Rudolf von Jhering

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rudolf von Jhering

Rudolf von Jhering or Ihering (born August 22, 1818 in Aurich , † September 17, 1892 in Göttingen ) was a German legal scholar and primarily influenced German private law .

Life

"Kampf um's Recht", front page of the 4th edition (1874)

Parentage, youth and studies

Rudolph (as he sometimes wrote himself) Jhering (old but still common spelling: Ihering) came from a family of lawyers that has been in East Friesland since 1522 . His great-grandfather Sebastian Eberhard Jhering (1700–1759) gave the East Frisian town of Jheringsfehn its name in 1754 . His parents were Georg Albrecht Jhering from Aurich (1779–1825) and Anna Maria Schwers (1792–1861) from Leer .

Jhering studied in Heidelberg , Göttingen , Munich and from 1838 in Berlin , where he also received his doctorate in 1842 .

Research and Teaching

After professorships in Basel , Rostock , Kiel and Gießen , he came to Vienna in 1868 . There he gave his famous lecture “The Struggle for Law” , which had twelve editions in two years and was translated into 26 languages. It says about the law:

“The life of justice is a struggle - a struggle of peoples, state power, classes and individuals. Indeed, law has meaning only as an expression of conflict and it represents human effort to tame itself. But unfortunately the law has tried to counter violence and injustice by means that in a reasonable world will one day be regarded as alien and shameful. Because the law has never really tried to solve the conflicts of society, but only to alleviate them by laying down rules according to which they should be fought. "

In 1872 he accepted a call to Göttingen . His successor in Vienna was Adolf Exner . He stayed in Göttingen - refusing calls to Leipzig and Heidelberg - until his death in 1892.

Awards

In Vienna the Austrian emperor bestowed on him the hereditary nobility.

In his place of work in Göttingen, a street named after him and a memorial plaque on his house remind of his life and work. In 1894, in the 15th district of Vienna Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus the Jheringgasse named after him.

family

Rudolf von Jhering's grave in the city ​​cemetery in Göttingen .

Jhering was married several times. His first wife was Helene Hofmann († 1848). After her death, he married Ida Frölich (born September 16, 1826, † September 3, 1867), with whom he had five children. After their death, he married Luise Wilders (1840–1909), the educator of his children in Vienna, in the summer of 1869 . He had the following children:

⚭ Maria Anna Clara Belzer (* May 17, 1846 - August 22, 1906 in Sao Paulo)
⚭ Meta Johanna Buff († 1929) daughter of the physicist Heinrich Buff and his second wife Johanna Moldenhauer
  • Elise Marie Agathe Helene (* July 9, 1852; † January 23, 1920) ⚭ 1882 Victor Gabriel Ehrenberg (1851–1929) Professor Dr. iur. Dr. rer. pole. in Göttingen
  • Karl Friedrich August (December 6, 1853 - January 31, 1919)
  • Ernst Albrecht Wilhelm Heinrich (* August 4, 1856; † 1924) ⚭ Emma Hildebrand
  • Rudolf Justus Heinrich Hermann Ludwig (January 5, 1862 - March 29, 1934) ⚭ NN. Hube

plant

Rudolf von Jhering, bust by Ferdinand Hartzer (1888)

Positions of Jherings

As a special circumstance in the scientific development of Jhering his legal-theoretical “conversion” is emphasized again and again. In his (unfinished) work “The Spirit of Roman Law at the Different Stages of Its Development” , he presented a system shaped by the concept of jurisprudence according to the historical school of law . Jhering refrained from this more and more (already in the third volume of this work) in favor of a sociological consideration of law, which he elaborates in more detail (in the likewise unfinished work "The Purpose in Law" ) . In his opinion, the law serves to protect individual and social interests by coordinating them and minimizing the opportunity for their conflicts (cf. interest jurisprudence ). In the dogmatics of civil law , the terminological distinction he made in 1861 between positive and negative interest can still be found today.

His “impetus” for pre-contractual liability, the so-called culpa in contrahendo in the same article, is also considered to be significant today . The pioneering thing was not so much the separation into categories of damages, which without this terminology was already applied by Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Friedrich Mommsen . By combining the non-contractual liability for slight negligence, the liability for culpa lata was generally recognized, with the legal consequence of liability on the negative interest, he found a workable compromise solution for the bitter dispute between will theory and explanatory theory by combining the will theory with liability for the negative interest connected. The liability proposed by Jhering is less a fault liability than a guarantee liability. Jhering's solution can still be found today in Section 122 of the German Civil Code. The z. Liability for pre-contractual negligence in accordance with §§ 311, Paragraph 2, 241, 280, Paragraph 1 of the German Civil Code, which is still sometimes referred to as culpa in contrahendo, has little to do with Jhering's construct despite its designation.

Jhering's scientific standing in the second half of the 19th century comes close to that of Friedrich Carl von Savigny in the first half of the century, although the methods used by the two were quite different.

Flowers for Rudolf von Jhering, 2018
Flowers for Rudolf von Jhering, 2018
At Jhering's birthplace in Aurich
At Jhering's birthplace in Aurich

For October 6, 2018, scientists from the Legal History Department of the Universities of Groningen, Radboud University Nijmegen at the University of Leiden organized an event in Aurich in memory of Rudolf von Jhering.

