Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

240 • The Making of a German Constitutionto the Bundesrat and Reichstag, tellingly titled No Taxation without DemocraticMarriage Laws. 167Despite the major rupture of 1918 and the Weimar Constitution of 1919, theBGB remained on the books and continued to serve as the basis of law along withthe entire legal edifice, which was the fruit of the Bürgerliche Revolution. OrdinaryGermans, therefore, found no relief from these conditions under the new constitutionand political arrangements. In a November 1921 letter, Paul Breuning wrote ofthe desperate suffering of his brother Max, who had owned a small bicycle andengine shop in Berlin. In 1909, Max married and lived for one year in a ‘very badmarriage’ until he decided to leave his wife in 1910. 168 His wife of one year filed amotion for support against him in a Berlin court, and the court ordered him to paya monthly sum of 40 Marks, a sizeable amount in 1910. ‘This crime’, Paul Breuningwrote ‘led to my brother’s flight.’ 169 ‘Now’, he bitterly reported, ‘my brother livesin Russia and writes me more and more letters of despair ... and I must help himout.’ 170 He respectfully requested help for the ‘poor German in Russia’. 171 Again, thestate offered no recourse, and the reply letter merely suggested that he consult the‘Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch’. 172In 1918, Anton Linder wrote with resentment of the dissolution of his ownmarriage, placing blame squarely on the BGB’s divorce provisions. For twentythreeyears he was married to a ‘completely penniless’ woman, contributing hisentire income to the welfare of his family and the upbringing of their four children.‘The wife’, he wrote ‘quarrelsome and argumentative, made demands incessantlythat exceeded my income and I could never catch up.’ 173 Making matters worse, hehad to take responsibility for his mother-in-law, and he complained that his childrenrefused him respect and obedience. All of this became the source of conflict and unpleasantscenes, and his wife simply left him without notice. The court later deniedhis petition for restoration of the marital community and slapped him with a bill of950 Marks for the cost of the suit. Moreover, the court obliged him to pay the cost ofliving for, not only his wife, but all four of his children. ‘Now’, he wrote grievously,‘in my old age, I have earned in substance only disappointments and ingratitude.’ 174Linder pointed out that these conditions made remarriage impossible for him, whichhe perceived as the loss of a basic right. Fault as the basis of divorce, he demanded,should be done away with, so that people in ‘unhappy marriages’ may more easilyobtain divorce. 175Herr A. Wilken recounted the difficulties of obtaining a divorce in his letter to theJustizministerium of 5 December 1921. ‘In a few words’, he wrote, ‘married in 1893for the sake of decency.’ 176 There was ‘permanent discord’ between the spouses, witha ‘totale Ehezerrüttung’ in 1910 and separation in 1912. After ten years of divorceproceedings, what he referred to as ‘der Kriegszeit’, the couple was still not permittedto divorce. ‘Shattered marriages’, he protested, ‘are no longer marriages and[people] should be allowed to divorce on legal as well as moral grounds!’ 177 ‘In my