Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

Last Bastion • 193Osnabrück, here again he met Bennigsen and Johann Struve, both also suffering disciplinarytransfer. His founding of the National Association with Bennigsen resultedin another disciplinary transfer to Aurich in 1852, a place Bennigsen described asthe worst possible post for a civil servant. 19 Undaunted, as the constitutional debatereached full steam, Planck’s continuing liberal agitation included a speech, publishedin the Landtagsblatt, in which he openly criticized noble privilege and demanded‘equality and freedom of all the people in every way’. 20 Condemning it as a ‘thechamber of privilege’, Planck reported that he was ‘no admirer of the composition ofthe First Chamber’. 21 Here, ‘a small sector of the people, with great privileges, hasseparated themselves from the rest of the people, and as a result, encounters hostilityand hatred’. 22 ‘Their interest is to create a more favorable environment for thepreservation of their existing privileges and this is the essence of the conservativeelement in the First Chamber.’ 23 Comparing the struggle of the German people tothe English Revolution, Planck issued the warning that opened this chapter, and it isworth repeating here.Presently, our conditions indeed are different: It will not be determined by war and powerfulweapons, but the substance of our struggle against each other is no less great. Onlythe historic law, what we can all struggle to extract from it, remains and it will remain[witness to our free spirit]. The law: no greater ideal can be used to reach the victory. 24The speech bore for him the immediate fruit of yet another disciplinary transfer toDannenberg, where he would remain until 1857.It was in not until 1857 that Planck returned to the city of Hanover, which wasagain a lively legal community and one with many returning liberal lawyers, includingBennigsen. This, however, was not the end of his disciplinary transfers, and hecontinued to be active in the liberal movement, as I discussed in Chapter 4. A yearafter the founding of the North German Confederation in 1867, Planck was appointedjudge of the Superior Court in Göttingen and in 1868, judge of the Appeals Courtin Celle. From Celle in 1869, he narrowly defeated the Social Democratic candidatefor a seat in the North German Reichstag. It was during this period that he workedon the commission to draft a procedure code for the North German Confederationwith Gneist, Leonhardt, Lasker, Johannes Miquel and others. 25 In 1871 he waselected to the national Reichstag, and it was his active support that helped carrythe Lex Miquel-Lasker motion in 1873, which formally amended the constitution toextend full legislative competency to the Reich in civil law. 26In 1874, Planck was appointed to the first BGB drafting commission and chief editorof the family law. Of the other members of the commission, Planck was the most publicfigure and the only person who would sit on the second commission as well. It wasPlanck who defended the first draft against Otto v. Gierke’s fiery criticism. By 1890, heemerged as the most influential editor on the second commission, expanding his reachwell beyond family law to become the Code’s lead editor. Through the formidable