4 - Reform, Not Revolution

Summary

This chapter explores the slow and uneven property reform path ushered in by the short-lived liberal reformers that gathered around Baron von Stein. After Stein’s resignation, the discourse of property modernization was shortlived and the reconcpetualization of property was carried on by two leading,moderately conservative Roman law scholars who had been close to Stein’s cicle: Barthold Georg Niehbur and Friedrich Karl von Savigny. Animated by sincere scholarly devotion, and yet not shy to use Roman law and agrarian history to support their political agenda, Neihbur built a powerful narrative equating the liberation of the German peasantry to the struggle of the dispossessed Roman free peasant. Simultaneously, Savigny outlined a new Romanist architecture for the law of property designed to enable and protect the full mastery of the owner’s will over a physical thing.