Background
Karl Salomo Zachariae von Lingenthal was born on the 14th of September 1769 at Meissen in Saxony, the son of a lawyer.
Karl Salomo Zachariae von Lingenthal was born on the 14th of September 1769 at Meissen in Saxony, the son of a lawyer.
He received his early educat ion at the famous public school of St Afra in that town. He afterwards studied philosophy, history, mathematics and law at the university of Leipzig.
In 1792 he went to Wittenberg University as tutor to one of the counts of Lippe, and continued his legal studies.
In 1794 he became privatdozent, lecturing on canon law, in 1798 extraordinary professor, and 1802 ordinary professor of feudal law. From that time to his death in 1843, with the exception of a short period in which public affairs occupied him, he poured out a succession of works covering the whole field of jurisprudence, and was a copious contributor to periodicals. In 1807 he received a call to Heidelberg, then beginning its period of splendour as a school of law. There, resisting many calls to Gottingen, Berlin and other universities, he remained until his death. In 1820 he took his seat, as representative of his university, in the upper j house of the newly constituted parliament of Baden. Though Zachariae's true history is in his writings, which are extremely numerous and multifarious. They deal with almost every branch of jurisprudence; they are philosophical, historical and practical, and relate to Roman, Canon, German, French and English law. The first book of much consequence which he published was Die Einheit des Stoats und der Kirche mit Riicksicht auf die Deutsche Reichsverfassung (1797), a work on the relations of church and state, with special reference to the constitution of the empire, which displayed the writer's power of analysis and his skill in making a complicated set of facts appear to be deductions from a few principles. In 1805 appeared Versuch einer allgemeinen Hermeneutik des Rechts; and in 1806 Die Wissenschaft der Gesetzgebung, an attempt to find a new theoretical basis for society in place of the opportunist politics which had led to the cataclysm of the French Revolution. This basis he seemed to discover in something resembling Bcntham's utilitarianism. Zachariae's last work of importance was Vierzig Bucher vom Staate (1839 - 42), to which his admirers point as his enduring monument. It has been compared to Montesquieu's L'Esprit des lois, and covers 110 small part of the field of Buckle's first volume of the History of Civilization. But though it contains proof of vast erudition and many original ideas as to the future of the state and of law, it lacks logical sequence, and is, consequently, full of contradictions. Its fundamental theory is, that the state had its origin, not in a contract (Rousseau- Kant), but in the consciousness of a legal duty. What Machiavelli was to the Italians and Montesquieu to the French, Zachariae aspired to become to the Germans; but he lacked their patriotic inspiration, and so failed to exercise any permanent influence on the constitutional law of his country. Among other important works of Zachariae are his Staatsrecht, and his treatise on the Code Napoleon, of which several French editions were published, and which w'as translated into Italian. Zachariae edited with Karl Joseph Mittermaier the Kritische Zeitschrifl fur Rechlswissenschaft und Gesetzgebung des Auslandes, and the introduction W'hich he vvrote illustrates his w'idc reading and his constant desire for new light upon old problems. Though Zachariae's Works have been superseded, they were in their day epoch-making, and they have been superseded by books which, without them, could not have been written.
(This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 18...)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
He himself prepared many reforms - notably in the harsh criminal code - he was, by instinct and conviction, conservative and totally opposed to the violent democratic spirit which dominated the second chamber, and brought it into conflict with the grand-duke and the German federal government.
He had married in 1811, but his wife died four years later, leaving him a son, Karl Eduard.
