German Historical School

The historical school of law or historical school of jurisprudence is a direction in the jurisprudence, the historical conditioning of the law called for the beginning of the 19th century against the background of romance in moving away from the era of natural law or natural law back into consciousness.

This direction was primarily founded by Friedrich Carl von Savigny, which returns to the development of law on the so-called folk spirit - a term also used Hegel in his view of world history. The basic message of the historical school of law is that the law is not to be construed as an arbitrarily created by the legislature stock of provisions, but as in the minds of the people living beliefs, similar to the language or the customs of a people. Although such legal convictions could also be initiated by the legislature, but developed and changed especially without fault of his own organically over time. The practical changing needs of the people play a major role. In a developed legal system to get the legal profession - in the sense of the social division of labor - the task to represent the popular consciousness in that it sets forth the applicable law on the basis of scientific work on the law and applies it.

Romanists and Germanists

Within the historical school of law competed the Romanists with the German studies. The Romanists felt that the rezipierte Roman law would correspond to the spirit of the people, while the German studies (Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, Jacob Grimm, Georg Beseler, Otto von Gierke ) according looked at the medieval German law as the German national spirit before the reception.

The historical school of law, the German legal science of the 19th century largely determined. In Savigny's successors Puchta and Windscheid walked out of the Romanist branch out the Pandektenwissenschaft which is also seen as conceptual jurisprudence. Jhering finally turned away from the concept of jurisprudence is to move towards an oriented to the real social demands consideration of the law.

While the foot of the historical school of law, and therefore historical jurisprudence for the drafting of the Civil Code, which was completed in 1896, was of great influence in the 20th century, the direct influence of the ideas and methods of the historical school of law has declined. The question of which species develops the right of the national spirit was, however, still subject of intense debate among lawyers in 1910.

Hans Kelsen directed his General Theory of the State from a purely legal theory of the positive state of the Historical School of the first third of the 19th century.

Criticism

Karl Marx criticized Gustav von Hugo as the " Altvater " of the Historical School of Law. He accused him of the reason criticism of existing conditions to be replaced by an attempt to justify the positive straight through its unreasonableness.

Max Weber criticized Savigny, if it was taken from the National Economists Wilhelm Roscher as a model, in particular the formation of concepts " national spirit " as hypostatization the necessary individual character of each truly popular right into a unified metaphysical nature and real foundation of all individual cultural expressions of a people.

Swell

Friedrich Carl von Savigny, from our professional time for Legislation and Jurisprudence, Heidelberg, 1814, in: Stern (ed.) ibid, pp. 69ff, 73f, 78f. ..