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Book Review
| Jonathan Sperber, Property and Civil Society in South-Western Germany, 1820–1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 287. $99.00 (ISBN 0-19-928475-X).
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| "Property and Law," Jeremy Bentham wrote, "are born and must die together. Before the laws, there was no property: take away the laws, all property ceases." While property and law are always linked, the nature of each—and therefore the character of their relationship—varies widely across time and space. Jonathan Sperber's remarkable book examines property and law in the nineteenth-century Palatinate, a non-contiguous province of the kingdom of Bavaria on the left bank of the Rhine, north of Alsace, east of the Prussian Rhineland, west of Baden, and south of Hesse-Darmstadt. |
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The empirical foundation of Sperber's work is provided by the records of civil court proceedings, which are preserved in the Landesarchiv Speyer. From this treasure trove of depositions, testimonies, and decisions, he was able to reconstruct over sixteen hundred cases. After a brilliant description of the court's structure and procedures—I know of no better account anywhere of how a legal system works—Sperber analyses a carefully selected sample of these cases in four concise but meaty chapters: on acquisition and transmission (especially within families), transactions (especially credit), boundaries (especially land), and a concluding account of changes across the long nineteenth century. |
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The "civil society" that emerges from these pages is not Habermas's public sphere, that realm of parties and parliaments, newspapers and journals, coffee house conversations and political discourse, where ideas are articulated and exchanged. Sperber's civil society is instead the world in which ordinary men and women struggle to make a living, rear their families, and come to terms with quarrelsome neighbors, untrustworthy relatives, and dishonest brokers. Even in the Palatinate, a relatively prosperous and stable corner of central Europe, this is a world full of disappointment and disillusion, broken promises and unpaid debts. Some people flourish, acquire property, and make a better future for their children. But many more grow old and infirm, lose their senses or their land (and sometimes one and then the other), lend or borrow unwisely, pay too much or sell too soon. |
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Although Sperber's records are sometimes incomplete and may suddenly fall silent when we most want them to speak, they are sufficiently rich to provide a picture of nineteenth-century society with the kind of detail and humanity that reminds one of Bruegel's masterly depictions of ordinary farmers and villagers. Sperber is able to bring to life people like Philip Würz, an unfortunate shopkeeper whose commercial difficulties were compounded when his wife tried to reclaim her dowry, Kasimir Unger, who fought with his neighbors over the pig stall he constructed near the village spring, and Johann Völker, whose heirs claimed that his second and much younger wife had made off with more than her fair share of his worldly goods. |
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In one form or another, property was at the core of these disputes—and indeed at the core of civil society itself. Property brought social standing, security, and independence; its loss, whether the result of moral weakness, commercial miscalculation, or just plain bad luck, brought disgrace, privation, and dependence. In the nineteenth century, Sperber argues, the movement of property was unimpeded by the corporate restraints of the old regime or the regulations of the twentieth-century state. But even in this relatively unrestricted market, property was never just a matter of calculation and interest. Always shaped by the emotional bonds and personal connections of kinship, neighborhood, and village, economic competition and conflicts were seamlessly woven into everyday life. "This," he concludes, "was the nature of civil society, the intermediary realm between the family and the state" (127). |
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The legal system established the rules for economic transactions and provided the means to make claims and settle disputes. One of Sperber's most interesting findings was how the legal system was readily available to people from quite modest circumstances, including both men and women, Christians and Jews, merchants and farmers. For these citizens of the Palatinate, the widespread willingness to use the courts presupposed a belief in the system's fairness and a certain confidence in its efficacy. The law, therefore, was not only an essential element in the formation of civil society, it was also an important link between individuals and the state. |
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Like many truly innovative works, Property and Civil Society in South-Western Germany has not received the attention it deserves. (Priced at almost a hundred dollars, it will not, alas, be a best seller.) This book should inspire those who are looking for new ways to approach the long nineteenth century and provide a model for how to understand the social, political, and cultural role of law in European history. |
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| James J. Sheehan
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| Stanford University |
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