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Rudolf von Jhering
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Rudolf von Jhering (22 August 1818 – 17 September 1892) was a German
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...

 jurist
Jurist
A jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...

. He is known for his 1872 book Der Kampf ums Recht (The Struggle for Law), as a legal scholar, and as the founder of a modern sociological and historical school of law.

Jhering was born in Aurich
Aurich
Aurich is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Aurich.-History:The history of Aurich dates back to the 13th century, when the settlement of Aurechove was mentioned in a Frisian document called the Brokmerbrief in 1276. In 1517, Count Edzard from the house of...

, Kingdom of Hanover
Kingdom of Hanover
The Kingdom of Hanover was established in October 1814 by the Congress of Vienna, with the restoration of George III to his Hanoverian territories after the Napoleonic era. It succeeded the former Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg , and joined with 38 other sovereign states in the German...

. He entered the university of Heidelberg in 1836 and, after the fashion of German students, visited successively Göttingen, Munich, and Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

. Georg Friedrich Puchta
Georg Friedrich Puchta
Georg Friedrich Puchta was a German jurist.Born at Kadolzburg in Bavaria, he came of an old Bohemian Protestant family which had immigrated into Germany to avoid religious persecution. His father, Wolfgang Heinrich Puchta , a legal writer and district judge, imbued his son with legal conceptions...

, alone of all his teachers, appears to have influenced him.

After graduating doctor juris, Jhering established himself in 1844 at Berlin as privatdocent for Roman law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...

, and delivered public lectures on the Geist des römischen Rechts, the theme that may be said to have constituted his life's work. In 1845, he became an ordinary professor at Basel
University of Basel
The University of Basel is located in Basel, Switzerland, and is considered to be one of leading universities in the country...

, in 1846 at Rostock
University of Rostock
The University of Rostock is the university of the city Rostock, in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.Founded in 1419, it is the oldest and largest university in continental northern Europe and the Baltic Sea area...

, in 1849 at Kiel
University of Kiel
The University of Kiel is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the Academia Holsatorum Chiloniensis by Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and has approximately 23,000 students today...

, and in 1851 at Giessen
University of Giessen
The University of Giessen is officially called the Justus Liebig University Giessen after its most famous faculty member, Justus von Liebig, the founder of modern agricultural chemistry and inventor of artificial fertiliser.-History:The University of Gießen is among the oldest institutions of...

. At each of these seats of learning, he left his mark; beyond any other of his contemporaries he animated the dry bones of Roman law.

The German juristic world was still under the dominating influence of the Savigny
Friedrich Carl von Savigny
Friedrich Carl von Savigny was one of the most respected and influential 19th-century jurists and historians.-Early life and education:...

 cult, and the older school looked askance at the daring of the young professor, who attempted to adapt the old to new exigencies and to build up a system of natural jurisprudence. This is the keynote of his famous work, Geist des römischen Rechts auf den verschiedenen Stufen seiner Entwicklung (1852-1865), which for originality of conception and lucidity of scientific reasoning placed its author in the forefront of modern Roman jurists.

It is no exaggeration to say that in the second half of the 19th century. the reputation of Jhering was as high as that of Savigny in the first half. Their methods were almost diametrically opposed. Savigny and his school represented the conservative, historical tendency. In Jhering, the philosophical conception of jurisprudence, as a science to be utilized for the further advancement of the moral and social interests of mankind, was predominant.

In 1868, Jhering accepted the chair of Roman Law at Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

, where his lecture-room was crowded, not only with regular students but with men of all professions and even of the highest ranks in the official world. In 1872, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria
Franz Joseph I of Austria
Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I was Emperor of Austria, King of Bohemia, King of Croatia, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Galicia and Lodomeria and Grand Duke of Cracow from 1848 until his death in 1916.In the December of 1848, Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria abdicated the throne as part of...

 conferred upon him a title of hereditary nobility.

The social functions of the Austrian metropolis became wearisome, and Jhering gladly exchanged its for the repose of Göttingen, where he became professor in 1872. That year, he had read at Vienna before an admiring audience a lecture, published under the title of Der Kampf ums Recht (1872; Eng. trans., The Struggle for Law, 1879). Its success was extraordinary. Within two years it attained 12 editions, and it has been translated into 26 languages. It this, his most famous work, Jhering based his theory of duty in the maintenance of one's rights, firstly, on the connection between rights and personality; and secondly, on the solidarity of law and rights. The relation of rights to personality is
explored. In truth, our rights involve a parcel of our social worth, our honor. Whoever violates our rights, attacks our worth, our honor.

This work was followed five years later by Der Zweck im Recht (2 vols., 1877-1883). In these two works is clearly seen Jhering's individuality. The Kampf ums Recht shows the firmness of his character, the strength of his sense of justice, and his juristic method and logic: to assert his rights is the duty that every responsible person owes to himself. In the Zweck im Recht is perceived the bent of the author's intellect. But perhaps the happiest combination of all his distinctive characteristics is to be found in his Jurisprudenz des taglichen Lebens (1870; Eng. trans., 1904). A great feature of his lectures was his so-called Praktika, problems in Roman law, and a collection of these with hints for solution was published as early as 1847 under the title Civilrechtsfalle ohne Entscheidungen.

Aside from shorter positions at Leipzig
University of Leipzig
The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...

 and Heidelberg, Jhering continued to work in Göttingen until his death.

Among others of his works were the following: Beiträge zur Lehre vom Besitz, first published in the Jahrbücher für die Dogmatik des heutigen römischen und deutschen Privatrechts, and then separately; Der Besitzwille, and an article entitled Besitz in the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (1891), which aroused at the time much controversy, particularly on account of the opposition manifested to Savigny's conception of the subject.

See also Scherz und Ernst in der Jurisprudenz (1885); Des Schuldmoment im römischen Privat-recht (1867); Das Trinkgeld (1882); and among the papers he left behind him his Vorgeschichte der Indoeuropaer, a fragment, has been published by v. Ehrenberg (1894).

For an account of his life, see also M. de Jonge, Rudolf v. Jhering (1888); and Adolf Merkel, Rudolf von Jhering (1893).

His oldest son was a German-Brazilian zoologist Hermann von Ihering
Hermann von Ihering
Hermann von Ihering was a German-Brazilian zoologist. He was born at Kiel, Germany, and died at Gießen, Germany. He was the oldest son of Rudolf von Jhering.-Biography:...

 (1850-1930).

Selected works

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