Friedrich Carl von Savigny in the years 1779 to 1810

The young Savigny

Summary

Friedrich Carl von Savigny, born in Frankfurt am Main on 21 February 1779, was orphaned at the age of 12 years following the death of his parents and raised by a friend of his father’s, Reichskammergerichtsrat Neurath (1739-1816), in Wetzlar. From 1795 studied Savigny at the university in Marburg intending to follow his father’s footstep by becoming a lawyer. In 1799, to round off his legal studies, he embarked on a cultural trip to Saxony, which took him to Leipzig via Jena and then to Prague. In Jena he had contact with the early Romantic circle, becoming friends with Clemens Brentano and August Stephan Winkelmann, later with Caroline von Günderrode and Achim von Arnim. In Leipzig, at the turn of 1799/1800, he decided to become a professor and embark on a university career. After his return, he received his doctorate in Marburg, where he also lectured. In 1803 he published his first major monograph “Das Recht des Besitzes” and was promoted to Extraordinarius (associate professor). After the 1803/04 winter semester, he ended his teaching in Marburg. In April 1804 he married Kunigunde Brentano, Clemens Brentano’s sister. After the marriage, Savigny departed on his grand library tour to Paris, on which Jakob Grimm was to accompany him later. During this tour, he spent a longer period at Heidelberg University, which in the wake of its reform in 1803 was hoping to recruit Savigny as Ordinarius (full professor). Savigny turned the offer down so that he could continue his planned library tours, but kept a later acceptance open. Savigny played a helping role in reforming the university and arranged for a number of scholars to move to Heidelberg. The Heidelberg law faculty went on to flourish and, at the same time, Heidelberg Romanticism blossomed, due to the friendship between its protagonists Brentano, Arnim, Görres, Grimm, Creuzer and others and Savigny. Then came the library tour to southern Germany, which also took Savigny to Vienna and, during this homeward journey, saw a first encounter with Goethe. After his return, Savigny’s efforts to be appointed to a chair in Heidelberg proved to be fruitless. In 1808 he accepted a call to Landshut which was overshadowed right from the start, however, by his striving for a call to the University of Berlin, which was in the process of being founded. Wilhelm von Humboldt won Savigny for Berlin in 1809, with the offer being accepted by Savigny in 1810. In early July, Savigny and his family arrived in Berlin, accompanied by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim. In the 1810/11 winter semester Savigny began holding lectures in Berlin.

I. Birth, descent, young years in Frankfurt am Main, Hanau & Wetzlar. Law studies in Marburg.

“...a large part of my earlier life passed through my heart with more pain than pleasure” writes Savigny from Marburg on 15 September 1800, a few weeks before he was due to receive his doctorate, to Stephan August Winkelmann (1780-1806), candidatus medicinae in Jena, whom he had met and became fast friends with in Jena a few months earlier. Death was a continuous companion of Savigny’s childhood. His father, Christian Karl Ludwig von Savigny (1726-1791), lived in Zweibrücken and lost his father at the age of 14 years. He studied in Marburg, Halle and Jena and then moved to live with his uncle von Cranz in Hanau. After his uncle’s death in 1751, he inherited Trages Manor with two neighboring estates and a small fortune. Like his father before him, he served as a legal-diplomatic adviser at princely courts, at first living in Offenbach am Main, where he married his ward Philippine Henriette Groos (1743-1792), who had been living in his house following the death of her father and his friend, a Zweibrücken privy councilor Groos. The household also included a spinster sister of Savigny’s father. From 1770 the Savigny family lived in the house “Zur weißen Katze” [At the White Cat], at Allerheiligengasse 52 in Frankfurt am Main. Here Friedrich Carl von Savigny was born on 21 February 1779.

Of the twelve siblings, only Friedrich Carl and his elder brother, Ernst Ludwig, were to survive childhood in Frankfurt am Main. Both brothers were educated together by private tutors. Besides Latin, the strict father was adamant that they mastered French. As in the days of their father and grandfather, a command of the French language was a sine qua non for serving aristocratic rulers, also as jurists with a dual role as diplomats. The paternal insistence of the choice of profession also influenced the choice of private tutors. Greek was not taught chez Savigny. In 1785, Aunt Maria von Savigny, who had run the Savignys’ household for some twenty years, died. In 1790 Friedrich Carl lost his brother Ernst Ludwig, his last surviving sibling. Only a year later, the much decimated family had to mourn the loss of the father Christian Karl Ludwig. The widow and her now only son moved to Hanau, where scarcely a year she too was to pass away, on 26 July 1792. Friedrich Carl was now twelve years old and a full orphan.

Savigny moved to Wetzlar to live with a colleague and friend of his father, Johann Friedrich Albrecht Constantin von Neurath (1739-1816), assessor at the Reichskammergericht there. The latter’s son Constantin von Neurath knew Savigny from his Frankfurt days. We still have a first letter which Savigny wrote to Constantin from Hanau in January 1792: “Dear friend! Haven’t I kept you waiting for so long for a reply, but certainly not from neglect, we have had so very much to do that you will surely excuse my long silence, even from the one year into the next...”. Perhaps cocky, perhaps precocious, either way the letter underscores the fact that Savigny had missed out on a childhood.

Savigny went up to Marburg University at the young age of 16. On 19 April 1795 he enrolled together with his boyhood friend Constantin Neurath, born in 1778, as stud. iur.. Both embarked on their law degrees well prepared. Whilst still in Wetzlar, they had received law lessons from the head of the household in person; Justinian’s Institutiones had been covered in detail. Thus, both could start their law studies straight way by attending lectures on the Digest. Savigny attended Digest lectures first from Philipp Friedrich Weis (1766-1808) and again by Johann Heinrich Christian Erxleben (1753-1811). Savigny studied law only at Marburg University, albeit interrupted in the winter semester of 1796/97, which he spent in Göttingen, and in the summer semester of 1797, which he took off for health reasons and staid mainly at Trages Manor, the Savigny family seat near Hanau. Wetzlar was not an easy time for Savigny. The von Neuraths did their best as foster parents, and this helped to create a feeling of trust. In April 1798 Savigny writes to his friend Constantin, “... a few weeks ago I talked to Papa and Mama...... ”. After Constantin’s mother died, his father remarried. The new marriage did not produce any children. But Savigny never really seemed to have experienced a real home. Constantin describes Savigny in this period as “mistrustful and extremely sensitive”. Physically Savigny came off second best to his friend: “... I abused this physical superiority less...”, but intellectually he was far superior to his friend; in Marburg too, Savigny was immediately the teacher and Neurath his pupil. The relationship between the two became somewhat estranged as Savigny soon established a large group of friends in Marburg, which in the same letter to Winkelmann cited above he describes in positive, almost familial terms: “... Here I am now living surrounded by dear people and look forward to a really cheerful future”.

