Egon White

Egon Weiß (born July 1, 1880 in Brno , † February 1, 1953 in Innsbruck ) was an Austrian legal scholar and Greek studies specialist.

Life

Egon Weiß, the son of a businessman, attended high school in Arnau (today: Hostinné), where he discovered his enthusiasm for antiquity at an early age and his teachers also encouraged his desire to study classical philology . After the early death of his father, however, Egon Weiß decided to study law for pragmatic reasons. He studied (after military service in 1899) at the Karl Ferdinand University in Prague (with Ivo Pfaff ), where he passed the first and second state exams in 1902 and 1904 (each with distinction). In 1905, a scholarship enabled him to deepen his studies for a semester at the University of Leipzig . There he came into contact with the legal historian and papyrologist Ludwig Mitteis , who shaped him the most as an academic teacher and gave him rich inspiration for his research work. Back in Prague, White was promoted to Dr. iur. doctorate , passed the third state examination and began working at the commercial court. On March 16, 1909, he passed the judge's examination. Shortly afterwards (1910) he completed his habilitation in Prague with a study on ancient lien . His marriage on December 12, 1912 resulted in two daughters.

For a long time, Weiss carried out scientific work alongside the judicial service. He dealt with both legal history and applicable law. So he presented numerous legal editions and worked on Heinrich Kling's commentary on the general Austrian civil code . Because of his expertise, he was appointed by the Ministry of Justice of Czechoslovakia as a member of the State Council after 1918 , which was supposed to draft a new civil code.

From 1919 white worked as an associate professor of Roman and civil law at the Karl Ferdinand University. In 1933 he was appointed full professor. In the same year he was made a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens and an honorary doctorate in philosophy from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens . At the University of Prague, Weiß was increasingly drawn into political tensions, some of which were directed against Germans and others against Jews. In 1938 he was removed from office due to his Jewish origins and lived as a private scholar in the following years. He continued his research to the best of his ability, but giving up teaching made him difficult. After the end of World War II (1945), he was, like all Germans from the Czech Republic reported . In doing so he lost all of his possessions; The loss of his library and a few manuscripts particularly pained him. He initially stayed with his younger daughter in Styria .

From 1946 Egon Weiß taught and researched at the University of Innsbruck , initially as an honorary lecturer, later as an honorary professor. He died on February 1, 1953.

His legal historical research focus included Greek private law, from which he derived the foundations of Roman law. From his main work, Greek private law based on comparative law , only the first volume (1923) appeared, the second was lost during the war years in Prague. Other fundamental monographs were his studies on lien (1909–1910), the basics of Roman legal history (1936) and the institutions of Roman private law (1937, 2nd edition 1949). In addition, white wrote numerous essays, reviews and lexicon articles. His contributions to the real encyclopedia of classical antiquity (RE) appeared from 1909 to 1956, also during the period of the teaching ban.

Fonts (selection)

• Lien investigations. Section 1: Containing contributions to Roman and Hellenistic liens . Weimar 1909 (habilitation thesis)
• Lien investigations. Section 2: Containing contributions to the history of dogma, then to Austrian, Saxon and Prussian legislation . Weimar 1910
• Studies on the Roman legal sources . Leipzig 1914. Reprinted Aalen 1985
• The civil procedure legislation of the Czechoslovak Republic with explanations . Brno a. a. 1921. 2nd edition, edited by Paul Thorsch 1930
• Memories of Ludwig Mitteis . Leipzig 1922
• Greek private law based on comparative law. Part 1: General Lessons . Leipzig 1923. Reprinted Aalen 1965
• Civil law. Part 1: The general civil code with selected decisions . Prague 1924. Revised 3rd edition 1933
• The bankruptcy legislation, explained by the case law . Reichenberg 1924
• with Richard Dočekal and Karel Jadrníček: The Civil Code for the Czechoslovak Republic: Translation of the draft commission for the revision of the ABGB . Reichenberg 1925
• Commercial law, the commercial code and the ancillary laws under commercial law . Prague 1925. 2nd, continued and modified edition 1931
• Civil law. Part 2: The civil law laws outside the General Civil Code with selected decisions . Prague 1927
• The procedural law. Part 1: The jurisdiction norm with explanations and a presentation of the case law . Prague 1928
• The procedural law. Part 2: The civil procedural order with the introductory law with explanation and a presentation of the case law . Prague 1928
• The procedural law. Part 3: Ancillary civil procedural laws . Prague 1928
• The procedural law. Part 4: The introductory regulation . Prague 1929
• The procedural law. Part 5: The procedure except for disputes with presentation of case law and explanation . Prague 1931
• The bankruptcy, compensation and avoidance legislation of March 27, 1931 . Reichenberg 1931
• The land register law . Reichenberg 1933
• The trade regulations . Prague 1934
• Czechoslovak bankruptcy, settlement and avoidance rules and their introductory law . Prague 1936
• Fundamentals of Roman legal history . Reichenberg 1936
• Institutions of Roman private law as an introduction to the current private law system . Prague 1937. 2nd edition, Stuttgart and Basel 1949

literature

• Sibylle Bolla : In memoriam Egon Weiß . In: Anzeiger für die Altarwissenschaft . Volume 6 (1953), Col. 65f.
• Sibylle von Bolla: Egon Weiß, † February 1, 1953 . In: Journal of the Savigny Foundation for Legal History. Romance Department . Volume 70 (1953), pp. 518-521
• Fritz Schwind : Egon Weiß (1880–1953) . In: Studia et documenta historiae et iuris . Volume 19 (1953), pp. 449-451
• Rafael Taubenschlag : Egon Weiss . In: Iura . Volume 4 (1953), pp. 553-557
• Rafael Taubenschlag: In memoriam Egon Weiss . In: The Journal of Juristic Papyrology . Volume 7-8 (1953-1954), pp. 25-28
• Walter Doscocil: Egon Weiss. A commemoration for his 90th birthday . In: Bohemia . Volume 11 (1970), p. 418-432

Web links

• Literature and other media by and about Egon Weiß in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic
• Literature by Egon Weiß in the catalog of the German National Library