Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

–7–Discontent in the Bürgerliche Society 1900–1933Exclusion and Popular ResentmentIt hardly seems necessary to point out how many passages in ancient writings, how manyphenomena of matriarchal cultures were illuminated ... by Tacitus’ remarks about the farreachingimplications of sisterhood as the basis of the Germanic family. 1—Johann Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, 1861In the January 1900 issue of Das Recht, celebrating the BGB, Heinrich Dernbergwas quoted encouraging Germans to ‘hold on to the continuity of the civil law’ because‘under its umbrella and protection, the German people will be liberated togrow free and powerful, effecting social progress’. 2 ‘Never fading youth’, as Gierkeextolled, ‘in these changing times, our people will only be successful in winningcultural renewal and inner peace again and again if we hold true to our own laws’.‘With the achievement of legal unity’, he was quoted, ‘we can abandon the last century,because the new law—a truly German Volksrecht—will stand up to the greattask of the dawning century.’ 3 No comments were more telling of the BGB’s politicalimplications, however, than those that appeared in the Deutsche Juristen-Zeitung on1 January 1900: ‘On this New Year’s Eve, Germany’s old laws depart from our livesand the new Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch comes into its rule. Le roi est mort, vive le roi!Celebrating we will welcome the new sovereign of our legal life’. 4 In the popularpress, a New Year’s Eve ball held by the Munich Bar Association in honor of theBGB’s introduction was covered by the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten. 5 ‘The greatday on which German legal unification shall take place is standing before the door,’the Hannoverische Rundschau reported enthusiastically, and ‘now we will possess aunified German Civil Code ... written in the German language for the whole Germannation.’ 6 ‘By means of legal unity’, read the Hamburger Nachrichten, ‘the work ofthe German people for political unification has found its essential completion.’ 7However much these voices of jubilation dominated the national press coverage,they did not echo the sentiments of the many Germans who found themselvesfacing discrimination and exclusion under the new majority rule constitution of theDeutsche Reich, namely women, workers, gays and the ‘mad’. As even Planck wasaware, most women viewed the BGB as ‘a system of tyrannical male despotism overwomen’. 8 August Bebel saw it as the ‘Götterdämmerung of the bourgeois world’,