Otto Friedrich von Gierke

Otto Friedrich von Gierke (born Jan. 11, 1841, Stettin, Prussia—died Oct. 10, 1921, Berlin) was a legal philosopher who was a leader of the Germanist school of historical jurisprudence in opposition to the Romanist theoreticians of German law (e.g., Friedrich Karl von Savigny). An incomplete knowledge of his work led some advocates of a pluralistic, decentralized political system to claim him as their spokesman.

Gierke was a professor at Breslau (1871–84), Heidelberg (1884–87), and Berlin (1887–1921). He criticized the first draft (1888) of a new German civil law code for what he considered the gratuitous addition of Roman law elements to an indigenous Germanic content that was sufficient in itself. This controversy inspired his Deutsches Privatrecht, 3 vol. (1895–1917; “German Private Law”).

Gierke believed that the ideal state was a synthesis of Genossenschaften (cooperative associations) and Herrschaften (groups subordinated to an individual imperious will). Always a patriotic German, he thought that the Reich of Bismarck had nearly achieved that synthesis. His early preference for decentralized government influenced his pupil Hugo Preuss, chief draftsman of the German (Weimar Republic) Constitution of 1919. But Gierke, who had grown more authoritarian, attacked the document for its decentralizing tendency.

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His emphasis on the voluntary nature of some associations had considerable effect on pluralist theory, especially in Great Britain, where his increasing desire for national unity was overlooked. The noted English jurist Frederic William Maitland’s Political Theories of the Middle Age (1900) was a partial translation of Gierke’s longest work, Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, 4 vol. (1868–1913; “The German Law of Associations”).