Westen im Osten

Abstract

Western European legal historiography deplores the 19th century as the age of destruction of the Romanrooted ius commune by national codes. In reality the French code civil, the Austrian ABGB and the German Pandectist jurisprudence effected rather a relative unification of private law. In the same way, French constitutionalism as well as the administrative and court system spread throughout the West. This wave of law reform also rolled over Eastern Europe, until then a patchwork of customary law. In South-Eastern Europe, previously under Byzantine influence, the Serbian Civil Code of 1844 followed the Austrian ABGB, while the Rumanian Code of 1864 followed the French code civil. All over the region the liberal Belgian constitution of 1831 was very influential. Bohemia and Poland, both of them forming the eastern periphery of the Central-European empires, simply had their law imposed upon them. Hungary and Russia, on the other hand, modernized their law mainly by means of German Pandectist jurisprudence. In this way the patchwork of eastern customary law was harmonized. The further circulation of western legal models in the interwar period completed the relative unification of continental European law. The communist rule left these common legal bases of West and East to a large extent intact.

Keywords

• MPIeR