Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

242 • The Making of a German Constitutionrejected the Code’s marriage law for ideological reasons, the great mass of men andwomen were disaffected by the realities of their family life, leaving them perhapsmiserable in the factory and at home. In the case of women, this involved completesubmission to the Vormundschaft of their husbands, including the loss of controlover their property and children. Ordinary men were disgruntled over the BGB’sprovisions for divorce, which, in reality, made divorce impossible, as well as bindingobligation to provide for wives and children whether they were present or not. Thiswidespread unhappiness in marriage, which liberals had long viewed as the beginningof the family—the basic foundation of society—alongside unhappy family life,contributed to instability at the grassroots and did not bode well for the future. Theseconditions, aggravated by the stress brought on by the First World War, also contributedto the stormy demise of the Kaiserreich.The potency of Gegenpolitik came in the fact that so many people were disaffectedby the BGB, and the fact that discontent was held in common at all levels ofGerman society, from Conservatives to Social Democrats, to Left Liberals, to a greatmass of women and ordinary German men. The problem, however, was that thesegroups never coalesced into a united front. Gegenpolitik was marked by atomization,with every excluded group taking its own road to inclusion.While the Weimar Constitution changed some of these conditions on paper, itsprovisions were somewhat empty, because the BGB remained in effect. 189 The WeimarRepublic was a social democratic republic wobbling on top of the structures ofthe bürgerliche republic. Moreover, there existed a lingering, exclusive liberalismin the official areas of the legal bureaucracy. As the files of the Justizministeriumreveal, bureaucrats continued the practice of ignoring letters from women. Frau KäteEdlich wrote a total of eight letters to the Justizministerium on the question of divorcebetween 1929 and 1930. 190 Herr Oegg, who had worked on the family law committeewith Gottlieb Planck, replied only once with a two-sentence letter. 191 In contrast,he seemed very eager to aid the Kaufmann, Hans Petersen, in his bid for control ofhis wife’s property. In November of 1928, Emil Petersen wrote in on behalf of hisbrother, Hans. Apparently, Hans had married while out of the country and had signeda prenuptial agreement, giving up any rights to the management and usufruct of hiswife’s property. Emil inquired as to whether there was any way for his brother to getout of the prenuptial agreement. 192 Oegg promptly replied and explained that the agreementwas not valid unless it was registered in a Güterrechtsregister of the Amtsgerichtof the husband’s residence. ‘If the husband does not have a residence in Germany,as in the case at hand’, he wrote, ‘the contract cannot be registered.’ 193 Although hesaid that he could not predict the outcome in court, in so many words, he explainedthat the contract was not valid. 194 Hans Petersen later wrote to Oegg directly and theircorrespondence continued as Oegg, basically, walked him through gaining the rightsof management and usufruct he had originally signed away. 195 It was this type ofunderhanded social control and sociopolitical hypocrisy that also contributed to thedecline of Weimar in the end and left Germany open to Nazism in 1933.