Aegidius Rudolph Nicolaus Arntz

Aegidius Rudolph Nicolaus Arntz (born September 1, 1812 in Kleve ; † August 23, 1884 in Brussels ) was a German legal scholar who taught as a professor in Brussels. During the revolution of 1848/49 he was a Prussian member of parliament.

Life

His father was a doctor and was originally from Holland before he settled in Kleve. The son attended high school there and began to study law in Munich from 1830. There he joined the Germania fraternity . Because of unrest at the university, he and all other foreign students were expelled and the fraternity dissolved. Arntz then studied in Jena , Bonn , Heidelberg and again in Bonn. In Bonn he became a member of the Marcomannia fraternity in 1832. In addition to lectures in law, he also attended cameralistic, philosophical, historical and literary lectures.

After the Frankfurt Wachensturm , an investigation into high treason was initiated against him, as well as against numerous other fraternity members . He was an ausculator in Kleve in 1834 when he was about to be arrested in his parents' house, but managed to escape across the nearby border. He was wanted list and in 1837 a judgment was the Berlin Chamber Court that him in absentia to fifteen years imprisonment condemned. In Liège he continued his legal studies and was awarded a Dr. jur. PhD. Then he worked for a lawyer. Soon he was appointed to the chair for pandects at the newly founded University of Brussels.

When Friedrich Wilhelm IV ascended to the throne , those convicted in absentia were excluded from the general amnesty issued in celebration of the latter. They were told to return and surrender to the king's grace. Arntz accepted this and was pardoned in 1841. After that, he was able to visit his family, which he did frequently afterwards.

After the beginning of the March Revolution he was elected a member of the Prussian National Assembly in Kleve , took an active part in the negotiations in the committees and was twice in talks as minister. He counted himself on the left without completely giving up his independence. In a brochure, he denied the government's right to move the meeting to Brandenburg. Like other members of the opposition, he stayed in Berlin and approved the tax refusal campaign. After the dissolution of the National Assembly, he was elected to the second chamber of the Landtag . There he spoke out against the imposed constitution . After the Chamber had also been dissolved, he returned to his chair in Brussels. He had previously married Jeanne Petronille Bichon, the daughter of a Dutch hotelier living there, in Kleve.

In Brussels he now took over a professorship for civil law , but also read about natural law , constitutional law and international law . In addition, he worked as a lawyer and advisor on commercial law issues and enjoyed a high level of trust in industry and business. He was also called in as an advisor on political issues. For example, he wrote an opinion on the Belgian Association Africaine or prepared a constitution for the Belgian Congo area. In 1876 he was appointed a member of the Belgian Academy and in 1877 a member of the Institute for International Law . He later became its vice-president. He was significantly involved in the discussions of this institute and the editing of the institute's magazine "Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée".

The main scientific work is his textbook on French civil law: "Cours de droit civil français, comprenant l'explication des lois qui ont modifié le code civil en Belgique." The work was first published in 1860 and 1875 in two volumes. A second edition appeared in four volumes in 1879/80. He was also an author for various legal journals. Among them was "La Belgique judiciaire, which he co-founded in 1842."

Individual evidence

1. ↑ physical description in the Official Journal Koblenz Digitalisat

Works

• The right of the National Assembly: the coup d'état of November 9 and the responsibility of the ministers. Berlin, 1848 digitized

literature

• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I Politicians, Part 1: A – E. Heidelberg 1996, pp. 28-29.
• Raimund Schramm:  Arntz, Aegidius Rudolph Nicolaus . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 46, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1902, pp. 55-58.