Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

148 • The Making of a German Constitutionvom Jahre 1845 (1845). 112 Finally, the same year as the first Germanistentag, GustavNürmberger, who was the foremost scholar on Nürnberg, published Sammlung vonBeiträgen und Anmerkungen zu praktischer Erläuterung der Nürnberger Wechselordnung(1846). 113These studies are just examples of the literature that was in production for sometwenty years prior to 1848. Unlike the other measures that were introduced after1849, the well-known Wechselordnung (General Bills of Exchange Law) was pushedthrough in 1848. Just as the decision to pursue the introduction of a civil code andprocedural reform was decided in 1847, the Wechselordnung was, in fact, a productof a Leipzig legal conference of 1847. This was also an area of law in which enoughdata for a system had been produced, and an experimental phase with the introductionof local measures had occurred earlier. In point of fact, the Wechselordnung hadbeen a long time in the making, however much 1848 may have provided the chancefor its introduction.While the Wechselordnung has long been celebrated as an advance by legalscholars and historians alike, it should come as no surprise that liberal gender protectionismalso made its national appearance here. Under Article 1.3, claims couldnot be filed against women ‘who were not engaged in business or some other trade’. 114Although implemented under the auspices of protection, this measure, in fact, servedto keep women out of the public courts. Liberals jammed through their social agendaanywhere they could. In addition, Article 1 also made clear that exchange law, whichhad heretofore been the subject of private law scholarship, was considered to be‘public law (öffentliches Recht)’. 115 This also underscores the point I have madeabout Privatrechts-Staatslehre, and how many areas of German public law first developedin the realm of private law scholarship.Following this major legal advance, a new area of legal scholarship focusedon practice quickly grew up around the new law. Eduard Siebenhaar and TheodorTauschnitz started the Archiv für deutsches Wechselrecht in 1850. Mittermaier publishedtwo articles in the first edition. In ‘Das Indossament nach dem Verfalltage:Erläuterung des §16 der Deutschen Wechselordnung’, he offered an explanation andcommentary on the law itself. 116 This was an early indication of the practice thatwas followed after the introduction of major legislation in Germany. His ‘Ueberden Einfluß höherer Gewalt auf die Regreßklage im Falle der Unterlassung wechselrechtlicherPflichten nach der deutschen Wechselordnung’, by contrast, dealtwith how a particular dispute would be interpreted under the new law. 117 In additionto these journals, larger legal textbooks were produced in the aftermath of theWechselordnung’s passage and marked the growth of specialized practice in this areaof law. These included Franz Haimerl’s Anleitung zum Studium des Wechselrechtes(1855) and Leopold Bleibtreu’s Die Lehre von den Wechseln mit Hinweisung aufbestehende Gesetze (1860). 118 Achilles Renaud’s three-volume textbook, Lehrbuchdes allgemeinen deutschen Wechselrechts (1857), was an important work in thisarea. 119