Constantin von Neurath soon triggered a crisis in Savigny when he lamented bitterly about the underlying conflict between the two friends in a letter dated 21 July 1797: “We went up to Marburg. At first you were quite open to me: until you made friends - from which I was excluded. You became ever more distant, indifferent towards me: seemed to even despise me: this incensed me ... When you on occasion happened to be friendly to me, I immediately responded with a truly loving heart: I believed that I had to convince you that I loved you so incomparably more than many of your acquaintances, whose company you preferred to mine. But then your behavior or a feature of your character made me shrink back. When I discussed something with you, you immediately became very sensitive, no matter how trivial the subject matter was. You then spoke only disjointed, biting words, pulled a face and gave no or only incomprehensible answers... Your morals were too ideal for me and you struck me as a pedant, you were never loved (at least as far as I knew), so intellect you might have, but no feelings: my close confidante you could never be...”

The letters from Savigny to his childhood and university friend in Marburg, Constantin Neurath, collected by Stoll are hard to fathom for those who are not familiar with this letter of July 1797, which was unfortunately unknown to Stoll as well and hence not included. The letters to Constantin Neurath printed by Stoll show a Savigny at times struggling desperately for his friendship. He excuses himself: “... For my behavior in Frankfurt I do not know what to say, I am so ashamed...”. Even long after Neurath had begun to move in different circles, Savigny cannot let go. In his letters he appeals emotionally to Neurath, but is apparently unable to settle the matter in face-to-face discussions. He seems incapable of bearing, let alone confronting and dealing with, conflicts with others. Quiet, introverted, taciturn were the ascriptions from his earlier days; distanced, arrogant, inapproachable were the epithets used to describe the older Savigny: but the roots were the same. And very frequently Savigny’s health was to break down, once emotional conflicts came to a head. For example, he took the whole of the 1797 summer semester off due to health problems and spent months recovering at Trages Manor.

Right from an early stage Savigny organized an extended group of friends; as a rule, of men much older than him, rarely other students, mostly already holders of office and not a single jurist among them. Almost daily they met in Marburg and read from books, with Savigny mostly doing the reading aloud, and discussed literary and philosophical topics. His boyhood friend Constantin Neurath was not a member of the circle, which had become so set that on the verge of completing his law studies - and just before embarking on his peregrinatio academica - Savigny closed his letter of 4 March 1799 to his Creuzer cousins with the words: “... To our gathering - a circle of loving friends in a higher sense than many call themselves such - to our gathering extend my heartiest greetings and tell them that I will always remember them with wistful pleasure. Fare well, dear friends, may you live well and think of your friend...”. Stoll too sums up these Marburg student days: “Savigny’s friendship with such good people was more than quotidian; here he experienced that family life which fate had put beyond his reach while he was so young...”. Proper reading was a constant topic of this group of friends, which lamented the excessive number of books being publishedthe publication of novels having shot up during the last decade of the 18th century. Books were now a means of entertainment. The Marburg circle, however, believed that reading books was a part of character building. They also went on long walks along the River Lahn, even as far as the Rhine. That Savigny is searching for orientation is clear; for example, in October 1798 he writes to Constantin Neurath: "... if I had had a tutor who had fed me with love instead of Latin grammar, I could have become a different person to what I am now...”. Being alone is also difficult to bear for Savigny: “... now I live in solitary peace. But this peace brings me nothing, this loneliness even less; I cannot stand it much longer…”. This reflects an earlier feeling: “... Oh I feel ever more that life is not worth a fig without sociability ...”. Savigny has formulated here quintessential sentences of the early Romantic movement, which is already emerging in Jena at that time. The type of literature which Savigny reads and recommends in his letters is also moving in this direction. We are surprised to hear that he has already subscribed for the first year of Athenaeum, the famous magazine published by the Schlegel brothers and the voice of the Jena Romantics par excellence. In 1798 he writes to Neurath: “... A word or two about our latest literature. I have read the Hesperus (by Jean Paul) and I know much and yet not what to say about it.... The Schlegel brothers are now publishing an Athenaeum, that I would like to tell you about... What you cannot find there, you can look for in the folk tales of Peter Leberecht (Tieck)…”.

A few months later Savigny reports that he had finished the then scandalous novel Lucinde by Friedrich Schlegel. He is also struck by the great adoration of Goethe among the Romantics in Jena; “... But one circumstance must much animos conciliiren for the publishers (of the Athenaeum): Goethe is their God ...”.

However, Savigny must first focus on his studies and graduating. Already in his sixth semester, he writes to Neurath: “On this you err too, if you believe I have reached fixed points on the part of thoughts. Only this winter have begun I to concentrate seriously on things…”. And two semesters later, i.e. in his eighth, he writes once again to Neurath:

“... As far as the knowledge in this subject is concerned, I now accept that I have wasted a great deal of time and effort through the sloppy way I studied; since last summer I have been swatting Roman law (which are so close to my heart) quite thoroughly under Hofacker and have also covered various materials; so that I will soon be finished and shall then cursorily skim the other legal disciplines (which I heartily despise). Perhaps by Easter I will be ready to look for a position... perhaps go on a short journey beforehand...”

This letter Savigny wrote in early 1799. He had enrolled for the German law under Bauer, civil procedural law under Erxner and for a second time under Robert, whose civil procedural law tutorials he also attended. In those days a law degree was not ended with an examination but proof of the length of studies as evidence that the legal knowledge required for the chosen profession had been acquired.

II. Completion of law studies, choice of profession and the Saxon study tour in the years 1799-1800

The Creuzer cousins exchanged information about how Savigny had been advised to take up a professorship after completing his law studies and they both sought to prevent this under all circumstances: “... Weis put the idea into Savigny’s head of becoming a professor, unfortunately the seed has not only taken root but is also sprouting - that it bears no fruit or at least no ripe fruit, we must make sure of that ...”. But there is also a decision on the part of Savigny to follow in his father’s steps and practice law. At the same time as the Creuzer brothers are exchanging their fears, Savigny writes: “... I am resolved to devote myself to practical law, which I hold so dear ...”. It is also in his eyes the appropriate profession for an aristocrat. He had chosen Marburg University not only because his father had studied there, but because Marburg University was in the same sovereign territory that included Savigny’s estates near Hanau.

After the summer semester Savigny went down to Trages Manor, from where he embarked on his “short journey” on 24 July 1799 and to which he returned a year later on 16 August 1800. Savigny wrote a travel diary in two parts, an announced third part was never completed: “The rest of my diary I have too artfully put off, until nothing will now come of it; now the gap is too great for there to be a continuation ...” writes Savigny from Leipzig on 1 November 1799. In the first part, Savigny describes his journey to Leipzig and sends this report to Leonhard Creuzer from Leipzig on 16 August. The second travel journal takes up from 5 September 1799 with the journey from Leipzig to Meißen and ends with the report on Carlsbad on 15 September. The travel report is very much abridged in Stoll’s three-volume work, can only be found almost in its entirety in his publication on Savigny’s “Saxon study tour”. The first part frequently contains Savigny’s impressions of contemporary figures he encountered. This show a sensitive and acutely aware Savigny and how he reaches his opinions. The second part stands out more for how his impressions of nature.

