Making of a German Constitution : a Slow Revolution

70 • The Making of a German ConstitutionRechtswissenschaft (1800) with Paul Johann Anselm Feuerbach (1775–1833), wasthe earliest critic of the imposition of Code civil. 75 Echoing a familiar charge by 1809,Feuerbach simmered in a letter to Savigny: ‘If we consider the example of the ancientworld unfolding before our very eyes, a legislation like the French [Code], which hasbeen forced on Germany, can only lead to literary barbarism and instead of allowingthem to seek perfection, will sink into geistloser Mechanismus.’ 76 Jacob Grimm(1785–1863) ‘hated’ the French law, which threatened to destroy German jurisprudence.77 Resentment simply boiled over in the comments of Stein’s mentor, AugustRehberg (1752–1836): ‘Geld und Gut, which are the booty of foreign armies, one canget over’, but the French civil law posed too high a cost by threatening to ‘deprivethe German nation of what people have in the heart and sentiment’. 78 This feelingresonated on the ground as well. ‘What should our lesson be’ read an 1815 articlein Joseph Görres’s Rheinischer Merkur: ‘Ein Reich, Ein Recht! That should becomethe aim and bond of all German societies against the Undeutsch which threatened usfrom outside.’ 79 The Freiheitskriege (1813–1814), as Savigny’s biographer Rudorffwrote, also were ‘the struggle of the whole nation’ against the ‘foreign Code’. 80Katherine Aaslestad’s research on Hamburg, where the Freiheitskriege began,also offers some indication of how the imposition of the French law codes set off resistance.While she focuses on the severe economic consequences of Napoleon’s banon trade with England, the loss of local autonomy was also a significant factor. TheFrench replaced Hamburg’s constitution and governing bodies, as she points out, andthe removal of Hamburg’s coat of arms from all public buildings, newspapers, andpublic notices; and replacement with the imperial eagle ‘symbolically underscored therepublic’s lost independence’. 81 Hamburg’s patriots, as Aaslestad writes, sought, firstand foremost, ‘to preserve and liberate their Vaterstadt from oppressive French rule’and ‘to recover the city’s republican constitution, independence, and autonomy’. 82As soon as Napoleon was defeated in 1814, Hamburg’s traditional governing bodiesand constitution were restored immediately. 83The visceral reaction against the imposition of French law also was a reflectionof the continuing identification of sovereignty with jurisdiction, which had thrivedfor centuries, and of the strength of local self-governing principles that remainedorganized around law. Savigny wrote scornfully, after the wars, that the ‘perniciousand ruinous’ Code civil was meant for German ‘destruction’. 84 Echoing Burkeansentiments, he also underscored that it had carried France ‘backwards’ rather thanforward in the revolutionary path. 85 It was the product of despotism, and the fruitof a failed experiment in political revision. ‘The Revolution’, Savigny charged, had‘annihilated, together with the old constitution, a great part of law; both, rather froma blind ire impulse against everything established, and with extravagant senselessexpectations of an undefined future, than in the hope of any definite improvement.’ 86The French experiment, above all else, was a failure, which did not result in a stableand durable constitutional polity. ‘As soon as Napoleon had subjected everything toa military despotism’, Savigny wrote, ‘he greedily held fast that part of the Revolution