1808 at the University of Landshut, where he taught until 1810. Meanwhile, Wilhelm von Humboldt had in the course of the Prussian reforms on the foundation of the later works executed by him and his brother named Alexander von Humboldt University of Berlin. Savigny took over in 1810 nor the Law Department, where he remained until his death. In 1811 he also joined the Prussian Academy of Sciences. In the following decades, Savigny had decisively shaped the development of the Berlin University, which he temporarily presided as rector. In teaching and research of his discipline he made his mark primarily as an eminent scholar of Roman law.
Also on the General Law, which was enacted in 1794 to Prussia, he was teaching. In addition to his academic work Savigny came as a private teacher of the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick William (IV) as a jurist and also to political influence. He was a member from 1817 to 1848 and at the end of President of the Prussian State Council. Savigny delivered in 1814, the Heidelberg professor of Roman law, Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut, a scientific debate over the need for a uniform Code for all German states. The Berlin lawyer came into this so-called “Kodifikationsstreit” the suggestion of an all-German codifications chose against, because they disagreed with his assumption of the historical foundations and individual differences in legal traditions.
Furthermore, Savigny was involved from 1819 to 1841 as privy Oberrevisionsrat to the rule of the Audit and Cassation, which had been set up for the Rhenish Prussian territories that had previously been under the influence of the French Napoleonic law. In the years 1842 to 1848 Savigny has also served as Prussian Minister of Law revision as the impetus it has made considerable reform in the civil and criminal matters, which were only partially realized. Scientific milestones set Savigny mainly in the field of legal history, which he with his “History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages” (first 6 vols, 1815-1831; then 7 vols, 1834-1850) in terms of methodology to the term 20 . Hundred-century coined into it, because it directly here based on the medieval manuscript sources.
In the field of legal theory Savigny went out with the thought of an organic, growing out of the habit of the people right. From this he formulated the need for a historically driven jurisprudence. Thus was the lawyer in Berlin with Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, the founder of the so-called Historical School of Law, which determined the German law for a long time and published by the two “Journal of Historical Jurisprudence” made her professional body. Regarding the methodology Savigny emphasized throughout his major work, the demand for source-related legal studies: In the “system of modern Roman law” (8 vols, 1840-1849) he established including private international law again.
Friedrich Carl von Savigny, died on 25 Oct 1861 in Berlin
