Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg (born 8 April 1795 in Frankfurt am Main, died 14 July 1877 on Rheineck castle

Rheineck

Rheineck is a municipality in the Wahlkreis of Rheintal in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland.-History:Rheineck is first mentioned about 1163 as castellum Rinegge. In 1218 it was mentioned as Rinegg...

 near Niederbreisig

Bad Breisig

Bad Breisig is a town in the district of Ahrweiler, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the Rhine, approx. 15 km south-east of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler....

 on the Rhine) was a German jurist

Jurist

A jurist or jurisconsult is a professional who studies, develops, applies, or otherwise deals with the law. The term is widely used in American English, but in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries it has only historical and specialist usage...

 and Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

n politician.

Life

Bethmann-Hollweg was born in Frankfurt am Main as the son of the banker Johann Jakob Bethmann-Hollweg and Susanne Elisabeth Bethmann

Bethmann family

The Bethmann family has been remarkable for the high proportion of its males who succeeded at mercantile or financial endeavors. This family trait began in medieval northern Germany and continued with the Bethmann bank which Johann Philipp Bethmann and Simon Moritz Bethmann founded in 1748 and...

. As a child he was tutored by Karl Ritter

Karl Ritter

Karl Ritter was a German diplomat, ambassador to Brazil, a member of the Nazi Party, Special Envoy to the Munich Agreement, a senior official in the Foreign Office during World War II, and convicted war criminal in the Ministries Trial.-Life:Karl Ritter was a graduate in law, and was appointed to...

 and Georg Friedrich Grotefend

Georg Friedrich Grotefend

Georg Friedrich Grotefend was a German epigraphist.-Life:He was born at Hann. Münden and died in Hanover. He was educated partly in his native town, partly at Ilfeld, where he remained till 1795, when he entered the university of Göttingen, and there became the friend of Heyne, Tychsen and Heeren...

.
Later he studied at Göttingen University, and then Frederick William University in Berlin, where he was especially influenced by Friedrich Karl von Savigny. While still a student, he participated in the deciphering of the Veronese jurist Gaius

Gaius (jurist)

Gaius was a celebrated Roman jurist. Scholars know very little of his personal life. It is impossible to discover even his full name, Gaius or Caius being merely his personal name...

 discovered by Niebuhr

Barthold Georg Niebuhr

Barthold Georg Niebuhr was a Danish-German statesman and historian who became Germany's leading historian of Ancient Rome and a founding father of modern scholarly historiography. Classical Rome caught the admiration of German thinkers...

.

On New Year's Eve, 1817, he was transformed by a conversion experience into a born-again Christian. In the Christlich-deutsche Tischgesellschaft of Adolf von Thadden-Trieglaff, an exclusive society restricted to ethnic German Christians from birth, he met the brothers Leopold, Ernst Ludwig

Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach

Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach was a conservative Prussian judge, politician, and editor. He was the son of Carl Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach and the brother of Ludwig Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach....

 and Otto von Gerlach

Otto von Gerlach

Karl Friedrich Otto von Gerlach was a German theologian and pastor from Berlin.He was the youngest of five children of Carl Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach , first Lord Mayor of Berlin, and Agnes von Raumer , and brother of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach and Ludwig Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach .Otto von...

 as well as Ernst Senfft von Pilsach and conversed with the Crown Prince, who would later, as king, elevate him to nobility. In 1819 he attained his habilitation

Habilitation

Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis based on independent...

 in Berlin and became a tenured professor there in 1823; from 1827 to 1828 he also served briefly as Rektor of his alma mater. He specialized in the history of civil legal procedure and made many pioneering contributions demonstrating a deep grasp of his subject and an independence from received doctrine, and showing the value of the historical viewpoint. He had an ongoing concern to reconcile his religious convictions with the rest of his life. He stayed away from politics and was repelled by the persecution of the so-called demagogues.
From 1829 he taught at Bonn University. The beneficial influences of this small community permitted him to reconcile his religious and professional lives and understand the moral foundations of the law. In 1840, on the death of Frederick William III, who had much appreciated his work, he was elevated to the hereditary nobility

Nobility

Nobility is a social class which possesses more acknowledged privileges or eminence than members of most other classes in a society, membership therein typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles, or may be...

. In 1842, he was appointed as the government authority at Bonn and as university trustee. Now his primary concern became the welfare of the university. This represented a departure from his life of academic research, and gave him more access to the government in Berlin, and he turned his attention more to religious and political developments. In 1845 he was appointed to the Prussian council of state. In 1848, as a result of the dissolution of the Prussian ministry, he gave up his university offices.

The frightfulness of the 1848 revolution

Revolutions of 1848

The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It was the first Europe-wide collapse of traditional authority, but within a year reactionary...

, and the moral damage it revealed in many areas, decided von Bethmann-Hollweg for devoting himself to the moral and political well-being of the country. He was much opposed to the democratizing tendencies of the time, though still repelled by the reactionary elements. In 1848 he founded the Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag

Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag

The Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag is a movement of lay members of the Evangelical Church in Germany...

 and served as its president or co-president until 1872. In addition he served as president of the Inner Mission (Germany) founded by Johann Hinrich Wichern

Johann Hinrich Wichern

Johann Hinrich Wichern was a founder of the Home Mission movement in Germany.-Biography:...

. Within the ambit of the Frankfurt Parliament

Frankfurt Parliament

The Frankfurt Assembly was the first freely elected parliament for all of Germany. Session was held from May 18, 1848 to May 31, 1849 in the Paulskirche at Frankfurt am Main...

 he struck a friendship with Dietrich Wilhelm Landfermann. Like the latter he tried to maintain a centrist political position: von Bethmann-Hollweg's aim, which he also publicized from 1852 onward in the Wochenblatt together with Graf von der Goltz, was to argue for a controlled expansion of a constitutional state in a conservative-liberal framework.

From 1849 to 1855 he served as a deputy in Prussia's first and second houses of parliament, apart from a few brief interruptions. Notwithstanding its small size, his faction was significant through its political integrity and intellectual prominence. From 1858 (advent of the regency of Wilhelm I) to 1862 (advent of Bismarck

Otto von Bismarck

Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...

's ministry) von Bethmann-Hollweg served as the Prussian minister of education, culture and medicine. After his retirement he wrote the book for which he became chiefly known, Der Civilprozeß des Gemeinen Rechts in geschichtlicher Entwicklung (Civil Procedure in Common Law, A Historical Overview).

Legacy

As a writer on jurisprudence he had a deep influence in the reforms of the German laws following the enactment of the German Civil Code in 1896.

Family

He is a grandfather of Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg

Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg was a German politician and statesman who served as Chancellor of the German Empire from 1909 to 1917.-Origins:...

 who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1909 to 1917.

Publications

• Grundregeln zu Vorlesungen über den allgemeinen Civilprozeß, 1821 (1832)
• Versuch über einzelne Teile der Theorie des Civilprozesses, 1827
• Die Gerichtsverfassung und der Prozeß des sinkenden Römischen Reiches, 1834
• Die Entstehung der lombardischen Städtefreiheit, 1846
• Der Civilprozeß des Gemeinen Rechts in geschichtlicher Entwicklung I-IV/1, 1863–74
• Ueber Gestezgebung und Rechtswissenshaft als Aufgabe unserer Zeit (On law making and jurisprudence as tasks for our time), 1876

External links

• Works by

That material has been supplemented with information from Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie is one of the most important and most comprehensive biographical reference works in the German language....

(see bibliography above).