Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

Toward a German Nation • 65governed. 49 These forebears in the Huguenot legal world also shaped Savigny’s legalworldview and his emphasis on self-determination. The third generation of Savignyswas known in Frankfurt’s elite legal and social circles, which included the Goethes.Amongst Christian’s closest friends were Johann Jakob Moser, and the judge of theReichskammergericht in Wetzlar, Constantin von Neurath (1739–1816), who wouldbecome Savigny’s guardian. 50 Moser, who was discussed in the last chapter, was wellrespected in German reform circles for his resistance to the attempted personal ruleof Duke Carl Eugen of Württemberg. During his confinement, Moser began to considerthat there were significant deficiencies in the natural law systems of ChristianThomasius (1655–1728) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s disciple, Christian Wolff(1679–1754). Moser, ultimately, rejected the natural law school altogether. His twelvevolumes of Neues Teutsches Staatsrecht (1766–82) enshrined him in the German legalworld as the celebrated father of German public law and also shaped Savigny’s legaland political views.Despite a relatively comfortable early childhood, where he enjoyed a close relationshipwith his mother, Savigny’s life was haunted by personal tragedies. Of Christianand Phillipine’s twelve children, nine died in their first year of life, a daughterlived only to age twelve, and their eldest son made it just to age thirteen. Only Savignysurvived to adulthood. This alone must have had a devastating impact on theyoung boy, but what is more, he lost both his parents by the age of thirteen. He wasleft, as Rudorff wrote, ‘wealthy, but totally orphaned’. 51 Without even a relative totake him in, Savigny grew up with his father’s old friend, Constantin von Neurath, ashis guardian. While he developed a warm and familial relationship with the Neuraths,he still experienced moments of great melancholy throughout his adult life. Writingto Neurath from the University of Marburg in the winter of 1798, he despaired: ‘Myheart has suffered from a sad fate, and now I live in cold commonness and indignation,without a friend in life, trying to hold myself together through diversions andwork—Oh this is as vexing as my grief.’ 52Taken together, Savigny’s Calvinist roots, his parents’ mixed-faith marriage, hisfamily’s long association with the German legal world, and the fact that he was borninto the cradle of reformist Central Europe, suggests something other than a predispositiontoward reactionary conservatism. He was perhaps more a descendant of tolerantProtestant refugees than he was an aristocrat and a man who brought reserve toa euphoric German world that was heady with a host of hasty causes by 1814. Thetragedy of having lost his entire family, by the age of thirteen, left him with no optionbut to make his own name, and in this he was scarcely better off than the sons of middlingsorts, as he was aware. Johann Dietrich Gries wrote that he admired Savigny’scharacter and ‘determination to define his own life’, during their university years. 53In reality, he had little choice; the need to define himself was a fact of his conditionas an orphan. As the prospect of war with France loomed over the horizon in 1792,Savigny’s family was dying around him, and he faced the specter of surviving oneof the greatest calamities in German history alone. Despite the considerable support