Savigny

Savigny, FRIEDRICH KARL VON, writer on jurisprudence, was born, of an old Alsatian family, on 21st February 1779 at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and studied law at Marburg and other German universities. In 1800 he began to teach as a privat-docent at Marburg; three years later he was made professor of Jurisprudence there and published a treatise on the Roman law of property, Das Recht des Besitzes (Eng. trans. 1849), that quickly won him European fame. In 1808 he was called to the chair of Jurisprudence at Landshut, but in 1810 removed to the corresponding chair at Berlin. This he held, along with several state offices, such as member of the commission for revising the code of Prussia, member of the Supreme Court of the Rhine Provinces, &c., until 1842. In that year he devoted his energies entirely to the task of reforming the laws. He resigned office in 1848, and died in Berlin on 25th October 1861. His greatest books were Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter (6 vols. 1815-31) and System des heutigen römischen Rechts (8 vols. 1840-49), and the continuation of this last, entitled Das Obligationenrecht (2 vols. 1851-53). Savigny in those works applied the principles of the historical school to the study of the historical aspects of Roman law with brilliant success. From 1815 onwards he edited in conjunction with Eichhorn and others the Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft. His writings appeared as Vermischte Schriften (5 vols. 1850). There are biographies by Arndt (1861), Rndorff (1862), Bethmann-Hollweg (1867), Ennecerus (1879), and others.