The Allgemeines Landrecht, which codified Prussian civil and criminal laws on the basis of traditional social stratification, contributed to the unification of the various Prussian regions under absolute monarchy. It was thus an important aspect of the growth of Prussia as the central German power and the establishment in the nineteenth century of a German Empire.
The Allgemeines Landrecht represented the culmination of legal efforts during the eighteenth century in Prussia to collect and codify various royal edicts and laws in order to establish greater unity among the diverse Prussian provincial laws and legal practices. The code also reflected and made clear the tensions between enlightened concepts of natural rights, which were advocated by the code’s principal legal authors, and the traditional, stratified society of an absolute monarchy.
In the early eighteenth century, Brandenburg-Prussia
To create more legal unity, King Frederick William I in 1714 ordered the law faculty of the University of Halle to collect a law codex for his kingdom. Frederick William I was not successful in creating such a Landrecht for Prussia, but he did introduce an inquisitional process in criminal cases. Under his successor, Frederick the Great, however, judicial reform was pursued much more vigorously in order to increase efficiency and to affirm the king’s authority over the various provinces. Frederick, who was influenced by Montesquieu,
The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)
Frederick the Great issued a cabinet order on April 14, 1780, charging von Carmer with the task of producing a code in German that the ordinary Prussian subject could understand. Legal concepts based on Roman law (Justinian’s Code) and Saxon law were to be revised to meet the changing times. For example, slavery was forbidden in Prussia. Frederick the Great never saw the completion of the work he commissioned, but work on the project continued after his death under the new and more conservative king, Frederick William II. The code Allgemeines Gesetzbuch
The Allgemeines Landrecht, which was praised by Alexander de Tocqueville, was a collection of both civil and criminal law. Organized in more than nineteen thousand paragraphs, the code required 734 double-column pages of print. The Landrecht was intended to supplement the provincial codes. In cases where the provincial codes did not address an issue, the Landrecht would take precedence. However, since most of the provincial laws were not codified, judges in many regions increasingly relied on the Landrecht for their judgments.
The introduction to the code includes the liberal statement that the general rights
Frederick the Great had decreed in 1780 that the Landrecht could not affect the social reality of estates and provincial legal practices. The Landrecht made it clear that each major social group or estate, ranging from nobles and the Bürgerstand (bourgeoisie)
Like the Allgemeines Gesetzbuch of 1791, the Allgemeines Landrecht allowed religious freedom,
The Prussian legal reforms were similar to those carried out in other eighteenth century European countries. French legal reforms
Many parts of the civil code of the Allgemeines Landrecht remained in effect in several provinces of Prussia throughout much of the nineteenth century, but the impact of the French Revolution and Napoleon on Prussia modified many provisions of the code within a generation. The Prussian reforms after 1807 freed the serfs and removed restrictions on property ownership based on estates.
The French introduced the Napoleonic Code on the left bank of the Rhine, and it, not the Landrecht, remained in effect after 1814. Because Napoleonic reforms in Germany eliminated many traditional provincial laws, the Allgemeines Landrecht became the primary law in those areas reunited with Prussia after 1814 (except Kleve). In new areas occupied by Prussia after 1814, ranging from the Rhineland to Saxony and Westphalia, either old law or French law remained in effect. After 1848, the Allgemeines Landrecht was no longer introduced in newly annexed provinces. After German unification in 1871, German national civil laws culminating in the German Civil Code of 1900 replaced the Prussian Landrecht. By 1931, when the last edition of the Allgemeines Landrecht was published, it had been reduced to only two hundred pages.
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Behrens, C. B. A. Society, Government, and the Enlightenment: The Experiences of Eighteenth-Century France and Prussia. New York: Harper and Row, 1985. Includes an informative chapter on the administration of justice in Prussia and France from Frederick William I to Frederick the Great. -
Fay, Sidney B. The Rise of Brandenburg-Prussia to 1786. Edited by Klaus Epstein. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964. A detailed and reliable administrative history of the state. -
Gothelf, Rodney. “Frederick William I and the Beginning of Prussian Absolutism, 1713-40.” In The Rise of Prussia, 1700-1830, edited by Philip G. Dwyer. New York: Longman, 2000. Helpful for understanding the polymorphic nature of the Brandenburg-Prussian states. -
Koch, H. W. A History of Prussia. New York: Longman, 1978. A short but insightful section, which often quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, evaluates both the theoretical basis and the practical application of the 1794 code. -
MacDonogh, Giles. Frederick the Great: A Life in Deed and Letters. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999. Includes a short discussion of the miller Johannes Arnold case, which helped accelerate judicial reforms. -
Rosenberg, Hans. Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy: The Prussian Experience, 1660-1815. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966. Includes a short section on Samuel von Cocceji’s judicial reforms. -
Weill, H. Frederick the Great and Samuel von Cocceji. Madison: University of Wisconson Press, 1961. Summary of Frederick the Great’s legal reforms, particularly useful since most works on von Cocceji are in German.
Accession of Frederick the Great
Seven Years’ War
Frederick the Great; Frederick William I.