Otto von Gierke
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
historian. He was born in Stettin (Szczecin)
Szczecin
Szczecin , is the capital city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. It is the country's seventh-largest city and the largest seaport in Poland on the Baltic Sea. As of June 2009 the population was 406,427....
, Pomerania, and died in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
.
Scholar
He specialised in the study of the German antecedents of German law. His view of the RechtsstaatRechtsstaat
Rechtsstaat is a concept in continental European legal thinking, originally borrowed from German jurisprudence, which can be translated as "legal state", "state of law", "state of justice", or "state of rights"...
(state on a legal basis), and his emphasis on the federal nature of medieval states, became important and debated. In fact, he said the society grows up because people form groups and groups of groups, from families to the State. He stood as an opponent of the trend of civil law
Civil law (legal system)
Civil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law and whose primary feature is that laws are codified into collections, as compared to common law systems that gives great precedential weight to common law on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different...
interpretation and theorising. His theory took up some older ideas from Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
and Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
(De Monarchia
De Monarchia
De Monarchia is a treatise on secular and religious power by Dante Alighieri. With this Latin text, the poet intervened in one of the most controversial subjects of his period: the relationship between secular authority and religious authority...
).
Abroad he was a major influence on the British historian of law F. W. Maitland
Frederic William Maitland
Frederic William Maitland was an English jurist and historian, generally regarded as the modern father of English legal history.-Biography:...
, who translated as Political Theories of the Middle Ages some of Gierke's major works, and on John Neville Figgis
John Neville Figgis
John Neville Figgis was a historian, political philosopher and monk. Educated at Brighton College, he was a student of Lord Acton at Cambridge, and editor of much of Acton's work....
.
Works
- Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, Berlin 4 volumes, 1868, 1873, 1881
- Deutsches Privatrecht, 3 volumes, Leipzig 1895
- Naturrrecht und Deutsches Recht, Frankfurt 1883
Secondary
- Scruton, RogerRoger ScrutonRoger Vernon Scruton is a conservative English philosopher and writer. He is the author of over 30 books, including Art and Imagination , Sexual Desire , The Aesthetics of Music , and A Political Philosophy: Arguments For Conservatism...
,"Gierke and the corporate person" in The Philosopher on Dover Beach, Manchester, Carcanet Press, 1990. ISBN 0-85635-857-6