Savigny himself formulates the aim and course of his journey: “... I have decided to travel to Leipzig over the course of four weeks... I will pass through Fulda, Weimar and Jena, from Leipzig I will visit Dresden and Berlin. In L., where I will stay a few months, I will study... nothing but Fichte’s philosophy so that I will really feel at home there... It would be greatly appreciated if you could give me some pointers about Jena, Weimar and especially L. itself... “. This request was addressed to the two Creuzers, Leonhard and Friedrich, who had put Savigny up to this journey and who had both had studied in Jena for a semester in 1790. Shortly before the journey, in May 1799, Savigny reports that he had studied Friedrich Schlegel’s essay “Über die Philosophie” [On Philosophy], fundamental reading for romantics: “I draw your attention especially to the passages on moral education, on reason, on sociability and even more to the whole; I would be most pleased if the symphilosophy and sympoetry between us were to be felt here too …”.

On 24 July Savigny set off, travelling via Fulda and Berka to Eisenach, where he visited the Wartburg (a medieval castle where later Luther translated the New Testament into German). Then he went on to Gotha, where he visited Jean Paul, whose Hesperus he had read: “... an uncommonly gentle but somewhat stilted or even affected person, who borders on the languishing where women are concerned ...”. The next stop was Erfurt, where he visited the court library, which at that time housed some 60,000 volumes and “is especially rich in old prints”. Savigny finally reached Weimar: “Night had already fallen by the time I entered the holy city”. Goethe himself he did not visit, their first encounter was not until 1809, when he was in Weimar in the company of his sister-in-law Bettina Brentano (1785-1863), an ardent admirer of Goethe. Later the Savignys were to stay more frequently and also for longer with Goethe, who greatly admired Mrs. Savigny in particular. The next day, 29 July 1799, Savigny travelled from Weimar to Jena: “... A few hours thereafter I reached that strange valley of Jena”. The university city of Jena, the Salana founded in 1548, was at that time the intellectual centre of Germany. Benefitting not only from the proximity to the poet prince Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) residing in neighboring Weimar, the intellectual giants of that age also taught there: Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) from 1793, August Wilhelm Schelling (1775-1854) was recruited by Fichte and Goethe to the university in 1798 as Extraordinarius, Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) held a professorship from 1789; also were present were Friedrich Schlegel ( 1772-1829) and Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel ( 1770-1831 ), who lectured in Jena from 1801 to 1807. In the faculty of law Savigny made the acquaintance of Gottlieb Hufeland (1760-1817) and the young Johann Anselm Feuerbach (1775-1833). In his overall résumé only a few days later, Savigny praises what he found at the university: “... I have been in Jena for four days now and neither in the street nor in the colleges have I seen the slightest sign of uncouthness or uneducated people... Jena is for students the prime German university... and I would choose Jena, if I had to choose where to study again…”. About Hufeland he wrote : “He is an outstanding person. He has a great respect for Roman law... his opinions on others, for example Hugo and Runde, were completely to my taste, formed from a higher plane...”. Savigny also attended lectures given by Feuerbach: “... Feuerbach teaches very thoroughly and well, only his appearance is wanting. This is neglected far too much, without realizing that the only point is to make oral presentation useful and in certain cases indispensable...” Of the Romantics Savigny encountered at first only A.W. Schlegel:

“Just imagine my astonishment, when I attended Schlegel’s Aesthetics to find only five others present; apparently at times their numbers rose to twelve. His eye has an idealistic glint, but in his facial expressions appear the impact of a destructive force. The main cause of this change is said to be excessive effort, whose root is to be found in dire economic needs... His lecture is highly polished and ready for printing...”.

After this, Savigny travelled on to Leipzig, where he was hoping to rent a house “in a garden” from which he could visit Dresden and Freiburg; and finally he reached Prague via Carlsbad. Jena he was to visit altogether three times, staying longer each time.

III. Jena, the intellectual centre in Germany and stronghold of Romanticism

At that time, the intellectual climate in Jena was changing practically from week to week. The seed of the Romantic circle was the presence of August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845) in Jena, and his becoming acquainted with Goethe and Schiller. By 1794 he had already published countless reviews and articles, and also translations from Shakespeare’s works, in Schiller’s magazine “Die Horen”. For these translations of literary masterpieces he was appointed Extraordinarius in Jena in 1798. He now gave lectures on the history of Greek, Roman and German literature, on aesthetics, methodology of classical studies and presented interpretations of Horace, albeit - as Savigny was to observe - not exactly to full lecture halls. In 1797 arose the first disagreements with Schiller, who refused to include contributions from his brother Friedrich Schlegel in his magazine as he found him to be too brazen and excessive in his critiques. During a two-month stay in Berlin in May and June 1798, A.W. Schlegel and his brother Friedrich met Ludwig Tieck and soon all three became fast friends. For quite some time A.W. Schlegel had already had a relationship with Caroline Michaelis (1769-1809), the daughter of Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791), the famous orientalist and professor in Göttingen. From 1798 Caroline and A.W. Schlegel took a house in Jena, which from now on was to be the focal point of the early Romanticism. Then came the éclat with Schiller. With his brother Friedrich Schlegel, he launched the magazine Athenaeum.

Day in and day out up to twenty people would gather at the Schlegel’s; in 1799 Friedrich Schlegel also moved from Berlin to Jena together with Wilhelm Tieck and set up home in his brother’s house. Each day, the entire social gathering would be wined and dined. This was followed by much discussion and composing of poems, disputing and the discussing of feelings. The goal was the greatest individuality coupled with heart-felt attachment, which the Romantics called Geselligkeit (sociability). It was a kind of community which the second leading lady living there at the time, Dorothea Veit (1764-1839) who was to later marry Friedrich Schlegel), called a “republic of despots”). Rejection of the French Revolution, above all after its atrocities had became generally know, acceptance of the religion, the struggle against the Enlightenment, the claim to having laid down a completely new foundation of literature, those were the outstanding hallmarks of the Romantics in Jena: the written word was used as a weapon to make the whole of society adapt to the new conditions. Friedrich Schlegel formulated the Romantic assertiveness as a dawn of a “new age”: “The new age heralds itself as fleet-of-foot, winged-soled; morning glory has donned seven-league boots. Long has there been summer lightening on the horizon of poetry; in a mighty cloud did the tempest power of the heavens accumulate; now it has thundered awesomely...”). Goethe spoke of “the fiery air from Friedrich Schlegel’s laboratory”). And Schiller was the authority against which the young men railed, against which they rose up. The utterances, and at times also the writings from this early Romantic circle of young, rebel poets, were snappish, derogatory, even loutish. Caroline Schlegel reports in a letter to her daughter Auguste from Jena on 21 October 1799: “... yesterday during a poem by Schiller, das Lied von der Glocke [Song of the Bell], we almost fell of our chairs in laughter ...”). The Jena Romantics spent the day in Schlegel’s house, went home in the evening, wrote poetry through the night and gathered to discuss the results the following day. The list of famous persons who came and went from the Schlegel’s is a long one that included the likes of: Schleiermacher, Bernhardi, Novalis, Hölderlin, Tieck, Brentano, later Sendling and many more not so familiar today.

The third important lady to be a permanent guest in Schlegel’s salon was Sophie Mereau, who later married Clemens Brentano. Savigny met her, too. The highest intensity and greatest productive power was reached by the early Romanticism in Jena whilst Savigny was on his study tour. Savigny was already on the homeward leg as the circle broke up following Schlegel’s wife return to Sendling.

