[Introduction]

Germany is no longer a state. The older teachers of constitutional law had the idea of a science in mind when they dealt with the constitutional law of Germany, and they accordingly set out to specify a concept of the German constitution. But they could not reach agreement on this concept, and their modern counterparts finally gave up looking for it. The latter no longer treat constitutional law as a science, but as a description of what is present empirically without conforming to a rational Idea; and they believe that it is only in name that they can describe the German state as an empire or body politic.

There is no longer any argument about which concept the German constitution falls under. What can no longer be related to a concept [begriffen] no longer exists. If Germany were supposed to be a state, we could only describe the present condition of the state's dissolution as anarchy (as a foreign scholar of constitutional law did), were it not that the parts have reconstituted themselves into states which have retained a semblance of unity, derived not so much from a bond which still exists as from the memory of an earlier one. In the same way, fallen fruit can be seen to have belonged to a particular tree because it lies beneath its branches; but neither its position beneath the tree nor the shade which the tree casts over it can save it from decomposition and from the power of the elements to which it now belongs.