Barber Crosby Margaret Barber Crosby Making of a German Constitution

Annotation

The Making of a German Constitution is one of the first books to explore the important place of the theory and practice of private law (civil law) in the transformation of Modern Germany's fin-de-si cle constitutional arrangements. Reading sources from early nineteenth-century private law scholarship, the book offers a thought-provoking and novel understanding of German political development. The author argues that the German idea of sovereignty grew out of a dual conception of law not only as the product of socio-political transformation, but also as a means to it. In the short term, a modern social and political system in Germany was attained through non-violent means and the domestic authority of the Kaiser was severely limited by law. However, the exclusive bourgeois socio-political arrangements that were installed in this era led to considerable discontent in German society, particularly with regard to gender and class tensions. The "slow B rgerliche Revolution" thus contributed to the traumatic ruptures that mark German history in the first third of the twentieth century.