As great as Savigny’s influence on the Romantics was, so taciturn was he in his reports on the Romantic circle, apart from his portrayal of meetings with Romantics in Jena. And hence, this topic is much contested in legal historical literature, even though Adolf Stoll refers to this period with the subtitle: “being also a contribution to the history of Romanticism” and in his introduction talks of the “Romantics among the philologists”. But in no way can one speak of a circle of Romantic poets, as the very composition refutes that narrow focus. A postulate of the Romantics was to radically reshape social intercourse. Poesy, lyricism and novels (the name Romantics stems from Roman - German word for novel) was to encapsulate everything: poetry, philosophy, theology and above all the historical perspective. Hence it was not an aesthetic movement or a poetic upheaval, but a cultural revolution that radiated from Jena across the whole of Europe. Nor was there any epistemological demarcations. Hence, a few pivotal aspects must suffice at this point: The fixation with the Middle Ages, the revival of antiquity in literature and history, the complete rejection of the Enlightenment, the written word as the sole basis for changes, the foundation of a movement, the radically new approach in literature, the intellectual prowess of the poets in and around the university and lastly, Savigny meeting peers who had triggered and were waging this intellectual rebellion. Without doubt this calls for further research, but it is surely safe to presume that these encounters helped to inspire Savigny. The intellectual climate at the university had especially impressed Savigny and colored his decision to remain there; otherwise his portrayal of Jena University of 26 April 1800 whilst in Leipzig makes no sense: “... I was recently in Jena. I have always been tempted to enroll at the university there; the tone and spirit prevailing among the students is indeed just what one would always wish for; free, open and sociable without any uncouthness, and such mutual bustle and learning, what a pronounced sense of truth in each and every student, how glorious it is to see. Surely at no other university is there to be found such circles of inspired and true seekers of learning as here! And it is incredible that this is not merely subjective and by chance, but by and large the effect of the place, for I have found people there who without an individual inclination thereto have come to acquire a true feel for philosophical and aesthetic education...” In Jena, where he was to spend two months of his study tour, Savigny also made the acquaintanceship of Clemens Brentano. Sophie von La Roche, the authoress mother of Maximiliane von la Roche, the second wife of Peter Anton Brentano, met Savigny, while he was visiting Wieland. Clemens Brentano’s grandmother advised and suggested that he meet her grandson, who was studying medicine in Jena from 1798.

IV. Savigny’s decision to become a professor

At the turn of 1799/1800 Savigny finally decides to remain at the university and strive to become a professor: “To take my doctorate in Marburg is my serious intention: it has been ever since I seriously decided to go there... I told Erxleben about my plan and received a very polite and approving reply”. Immediately Savigny takes the next decision, namely to set up home in Marburg: 2-3 rooms and space for a 2-3,000 volume library with beautiful clear view. It was not only a decision against his father’s footsteps, among his friends and aristocratic acquaintances it caused only consternation and shaking of heads: “It was certainly a curious phenomenon that a young rich man of noble blood, who could make a good claim to the top posts, would wish to live only for academe and himself...” And as so often, Savigny became very ill in Leipzig, marked by serious, presumably migraine, attacks, which on occasion made it necessary to blindfold him. In a last letter to Constantin Neurath from Leipzig Savigny reports: “... So I have quite often have a feeling that I am dying and it strikes me as strange that I am not truly dying...” But Savigny recovers and at the end of April 1800 feels so much better after the decision he has taken, about which he informs Constantin Neurath: “... Now I am somewhat freer and healthier... As far as I am concerned, my existence as a whole has become better and more cheerful; the hypochondria which plagued me so has eased. All this now enables me to once again think about the future and I have as good as made up my mind (inter nos) to come to you: only when I cannot yet say exactly...Whether, if I shall go to Marburg to apply for a teaching post straightaway, I do not yet know; the independence of being a graduate tutor has for much to offer for a start. How constraining is the dependency of a prof. extraordin., especially where, for example, a longer journey is on the cards...”.

Still in Leipzig Savigny starts putting his thesis to paper. He is extraordinarily industrious, a vague remark in a letter of 7 July 1800 from Jena to Leonhard Kreuzer: “... Just one more thing. Heyer has perhaps told you about a contract which I and a friend of mine in Leipzig reached with him for next Easter...” might possibly be an early reference to his monograph which was to appear three years later. The only known publishing contract with Heyer concerns his first work “Das Recht des Besitzes”. That would be an indication to an early involvement with this material; unfortunately Heyer’s publishing archive has not been fully preserved. Also while in Leipzig Savigny was very well informed about what was going on in Jena: “For now I am living in quite good health and quite gaily in a broad group of friends and acquaintances”, he writes from Leipzig on 6 December 1799. Gossip about the Romantic circles also reaches his ears: “... Recently in a gathering Tieck refuted Schiller’s genius entirely...” he reports to the Creuzer cousins from Leipzig on 20 October 1799. There he also reads the third and last year of Athenaeum: “... it was quite striking when I picked up the latest Athenäum a few days after your letters only to read: the demands for and traces of a morality which is something more than the practical part of philosophy are becoming ever louder and clearer...” he writes to the Creuzers on 26 April 1800 from Leipzig. Savigny is now very much in a rush. Visiting Jena once again, he returns to his Trages Manor on 16 August and immediately thereafter calls on the Brentanos in Frankfurt am Main. Savigny returns from his Saxon study tour much changed. Even on his way back, his changed attitude to jurisprudence is clear: “When Savigny visited Jena in June [=1800, on his return journey] and transmitted the delight which he felt for jurisprudence to all he encountered...” The new friends are poets in the Romantic movement: Clemens Brentano and Stephan August Winkelmann. To them he writes the most letters during his time teaching at Marburg. In 1802/3 Achim von Arnim joins the ranks as do the Brothers Grimm, who were later important figures in the Heidelberg Romantic movement. From the authoresses of the Romantic era are in his close proximity Sophie Mereau, Caroline von Günderrode and Bettina Brentano. Immediately after his return it is clear that he is no longer indifferent about women. Deep is the sigh when his old friend Friedrich Creuzer recalls the old times: “... As long as he had nothing to do with the fairer sex, he stood opposite me quite clearly and looked at me purely without a medium, and spoke to me without an interpreter. In those days he moved me and found himself moved by me on so many thousand points that he often said so, and I clearly felt that we were so wonderfully in agreement about the quintessence, about what men think is worth striving for (regardless of our each working in a different academic field)...”

At the Brentanos, he meets not only Clemens Brentano but also for the first time his sister Kunigunde, Gundula or Gunda Brentano, his later wife. She is the bosom friend of Caroline von Günderrode (1780-1806), a Romantic poet, whom he had first met on 4 July 1799, shortly before his departure for Leipzig. Caroline von Günderrode describes this encounter in a letter: “... Even at first sight Savigny makes a deep impression on me, I tried to hide it from myself, dismissing it as mere participation in the sweet pain which his entire being expresses, but soon, very soon the growing strength of my feeling brought it home to me that it was passion that I felt...” After his return from the study tour, Clemens Brentano spent August and September 1800 together with Savigny at Trages Manor accompanied by his sister Bettine and Caroline von Günderrode. Clemens Brentano stayed for quite a while at Trages Manor and the weeks spent there formed the basis for the second part of his first novel “Godwi”, which processed the atmosphere and the persons in literary form.

