Otto Gierke – författare

This re-issue of F. W. Maitland's translation of a vital section from Otto Gierke's monumental Das Deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht makes available once again one of the seminal texts in the historiography of political thought. Famed, inter alia, for the elegance and lucidity of Maitland's own expository introduction, Political Theories of the Middle Age is concerned in essence with the medieval development of the doctrine of State and Corporation - a concept which, as Maitland indicates, has been prone to misunderstanding by English minds versed in the tradition of the common law. Gierke identifies the peculiar characteristic of medieval political thought as its vision of the universe as one articulated whole, and every being, whether a joint-being (community) or a single-being - as both a part and a whole: his text examines the potentially revolutionary effect upon this of certain crucial intellectual intrusions, derived in part from Roman Law, described by Gierke as 'ancient-modern'.

George Heiman has translated the discussion of classical and early Christian laws of association from the major works by Grotto Gierke, Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht. This work complements F.W. Maitland's translation of a later part under the title, The Political Theories of the Middle Ages, and E. Barker's translation of the third part, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 1500-1800. Professor Heiman thus has completed the circle in bringing into English the eminent German jurist's historical analysis of the law.Professor Heiman furthermore has introduced the work with substantial, detailed, and scholarly essays on Gierke's work as a whole. He examines and explains Gierke's concept of the group-person and his organic view of the association, society, and the state, and clearly outlines the conflict between individualist Roman and collectivist Germanic law. This introduction provides the first complete analysis in English of the philosophy of a major representative of the school of historical law and a jurist whose thinking is reflected in the general civil code adopted in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century. The book will interest political and social theorists as well as those concerned with jurisprudence and legal philosophy.