Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

Toward a German Nation • 85understanding that we live primarily in a time of rebirth’. 179 As he set his sights ona representative constitution in 1810, Wilhelm von Humboldt recruited Savigny tohelp found the new University of Berlin’s law faculty. Amongst his closest friendsand allies at the university was the liberal professor of history, Barthold Niebuhr.In addition to his professorship, Savigny was actively engaged in effecting theStein-Hardenberg reforms. Along with his Roman law professorship, he was alsothird rector of the university and responsible for organizing the law faculty’s Spruchcollegium(tribunal competent to remit legal opinions in cases submitted by the ordinarycourts). At the same time, his political activities extended well beyond thehalls of the University of Berlin. On 22 May 1815, Hardenberg was finally able tosecure a decree from King Wilhelm III promising a written constitution for Prussiaand a representative assembly, which would include the new provinces on an equalbasis. In 1817, Savigny was appointed to the commission to organize the Provinzialständen(provincial diets) that were to be built from the bottom upwards and tothe Justizministerium (Ministry of Justice) in the Prussian Staatsrat (Privy Council).He also served on the Supreme Court of Appeals for the Rhine Provinces in 1819and, in 1820, on a commission called to revise the unsatisfactory Allgemeines Landrecht.Savigny was very close to the constitutional movement in these years, andwhen hope collapsed with Hardenberg’s death in November 1822, Savigny sank intodepression and went on extended travel leave. It is noteworthy as well that it wasSavigny who secured positions for the Grimm brothers after the Göttingen Sevendismissal in 1837. Finally, out of sympathy for the times, he resigned his officialpositions with the Prussian crown in 1848.By 1815, it was clear to those in government circles that liberal hopes for Germanunification and political revision would not be realized by the Congress of Vienna.Savigny was especially guarded about expressing his political views in public writings.His letters from the period, however, offered a much stronger statement of hissentiments. In the summer of 1814, after the publication of Thibaut’s Notwendigkeit,but prior to his own contribution to the legal debate, Savigny wrote to Jacob andWilliam that ‘we must not delude ourselves about the conditions that led to the finaldisaster, where the old states existed only for appearance—a terrible fraud’. 180 ‘Wewant’, he continued, ‘to be sure that we are able to obtain what people, in fact andtruthfully, have in their hearts, and this cannot be achieved in commissions and conventions.’181 In April of 1815, he expressed in a letter to Jacob that he was concernedabout Metternich’s growing influence and that of the Austrian system of administration,which he referred to as ‘undeutsch’. 182 ‘One must keep in mind’, he wrote,‘that we can never realize an enduring satisfactory condition for Germany withouta legitimate Kaiser of our own.’ 183 These points are important also, because theyshed new light on Savigny’s political sentiments around 1814 and indicate that hewas a supporter of the klein Deutschland idea, excluding Austria, that was emergingamongst liberal nationalists in these years. Savigny viewed law, as Rudorff wrote