V. Savigny’s doctorate and first lectures at Marburg University. First major publication: “Recht des Besitzes“

On 31 October 1800 Savigny was awarded his doctorate in criminal law: De concursu delictorum formali, as he had arranged with Erxleben, and then gave the obligatory lecture on criminal law in the winter semester of 1800/1801. Erxleben himself did not want to give any criminal law lectures that semester. Savigny lectured from Meister’s Prinicpia iuris criminalis Germaniae in the sixth edition from 1792. After this, Savigny finally turned to Roman law. He lives in Marburg, at first in a household shared with the Creuzer cousins. Later Weis purchased the Forsthof in Marburg, situated below the castle. He himself used the large house and Savigny moved into the smaller house, which still stands today. Savigny held his lectures in Weis’ large house, which is where the Brentanos also stayed when they were visiting Savigny.

Savigny now put a great deal of effort into maintaining his circle of friends in Marburg. Clemens Brentano, occasionally together with his sister Bettina, often stayed with Savigny. Brentano could not, however, find the support he was seeking. Savigny was in his opinion too engrossed in work, the phrase the “studying machine Savigny” was coined at that time. Nor could Savigny (yet) offer him the familiar “du” form of address. Despite a longer absence due to stays in Göttingen and Frankfurt am Main, Clemens Brentano spent months at Savigny’s, above all, after the quarrel between Brentano and Winkelmann. Correspondence is now sparse, nearly all his friends are after all in Marburg. He writes letters increasingly to Clemens Brentano (Stoll includes no less than 18 letters in three years), who frequently absented himself from Marburg, the two Creuzers still in Marburg, with Friedrich Creuzer not accepting a call to Heidelberg until 1804. Especially intensive in this period from 1800 to 1804 is the correspondence with Winkelmann.

In his first semester of 1800, a winter semester, Savigny’s lectures were attended by his peer Hans von Bostel (1779-1839), whom he already knew from Wetzlar, and Carl von Mülmann, whom he had already met together with Arnold Heise in Jena in 1799. Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) embarked on his law degree in Marburg at Easter 1802, and first attended Savigny’s classes in the winter semester of 1802/3. In the summer semester of 1802 Savigny taught testamentary inheritance law. In the winter semester of 1802/1803 followed legal methodology and intestate inheritance. In the summer semester of 1803 he lectured on Roman legal history, according to Rudorff mainly based on Gustav Hugo’s textbooks. And Savigny held his last lectures in Marburg in the winter semester of 1803/1804: Justinian Institutiones and Law of Obligations. In the second half of 1802 he penned his first major monograph: Das Recht des Besitzes, first published in 1803 by Georg Heyer in Gießen. The original title announced by publisher Heyer in his catalogue for the Easter Book Fair of 1803, read “Abhandlung der Lehre vom Besitz” [Treatise on the Doctrine of Possession]. The more succinct title “Das Recht des Besitzes” was chosen by Savigny himself. This monograph raised the still very young Savigny immediately to the forefront of German jurists. There followed five editions edited and corrected by him: 1806, 1818, 1822, 1827 and the sixth of 1836. His pupil Adolf Friedrich Rudorff (1803-1873), from 1833 Ordinarius in Berlin, brought out a last posthumous edition in 1865. Savigny’s mailing list for Recht des Besitzes has been preserved: “... The author receives 24 free copies on elegant writing paper: Weis, Heise, Martin, Thibaut, Hugo, Haubold, Cramer, Hufeland, Bostel, Grimm, Neurath, Pfeiffer, Grolmann, Bodmann.” Of the first edition 1,500 copies were printed, the publishing contract also envisaged a new edition on the same terms and conditions. Savigny used the monograph Recht des Besitzes as an occasion to apply to the Prince Elector for an appointment as Extraordinarius, which was granted on 13 May 1803. The announcement for his final lecture already carries the title Extraordinarius. Up to his call to in 1808, Savigny appears in the course catalogue of the faculty of law in Marburg as: “D. Fri. Car. de Savigny, Prof. publ. nec non Ord. JC. Assessor extraord., iter faciens literarium, hoc etiam semestri a lectionibus habendis vacabit”. Even a quick glance at the layout of the monograph reveals the new approach: I. Source techniques, II. Literary history. Already on 10 February 1799 he wrote to Constantin Neurath and enlightened him about his legal approach: “... In any case it strikes me that an independent and exhaustive course on sources is not only the most reliable but also the easiest and most pleasant path to satisfaction in our subject matter, as for me, the converse, studying the writers is to the highest degree abhorrent...” This is immediately obvious from the second part of his monograph (“Literary history”). Scarcely a work escapes with a positive description and the verdict is oft times cutting. In his reckoning with past times he is a worthy pupil of the Romantics.

VI. Savigny’s relationships to Caroline von Günderrode and Gundula Brentano

On the relationship between Günderrode and Savigny there are many reports. In the years up to 1804 a number of letters were exchanged, with Gundula Brentano and Günderrode sometimes writing letters together to Savigny. Savigny and Günderrode write using the familiar “du”. The situation remains in the balance for a long time, even though the choice on Savigny’s part has long since been for Gundula Brentano. Although Günderrode writes to Savigny: “... Dear friend, do come soon, Gundelchen is more saddened by your absence than she will willing to admit to you, today she is especially sad and weeps bitterly, do come soon...”, her tone becomes increasingly insistent. Savigny becomes evasive, gently belittling Günderrode as “Günderrödchen”. But no clear word is to be heard from him. Already in October 1803 Savigny wrote a letter to the Brentano pater familias, the eldest brother Franz, asking for the hand of Gundula Brentano. Savigny was mustered in Marburg and in Frankfurt am Main am 4 March 1804, even though he was exempt military service as a nobleman. Also a nobleman he was also entitled to marry in his own home, which he then also did in Meerholz on 17 April 1804. But an agreement first had to be reached on this mixed marriage, Savigny being a Protestant and Gundula a Catholic. None of his friends were present at the marriage, not even Clemens Brentano; it was quite cloaked in secrecy. Günderrode brings the matter to a head, shortly before the wedding ceremony about which she was totally in the dark, by sending Savigny the poem “Der Kuß im Traume” [The kiss in a dream] in April 1804. The next letter she receives is signed by the Savignys as a married couple. After this, Savigny no longer sees Günderrode. In the autumn of 1804, he and his already pregnant wife and a sister of Clemens Brentano set off on his famous library tour to Paris, where he arrives on 12 December 1804 and where four months later his first child, daughter Bettine, is born: “I am very happy, dear Creuzer, I feel more warmly bound to life than ever before. My child is so sweet and healthy, and what makes my pleasure so complete is that its mother had such little pain...” Still in the same year, Günderrode moves to Heidelberg and commences a stormy love affair with an old friend of Savigny’s, Friedrich Creuzer, now Ordinarius in Heidelberg. The marriage between Gundula and Friedrich Carl von Savigny was to last 57 years. She survived her husband, who died on 25 October 1861, by less than two years, dying in Berlin on 17 May 1863. The marriage produced five children.

