Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

–5–A Century of PromiseEheliches Güterrecht, Women’s Wealth andIndependence in Nineteenth-Century GermanyIn many ways women were worth less than men. 1—Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, 1828The legal measures that were introduced across German-speaking Europe in the thirdquarter of the century marked an important transition stage in the history of constitutionaltransformation. As I suggested in the last chapter, it is perhaps better to see thebig revolutionary event of 1848 to 1849 as merely one event within a much larger seriesof political meetings that took place in these years. While the unexpected eventsof 1830 and 1848 were opportunities for advance and, in fact, resulted in importantnew state constitutions, because constitutional transformation was understood to bea long-range process, these events did not make or break the course of political revisionin Central Europe as much as post-Second World War studies argued. Alreadyon the heels of 1849, the Hanover Prozeßordnung was made law in 1850, and, by1865, a uniform civil code was introduced in Saxony. These measures and others inthe German states show that the practice of constitutional transformation had begunto advance. However exclusive, liberal conceptions of participation were also advancingalongside the leveling of distinctions between the male bourgeoisie and thehereditary nobility. Nowhere was this more evident than in the family law of theBürgerliches Gesetzbuch für das Königreich Sachsen of 1863. On the one hand, it metliberal demands for separation of church and state; on the other, it also imposed thesex guardianship that was rigorously sanctioned by Grimm, Mittermaier, Beselerand the Germanists generally. As I have shown, Germanist constitutional theorymade the expansion of male liberty, based on private property ownership, dependenton the subordination of women.The question remains, however. Were women worth less, as Jacob Grimm sostridently argued? In this chapter, the realities of nineteenth-century marital propertyrelations are examined in order to juxtapose existing conditions against the regressiveimpact, not only of the state-level reforms we have already examined, but withan eye toward the BGB. In no other area of law was legal particularism greater