IX. Von der Genossenschaft zur Volksgemeinschaft: Juristische Germanistik als Rechtsgeschichte während des Nationalsozialismus

Abstract

From Cooperative Society to Ethnic Community: German Legal Studies in Legal History during National Socialism. The history of Germanist legal historians during the era of National Socialism is a history of a declining scholarship. The old hierarchy amongst Germanists from the Weimar Republic had vanished, but even the pressure of the NS-state and its organizations did not lead to a new firm order. Although the Germanists adapted their scholarship to the Nazi ideology and although some of them were deeply involved in injustice, they had no really significant influence in the new regime. German legal history was confined to deliver the keywords for decisions of lawmakers and practitioners. Germanist scholarship survived, but at the cost of merely being a subordinate element in a dictatorship.