VII. Reform of Heidelberg University and its attempts to gain Savigny as a member of faculty

The marriage to Kunigunde (Gunda) Brentano in Meerholz near Marburg on 17 April 1804 finally brought Savigny the feeling of security for which he had yearned so long. After the wedding he returned to Trages Manor, where he was to stay until setting off on his major library tour to Paris: “I have been here for ten days now and have started to live as if it is to never end. But in a sense I felt no beginning either, for it seems to me as if it had never been otherwise or could have ever been”. From now on he always travelled to Paris with his entire family, an entourage often extended by a member from the Brentano circle, for example Meline, very often Clemens or Christian, later Bettina Brentano or the future brother-in-law Achim von Arnim. His wife Gunda was well aware of his vulnerability and acted accordingly. When in the summer of 1804 Friedrich Creuzer sent Savigny a reproachful letter about Schwarz’s call to a chair in Heidelberg, she answered him in a longer PS to Savigny’s letter: “...You may now think, my dear Creuzer, that your thundering sermon has been completely forgotten... But you quite mistaken, for Savigny is now mine, and I must ensure that no misfortune befalls him; I will therefore be quite cross with you now, and read you the riot act and scold you. What way is that to treat my good Savigny that I had to take so much time and effort this morning to comfort him, so despondent was he that I even had to give him a kiss just to make him that bit affable...”

In the second week of August the Savignys set off from Trages Manor. Creuzer had arranged accommodation in the Schwarze Adler Hotel in Heidelberg, the first stop on the journey to Paris: “We need, including the servants, four beds”. Savigny and his wife Gunda, Meline Brentano and a servant formed the travel group.

0Already in the summer of 1803, a few months after the publication of his monograph Recht des Besitzes, Savigny received a call to Heidelberg with the condition that he could shape the restructuring of the faculty of law as he thought fit. Savigny turned the offer down for the time being, citing his pending library tour, but left open the possibility of his joining the faculty after his return. At that time Savigny also received a call to Greifswald, which he did turn down.

Heidelberg University, the third oldest Germanic university after Prague and Vienna, was in a period of decline at the end of the 18th century, with even its closure a possibility. During the course of the Counter Reformation the university ended up firmly in the grip of the Jesuits who subordinated teaching to dogmatic beliefs. Ultimately, the university received such little money that it could not afford to heat a single room in winter. In 1800 a mere 46 students were enrolled there. The new Palatinate Prince Elector Max Joseph sought to initiate a reform of Heidelberg University and with a larger donation eased the university’s dire situation. In 1803, Heidelberg and hence the university as well, fell to Baden and the new Prince Elector Karl Friedrich of Baden took over the fundamental reform of the university. On 13 May 1803 the organization edict for places of education was issued, and in its wake Savigny received a call to the university. The university was now named “Ruperto-Carola”, the Ruprecht Karls University.

The time was kind to Heidelberg. Napoleon changed the map of Europe not only militarily but also politically, and the entire German university system fell within the iron grip of Napoleon, who not without justification feared that students and members of faculty might be looking to organize resistance to the French occupiers. The universities in Rinteln, Dillingen and Helmstedt were shut down, Cologne, Mainz and Trier were dissolved by Napoleon. Altdorf was assigned to Erlangen, Wittenberg to Halle and Frankfurt an der Oder to Breslau. The Prussian universities were subjected to particular pressure from Napoleon. After the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt, Prussia lost further territories and universities on the far bank of the Elbe, such as Duisburg and Paderborn, Erlangen, Erfurt and also Münster and Göttingen, one of the leading universities of Germany. Halle was temporarily closed and Jena sunk into insignificance. Students and professors sought new places to learn and teach. Göttingen and the finally re-opened University of Halle were assigned to the Kingdom of Westphalia, where Napoleon’s brother Jerome ruled as king.

Baden very quickly came to terms with Napoleon. Long before the Code Napoleon entered into force and becoming Baden state law as of 1 January 1810, the Heidelberg law faculty was already holding lectures on French law:, Thibaut on the systemology of his Pandect law, Zachariae on the systemology of the code civil. In addition and in contrast to the rest of Germany, which suffered greatly under Napoleon’s Continental System against England, food prices remained stable there, even the wine from the nearby vineyards remained affordable for the students. Heidelberg University became ever more attractive for students and professors alike. Marburg, on the other hand, was under the domination of the French from 1806 to 1813, which was not without consequences. In 1804, there was still the quiet but vain hope that “our wonderful Savigny will now be appointed chancellor”. From 1806, the university steadily lost one leading teacher after the other; Marburg, which in any case had a reputation for being merely the first ladder of a university career, fell into complete obscurity. Without becoming an Ordinarius, Savigny, at the young age of 25, played an advisory position within the reorganization of Heidelberg University and now looked to set an appropriate course during a longer stay in Heidelberg from August to October 1804. Friedrich Creuzer made the start. Savigny arranged for Arnold Heise and Karl Wilhelm Paetz to move to Heidelberg, Chr. R. Dietrich Martin and Thibaut came in 1805, followed shortly after by Karl Salomo Zachariä. Heidelberg faculty of law became second to none throughout Germany and was to lose its position only after the foundation of the university in Berlin. The constitutional jurist Robert von Mohl reported on the year 1819 that of the some 800 to 1000 students in Heidelberg three quarters were law students. But the university changed not only in appearance. Schelling’s natural philosophy was also to be heard in the lecture halls. More and more scholars who lectured at Heidelberg University were at least not adverse to Romantic ideas. VIII. Heidelberg Romanticism and intellectual life in Heidelberg

In July 1803, when the reorganization of the university had already been set in motion, Ludwig Tieck visited Heidelberg. Tieck was greatly impressed by the city. Even upon sober reflection, Heidelberg with its university and the picturesque castle and panoramic view of the Rhine plane is the apotheosis of the Romantic concept of nature, spirit and history. Eichendorff was also enchanted: “Heidelberg is in itself a glorious Romanticism”. Members of the university, above all Daub, Kayser and Loss, urged Tieck to move to Heidelberg for a while, an idea to which he was not adverse. Brentano, who already knew since marrying Sophie Mereau on 29 November 1803 that Savigny would be leaving Marburg, was also looking for a new home, one which would leave him closer to Achim von Arnim. Brentano already knew Heidelberg from his youth. When Creuzer moved to Heidelberg in the spring of 1804, and Savigny had received the call, it occurred to Clemens Brentano to have a professorship offered to his friend Tieck in Heidelberg, an idea that found Savigny’ support. In the closing days of July 1804 Brentano appeared in Heidelberg, “at first only to look for somewhere to live”. A few days before Savigny’s arrival, Caroline von Günderrode also travelled to Heidelberg. On 4 and 5 August a larger party, poets and professors, an ideal group of Romantics, undertook outings together, including the likes of Brentano, the Creuzers and Caroline von Günderrode. Here began the fateful love affair between Günderrode and Creuzer, which after almost two years led to the tragic suicide of Caroline.

