What emerged from the works of the exiles was a powerful new theory on the shared European legal past that laid the foundation for the idea of a common European legal culture. From this common foundation, ideals such as the rule of law, law as science, and law independent from political power would have spread to form a liberal European legal culture. This theory was further developed by legal scholars and historians who had at some point collaborated with the regime. The uniting factor was that these were German-speaking legal scholars with some background in Roman law and legal history. Thus, the formulators can be divided into two distinct groups, 1) exiles and outcasts, those who were driven from their posts and 2) the collaborators and bystanders, who either thrived in the new circumstances under the Nazis or managed to avoid controversies. Of the first group, I have selected three significant scholars, of which Fritz Schulz (1879-1957) 6 and Fritz Pringsheim (1882-1967) 7 were exiled 8 in Britain, while Paul Koschaker (1878-1951) 9 was sidelined and retreated to a provincial university. From the second group, I have selected two younger scholars, Franz Wieacker , 10 a pupil of Helmut Coing (1912-2000), 11 whose post-WWII careers cemented the position of the common past theory. Their works are contextualized by juxtaposition and comparison with contemporaries such as Hannah Arendt,