On the “Loom” of Béni Grosschmid. “Extra-temporal” Hungarian Private Law Made of Historical and Modern, Traditional and Foreign Rules

Abstract

The ”immortal” Béni Grosschmid, an outstanding Hungarian jurist of the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, still shapes Hungarian private civil law: his ideas and arguments are still present in the selection of new solutions for the development of law and legislation. His works, which have lost none of their relevance in the almost a century since they were first written, are often quoted in the private law literature of the 21st century. The paper basically argues that Grosschmid’s enduring genius can be taken up today, and that it provides answers to the questions of our time, because the socio-economic requirements and circumstances that shaped Grosschmid’s ideas are very similar to the factors that drive Hungarian private law today. After all, the dominance of the socialist conception of law can be compared in its effects to the gaping effect of the abolition of law in 1848 and the consequent intrusion of the foreign (then Austrian) legal system, while the globalization of the world economy and the increasing complexity of financial and economic processes present the legislator with similar challenges as at the end of the 19th century. Perhaps the only difference is that today the third factor (the need to restore national unity) has been replaced by the need to balance, to find a space of autonomy for national laws in the melting pot of European and global legal systems: to harmonize with them and preserve their own character at the same time.

Keywords

• grosschmid
• private law
• conservative conception
• inheritance law
• codification
• constructive jurisprudential method