On 6 August 1804 Brentano travelled to Frankfurt am Main, and towards the end of August he and his wife and daughter Hulda moved to Heidelberg. There now formed a group around Brentano, which has gone down in literary history as the Heidelberg Romanticism: Clemens Brentano, a little later Achim von Arnim, Sophie Mereau, Caroline von Günderrode, the Brothers Grimm, Joseph Görres and once again Friedrich Carl von Savigny. Savigny was not a Romantic, nor could he be from his own estimation. It is conspicuous, none the less, that a number of Romantics were jurists or at least studied law, Novalis for example, who could boast a law degree, or Eichendorff, who studied law in Halle and Heidelberg. That a charismatic personality like Savigny, whose legal and language skills were patently clear to every academic scholar from 1803 at the latest with the publication of the monograph Recht des Besitzes, could have a fascinating effect on Romantic circles speaks for itself. In addition there is his keen and inspirational interest in the contents of Romanticism and literature as such. His friendships with the Romantic protagonists and lastly his marriage to Gunda Brentano boosted the Romantics’ admiration for Savigny all the more. On the influence of the Early Romantics in Jena on the character and life of Savigny there are different opinions as to the degree but not to the influence itself. In Marburg, Heidelberg, Landshut and lastly Berlin, everywhere a Romantic circle formed around Savigny. In a letter to his brother Franz Brentano, who was running their father’s business in Frankfurt am Main, Clemens Brentano described his own notion of an existence as poet and artist already in 1798 and indirectly touches upon the later role of Savigny: “In today’s world one can choose between two things only, one can either be a person or a bourgeois, and one only sees what is to be avoided but not what to embrace. The bourgeois have occupied the entire temporality, and the people have nothing for themselves apart from themselves”. Savigny ensured, if not guaranteed, the Romantics the space for their artistic creativity, which also extended to their work at the university. He created in the Romantic circle an intellectual, emotional and also material climate without which their tremendous productivity would not have been possible. Nor should Savigny’s organizational contribution be overlooked. Time and again he succeeded in gathering Romantics around him over a longer period: in Marburg, Heidelberg, Landshut, Berlin, but also in Schlangenbad, in Kassel, at Trages Manor, on a trip on the Rhine or also at Goethe’s home. The Romantics were forever on the move, Arnim often in Berlin, the Grimms in Kassel, Brentano in Frankfurt and Munich. Savigny ensured an intellectual and mutual exchange that was at once continuous and sustained. It is perhaps doubtful whether the later Historical School of Law would have blossomed as it did, if Savigny had not gained this fundamental experience with the Romantics. Bettina Brentano too describes the intellectual climate created by Savigny through his charisma: “... I know how his emotions are freer and lighter than all the others’, how they suffer no stress from this world and are not troubled within by what goes on outside, how no power in him is lost; for his spirit and his love have neither scale or boundaries in which they move, they feel no law which the opinions of others have created, he lives for his own sake alone...” It can certainly be called a stroke of good fortune for the Romantics that Savigny keeps the group together, especially as the Romantics were prone on occasion to vehement tensions. It is certain that without Savigny the Romantic circle would not have endured for so long or could have repeatedly enjoyed a new start after Jena. The Romantics were group-minded. Needless to say, this aspect included the wealthy Savigny, who could easily afford the bountifulness and organization. Even early on in his Marburg period he supported the impecunious Friedrich Creuzer, for example, for more than a year or furnished a generous surety for Tieck in Landshut. His house was always open and his sociable life widely known already in Marburg, at Trages Manor, later in Landshut. When Savigny’s circle of friends came together, he was always the focal point. Savigny often read from a book and led the ensuing discussions. The mutual help, support and pleasure in literary creativity - the Romantics in Jena called it symphilosophy and sympoetry - is clear in many of Savigny’s letters. The same discussion occasionally ran for a longer period of time. For example, J. Chr. Bang reported on how Savigny told him about the plans for his next publications and showed him his seminal and later famous polemic “Vom Beruf unserer Zeit” [On the profession for out time ] that was to be the foundation stone for the development of the Historical School and that the thoughts expressed in it had been known to him for years, for example the idea of the folkspirit which had already been formulated in July 1807, when Joseph Görres published his “Die teutschen Volksbücher” [The German Chapbooks]. In his preface, Görres describes that the chapbooks had become the “embodiment of the folkspirit”, and despite having been rejected over the course of time by the learned continued to enjoy popularity among the ordinary people and were the seedbed for sensitivity. The second part of this folkspirit is formed by the folksong, to which Arnim and Brentano had already devoted themselves. For example, Achim von Arnim wrote an essay “Von Volksliedern” [On folksongs], which was later taken up in the Wunderhorn. Joseph von Eichendorff, a Late Romantic poet who had been studying law under Thibaut in Heidelberg since the spring of 1807, had little direct contact with Heidelberg Romanticism. From Savigny’s old Marburg circle, Schwarz joined the theological faculty and from Jena Savigny arranged for the philospher Fries to move there. As part of the reorganization of Heidelberg University, an academic bookshop was to be set up. Cotta in Tübingen, Schwan and Götz in Mannheim and Mohr in Frankfurt applied for the privilege. The Mannheim booksellers Schwan and Götz were chosen, but Mohr was also allowed to open a bookshop thanks to the intervention of the Heidelberg professors Heise, Paetz and others. Paetz drafted the contract which gave Mohr the title of an academic bookshop but also insisted that he open an independent, not just a branch, bookshop. To that end Mohr won over Zimmer, his friend and colleague from their Hamburg days. Zimmer arrived in Heidelberg in July 1805 with the poetess and educationalist Caroline Rudolphi and founded the bookshop Mohr & Zimmer and, thanks to the large number of connections to the university and the Romantic poet circle established by Rudolphi, he was able to add the publishing activities in the same year. Zimmer was not only a bookseller and publisher, but also was a scholar with a keen interest in science. He accompanied the Romantics on their travels and rambles, also helping them in their search for material for the Romantics’ first major publication: “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”, [The Boy’s Magic Horn] published in September 1805, date on the title page 1806; it was also the first work published at Mohr and Zimmer. The publication of this in part controversial collection of German folksongs soon made Mohr and Zimmer known throughout Germany as the publishers to the Romantics. Business connections were established with Arnim, Böckh, Brentano, Görres, Perthes, the Brothers Schlegel, Tieck and also Savigny. In 1812 Arnim negotiated a publishing contract for Friedrich Carl von Savigny with Mohr and Zimmer. Within a few years the seminal works of the Historical School of Law were being printed in Heidelberg. A clear sign of the close relationship between university and Romanticism is also the “Heidelberger Jahrbücher für Litteratur” [Heidelberg Literature Yearbooks] set up by Daub and Creuzer in 1808 and published by Zimmer and Mohr, which contained not only contributions from Heidelberg scholars but also essays by Brentano, Arnim, Görres, Jean Paul and Savigny. Thibaut and Heise edited the law section in six-monthly rotation. The death of Sophie Mereau on 30 October 1806 seemed to put an end to the Heidelberg Romanticism, with Brentano practically fleeing from Heidelberg. But now came the first literary successes of the Romantics and kept Heidelberg Romanticism alive until 1808, when Brentano and his new wife moved to join Savigny in Landshut. Besides the first volume of Arnim and Brentano’s Knaben Wunderhorn, Joseph Görres published “Die teutschen Volksbücher” in 1807. In October 1806 Joseph Görres staged privatim the first Germanistic seminar at a German university. From 1 April to 30 August 1808 Brentano and Arnim produced the “Zeitung für Einsiedler” [Newspaper for Hermits].

