Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Hierarchy of Courts
- Glossary of Legal and Other Terms
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- 1 The Archimedean Point: Lawyers, Liberalism, and the Middle-Class Project
- 2 Freie Advokatur: The Blending of the Middle-Class and Professional Projects
- 3 Foundation of the Modern Profession: The Private Bar under the Lawyers' Statute
- 4 Institutional Framework: Lawyers and Honoratiorenpolitik
- 5 Growth and Diversification: Lawyers in the Province of Hannover, 1878–1933
- 6 Elites and Professional Ideology: Self-Discipline and Self-Administration by the Anwaltskammer Celle
- 7 Simultaneous Admission: The Limits of Honoratiorenpolitik
- 8 The Limits of Economic Liberalism: Freie Advokatur or Numerus Clausus?
- 9 The Limits of Political Liberalism: Lawyers and the Weimar State
- 10 Conclusion: Lawyers and the Limits of Liberalism
- Methodological Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Hierarchy of Courts
- Glossary of Legal and Other Terms
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- 1 The Archimedean Point: Lawyers, Liberalism, and the Middle-Class Project
- 2 Freie Advokatur: The Blending of the Middle-Class and Professional Projects
- 3 Foundation of the Modern Profession: The Private Bar under the Lawyers' Statute
- 4 Institutional Framework: Lawyers and Honoratiorenpolitik
- 5 Growth and Diversification: Lawyers in the Province of Hannover, 1878–1933
- 6 Elites and Professional Ideology: Self-Discipline and Self-Administration by the Anwaltskammer Celle
- 7 Simultaneous Admission: The Limits of Honoratiorenpolitik
- 8 The Limits of Economic Liberalism: Freie Advokatur or Numerus Clausus?
- 9 The Limits of Political Liberalism: Lawyers and the Weimar State
- 10 Conclusion: Lawyers and the Limits of Liberalism
- Methodological Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This is a book about German lawyers in private practice, but it is also an effort to address larger questions about the social and political history of Germany between the middle of the nineteenth century and the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933. It traces the history of German lawyers from the heady days of legal and professional reform in 1878 to their abject defeat in a quiet and swift “coordination” in the spring of 1933. In the 1870s, lawyers could bask in the widespread liberal assessment of their profession as a sort of Hegelian “general estate,” representing the general interest and the common good and entitled to respect, deference, and leadership. Opinion leaders believed that reform of the legal profession formed the touchstone of success in the project of the liberal Bürgertum to bring into existence its chief goal of the Rechtsstaat, the state ruled by law. Lawyers and liberals achieved almost all of their aims for the legal profession in 1878, carving out space for the bar to create its own institutions, to govern its internal affairs, and to assume the important public role that theory ascribed to it.
But developments between 1878 and 1933 did not turn out the way that either the liberal reformers, most of whom were legally trained and many of whom were private practitioners, or professional leaders of the bar expected.
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- Chapter
- Information
- From General Estate to Special InterestGerman Lawyers 1878–1933, pp. xix - xxxviPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996