Das Erbrecht in weltgeschichtlicher Entwickelung (1824–1835) von Eduard Gans

Das erste Zeugnis vom Einfluss Hegels auf die Privatrechtsgeschichtsschreibung

Abstract

Das Erbrecht in weltgeschichtlicher Entwickelung, although unquestionably the most ambitious work of Eduard Gans, has hitherto been generally neglected by scholars. While some parts of it are quite well known because of their polemical arguments against Savigny’s »Historical School of Law«, the way Gans tried to develop his own project of a »philosophical« history of succession law has received far less attention. This voluminous work, which encompasses the history of human civilisation from Ancient China and India up to the Middle Ages, relies on Hegel’s conceptualisation of world history as a key for interpreting the documents containing the law of succession of the most relevant nations. However, this is not applied consistently throughout, suggesting that, despite seeming to be a homogeneous study, his Erbrecht was a work-in-progress with three main stages of composition. In the most Hegelian part of his work – vol. 2: Das Römische Erbrecht – Gans manages to reconcile his philosophical approach with his juridical background. In the introduction and in the first chapter he follows the historical course of the Roman legislation on inheritance and succession from ancient times prior to the XII Tabulae up to Justinian’s codification, whereas in the remaining five chapters he attempts to reconstruct the whole system of the Roman law of succession from a dogmatic point of view. While in the former case the systematic principle was drawn from Hegel’s lectures on the Philosophy of History, in the latter case Gans followed current academic practice in reconstructing the Roman law of succession in a systematic way, nevertheless stressing that such a systemcould not satisfy the ethical needs of reason.