Theodor Hermann Sternberg (January 5, 1878, 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...

 - April 18, 1950, Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

) was a German legal philosopher

Jurisprudence

Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions...

 serving as a foreign advisor

O-yatoi gaikokujin

The Foreign government advisors in Meiji Japan, known in Japanese as oyatoi gaikokujin , were those foreign advisors hired by the Japanese government for their specialized knowledge to assist in the modernization of Japan at the end of the Bakufu and during the Meiji era. The term is sometimes...

 in Meiji period

Meiji period

The , also known as the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September 1868 through July 1912. This period represents the first half of the Empire of Japan.- Meiji Restoration and the emperor :...

 Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, where he was an important contributor to the development 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...

 in Japan.

Biography

Sternberg served as an instructor at Tokyo Imperial University from 1913 to 1918. He also lectured on occasion at Meiji University

Meiji University

is a private university in Tokyo and Kawasaki, founded in 1881 by three lawyers of the Meiji era, Kishimoto Tatsuo, Miyagi Kōzō, and Yashiro Misao. It is one of the largest and most prestigious Japanese universities in Tokyo, Japan....

, and other major Japanese universities, speaking on civil law, criminal law

Criminal law

Criminal law, is the body of law that relates to crime. It might be defined as the body of rules that defines conduct that is not allowed because it is held to threaten, harm or endanger the safety and welfare of people, and that sets out the punishment to be imposed on people who do not obey...

 and jurisprudence.

He later served as a consultant to the in 1918 and from 1922-1925, where he helped oversee the implementation of the Japanese legal codes.

Literary works

• Allgemeine Rechtslehre, 2 Vols. 1904
• Einführung in die Rechtswissenschaft, 1912
• Der Begriff der Philosophie, 1933

External links

• Duncker & Humblot - Gesamtverzeichnis - Bartels-Ishikawa, Anna - Theodor Sternberg - at www.duncker-humblot.de (German)
• AISTUGIA Il "diritto libero" di Theodor Sternberg dalla Germania al Giappone del primo Novecento at venus.unive.it (Italian)
• SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO - Il diritto libero di Theodor Sternberg dalla Germania al Giappone at www.francoangeli.it (Italian)