Eduard Gans

Eduard Gans (born March 22, 1798, Berlin—died May 5, 1839, Berlin) was a major German jurist and, for a time, a potent force in the revival of studies of Jewish culture.

The son of prosperous Jewish parents, Gans studied law in Berlin, Göttingen, and Heidelberg (Ph.D., 1820), where he became a disciple of the philosopher Hegel. In 1819, in collaboration with Leopold Zunz, later a Judaic scholar, and Moses Moser, a merchant and mathematician, Gans founded and became president of the Society for Jewish Culture and Science, which attempted to demonstrate Jewish worth and bring about a rapprochement between Christians and Jews. The society was dissolved in 1824, but not without having initiated some important studies of Jewish culture, such as Zunz’s biography of the great Jewish commentator Rashi (1040–1105) and Gans’s analysis of the Mosaic law of inheritance.

In 1820 Gans became a lecturer on law in Berlin, but his religious faith ruled out his holding high-level positions. He converted to Christianity in 1825 and the following year was appointed professor of law at the University of Berlin. Gans’s major work is Das Erbrecht in weltgeschichtlicher Entwicklung, 4 vol. (1824–35; “Historical Development of Inheritance Law”); his decision to write a historical work may have been influenced by the number of historical works in Hegel’s corpus. Gans’s treatise is valuable not only for its extensive survey of facts but also for its presentation of a general theory on the slow evolution of legal principles.

The Prussian government disapproved of Gans’s liberal political views and banned his Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der letzten fünfzig Jahre (1833–34; “Lectures on the History of the Last Fifty Years”). His other works include studies of Roman civil law and an analysis of the basis of property. Gans edited the Philosophie der Geschichte (“Philosophy of History”) in Hegel’s Werke, to which he also wrote a preface.