125 Jahre Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch

Unlike the Basic Law, the German Civil Code has never become a symbol of identification for German jurisprudence. It is only recently that it has begun to appreciate the fundamental ideas of codification (systematic structure, separation of society and state, individualism). The articles in this work examine the reasons behind the distant relationship between academia and the German Civil Code (BGB); they investigate how case law and academia have repeatedly applied their own values to codification; they reconstruct the historical relationship between codification and the constitution; they view the German Civil Code and German scholarship from the distance of other legal systems; they question the viability of civil law system concepts; and finally, they look for new forms of future-oriented private law jurisprudence.