Publications Jherings

Quotes Jherings

"The legislator should think like a philosopher, but speak like a peasant."

"The fight for justice is the poetry of character."

"You shall find your right in battle."

“Law is uninterrupted work, not just of state authority, but of the whole people. ... Every individual who comes in the position to have to assert his right takes on his part in this national work, contributes his little bit to the realization of the legal idea on earth. "

“Form is the sworn enemy of arbitrariness, the twin sister of freedom. For the form holds the counterbalance to the lure of freedom to licentiousness, it guides the substance of freedom in fixed paths so that it does not dissipate, run away, it strengthens it inward, protects it outward. Fixed forms are the school of discipline and order and thus freedom itself and a defense against external attacks - they can only be broken, not bent. "

literature

  • Julius Baron : Peregrine law and ius gentium. Festschrift for the fiftieth anniversary of Rudolph von Jhering's doctorate on August 6, 1892. Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1892.
  • Okko Behrends (Ed.): Rudolf von Jhering. Contributions and testimonies on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his death on September 17, 1992 . Wallstein, Göttingen 1992, ISBN 3-89244-046-8 .
  • Okko Behrends: Caspar Rudolf von Jhering . Digitized PDF . In: Biographical Lexicon for East Frisia. Aurich 1993, pp. 211-215.
  • Ulrich Falk : Jhering, Rudolph von. In: Michael Stolleis (Ed.): Juristen. A biographical lexicon. From antiquity to the 20th century . CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39330-6 , pp. 324-326.
  • Inge Hanewinkel / Nikolaus Linder: "A man with a strong sense of justice". Rudolf von Jhering's trial against his domestic servants and the fight for justice . In: Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte 42 (2020), Issue 1–2.

Web links

Commons : Rudolf von Jhering  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Rudolf von Jhering  - Sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Rudolf von Jhering  - Quotes

swell

  1. ↑ pronunciation : [ jeːrɪŋ ].
    • The spelling “Ihering” is the older and comes from the time when the capital letter J did not yet exist in German and the letter I was used instead (in addition to the use for the sound / i /). In order to write the sound / j / in front of the letter E, an H was inserted (“ihe ..”), since “ie” or “Ie” would have been misunderstood as a long / i: /. B. also "Ihena" in the old spelling of Jena .
    • Especially (but not only) since the letter J existed, the old spelling of names with an initial I is often misunderstood as the sound / i /. Ironically, the "more modern" spelling "Jh" is used instead of "Ih" e.g. E.g. in street names in different cities often misunderstood as the sound / i / by the population, since J is confusing before H and since it is known that the letter J was sometimes used instead of the letter I.
    • Meyers Großes Universallexikon (1985) only gives the spelling “Ihering” and the pronunciation [ ˈjeːrɪŋ ]. Ihering himself started to use the spelling Jhering to avoid the mispronunciation / i: /. If Ihering had been a linguist, he would not only have replaced the old-fashioned I with J when he modernized the spelling, but would have used the spelling “Jering” without the confusing and now superfluous H (corresponding to Jena instead of the older Ihena).
    • The same lexicon mentions the alternative, more modern spelling Jhering for Herbert Ihering, who was born 70 years later , but only in brackets.
  2. ↑ Rudolph Jhering, The moment of guilt in Roman private law. A Festschrift, Gießen (Verlag Emil Roth) 1867, before p. 1.
  3. ^ Rudolf von Jhering, The Struggle for Law, Vienna, 1872.
  4. ↑ Rudolf von Jhering, Culpa in contrahendo, in: Year books for the dogmatics of today's Roman and. German law (Jhering-Jahrbuch), 4th vol., 1861, 1
  5. ↑ Rudolf von Jhering, Culpa in contrahendo, in: Year books for the dogmatics of today's Roman and. German law (Jhering-Jahrbuch), 4th vol., 1861, 1
  6. ↑ Jhering Tage 2018 ( memento of October 9, 2018 in the Internet Archive ), rug.nl, accessed on October 9, 2018.
  7. ↑ Aphorism, quoted from: Wilhelm Herschel: Rechtsssicherheit und Rechtsklarheit. In: Legal journal. 1967, pp. 727-737, p. 736.
  8. ↑ Rudolf von Jhering: The fight for law. 5th edition. Manz, Wien 1877, p. 40, limited preview in the Google book search.
  9. ↑ Rudolf von Jhering: The fight for law. 5th edition. Manz, Vienna 1877, title page, limited preview in the Google book search.
  10. ↑ Rudolf von Jhering: The fight for law. 5th edition. Manz, Wien 1877, pp. 1–2, limited preview in the Google book search.
  11. ↑ Rudolf von Jhering: The spirit of Roman law at the various stages of its development. 2nd part, 2nd section. 2nd Edition. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1869, p. 456, limited preview in the Google book search.
personal data
SURNAME Jhering, Rudolf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH August 22, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Aurich
DATE OF DEATH September 17, 1892
Place of death Goettingen