IX. Savigny’s library tour to Paris

On 20 October 1804 Savigny himself left Heidelberg to travel towards Paris via Mannheim. On 2 November he stopped over in Strasbourg, then in Nancy and on 18 November in Metz, paying intensive visits to the libraries he came across. On 2 December the Savignys arrived in Paris, the same day as Napoleon was crowned emperor.

The arrival in Paris was marked by a disaster which hit Savigny so hard that Gunda took over correspondence for him, writing to Friedrich Creuzer from Paris on 5 December 1804: “...Only a very brief friendly greeting from us so poor and unfortunate people. Savigny is so distraught, so saddened by the loss of all the manuscripts he wrote about this journey. We have lost our suitcase or it was stolen when we arrived in Paris; so Savigny is discouraged from picking up his pen...” Only in early February was Savigny to find words and take heart enough to reorganize himself: “... I have not lost all of my papers, quite the opposite: of my own works nothing at all - but everything that had to do with the journey, i.e. the Index Bibliothecarum....the Index Editionum, and the Collatio Codd. Mss., in other words everything that I had put together last winter when I was in Göttingen and while on the journey (especially in Swabia and Metz). There I was now in Paris, where I hoped to find more than anywhere else in the world, and where at a glance I found much more than I had expected - there I was, had work aplenty, and the most magnificent, most fruitful work, new discoveries at every step - and yet paralyzed though the loss itself and the impression of that loss...”

Savigny was truly set back by the loss: “... in effect we were all rendered ill by it, either by turns or together”. Savigny spoke of some 1,000 notes which had been lost, and posted a large reward via the police. But the suitcase never turned up. Now Savigny needed urgent help. He did not want to ask this of his friend Hans in Bostel, the addressee of the letter, but: ... I have already written to Christian [= Brentano] in that spirit. If one of the two [= Pfeiffer or Jacob Grimm] can come, well and good. If that is not possible, could you come, and just as quickly as you can ...”

In the end, the 20-year old Jacob Grimm, who was in his final year of studies in Marburg, came to Paris, arriving on 12 February. On 20 February Savigny was once again optimistic; he apologized to Creuzer for the late reply because for nigh on two months a malaise... had left me fully lame, so that the slightest of activity cost me great trouble and I could not work on nothing for myself, either. Now I am well again, I have had the eldest Grimm come from Marburg, and he is helping me very admirably, and now work and everything else is proceeding quite merrily. The collection of manuscripts here is simply huge. There is no alternative to working in the cold, and only from 10 until 2: printed material I do of course get sent to my home. Very little excitement, mostly very ignorant or very lazy... Beyond the Ms. not a single thing.” Savigny made good progress, in the same letter of 20 February he was already showing signs of optimism: “... My lost papers will, as far as I need them for my journey, be replaced in short ...”

The daily library visit determined the daily rhythm of the entire family. Tea in the morning between 9 and 10, then the library visit. Then, a late breakfast about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Suitably refreshed, work on the books and manuscripts, with the fruits gained in the library being sorted and systematized. The evening meal between 10 and 12 o’clock at night, followed by bed. Occasionally the family went to a restaurant in Paris. Jakob Grimm was greatly impressed by the luxury in which Savigny and his family lived. The odd trip to the theatre also brought some variety for Savigny and Grimm. At the end of February, Savigny met an acquaintance from his Jena days, Friedrich Schlegel, by chance: “... Yesterday Friedrich Schlegel spoke to me over the manuscripts. He has become very fat and now looks somewhat forbidding, so that I would not have even recognized him, even though we were very often together there.”

Even from Paris, Savigny followed developments at Heidelberg University, with Friedrich Creuzer keeping him frequently and intensively informed. In March 1805 he learned that Thibaut had been offered a professorship. The initiative came from Arnold Heise, who on Savigny’s recommendation had been teaching in Heidelberg since the end of 1804. He was commissioned, in the spirit of the university reorganization, to recruit somebody to join the faculty of law. In a letter of 18 February 1805 Heise gave the name of Thibaut, who ranked on a par with Hugo, Savigny and Haubold among the best of German civil law academics at the latest following his “System des Pandektenrechts” [System of Pandect Law] first published in Jena 1803. The call to Thibaut came on 23 April and was accepted on 29 September 1805. Thibaut’s enormous salary led to not only friendly comments, with Friedrich Creuzer for example remarking: “... The entire theological faculty including extraordd. does not have as much as Thibaut alone”. Savigny clearly showed in his reaction that Thibaut had not gone to Heidelberg upon his recommendation, it even unsettled him somewhat and his comment about Cramer can be seen as a fear that his chances of becoming an Ordinarius in Heidelberg were waning: “What you write from Heidelberg has indeed caught me very much unawares. That Thibaut is moving there struck me the most, so that I still do not really believe it. If it is true, and if you could then get only Cramer, then no faculty of law would be so well appointed as yours. Write more on this soon...”

A few days later Savigny wrote to Clemens Brentano in a somber tone that the news from Heidelberg faculty of law was very pleasing and “Thibaut especially is a feather in its cap”. The question as to Savigny’s literary plans at that point in time is not easy to answer. In mid March 1805 he told Friedrich Creuzer that he would not be contributing to his journal despite having said so because he was planning on focusing “all my literary efforts on my main plans”. Nor did he want “to be lured into any distraction through the acclaim for other works”. This now also included the second edition of his Recht des Besitzes: “My book on possession will be printed anew after Easter, which is now embarrassing me somewhat “. Later, when he told Friedrich Creuzer about his application for a professorship in Heidelberg, he also revealed his intention to no longer give lectures the way he did in Marburg, where he more or less presented selected collegia. In Heidelberg he now wanted to lecture on a larger context, meaning not only a comprehensive presentation of the Digest, but equally the history underlying it: “You know that I take my literary plans very seriously, and I would in the main like to lecture again, and do more than devote just myself to books to fulfill those plans. But that I cannot do without giving a coherent whole in my lectures, and this wholeness includes firstly the history, and secondly the dogmatics (which is usually divided into Institutiones and Pandects), neither of these two parts can be appreciated in the right light without the other. So I would want to be able to lecture on the full course of civil law.”

Savigny also took this approach later at Landshut University: “I lectured on Institutiones and legal history, and in the summer on Pandects...” This means the winter semester of 1808/9 and the summer semester of 1809. In that summer semester of 1809 Savigny told Jacob Grimm: “I have been lecturing on the Pandects for a whole year now, starting from last spring, and besides giving those lectures it is my intention to complete my direct study of sources, as so far I only got through about half of it ...”. Savigny was also on the continuous lookout for books to acquire; for example during this period Clemens Brentano obtained the editio princeps of the Codex Iustinianus, Mainz 1475, for him. Savigny’s private library grew relentlessly. In the end, he removed 1,500 volumes and had a sale catalog printed in Frankfurt. At the same time he sought material for Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim’s anthology of folksongs (Des Knaben Wunderhorn). In libraries, at book auctions and at booksellers, he kept an eye out for anything suitable for them and their book project. Already in Heidelberg Brentano had built up a remarkable library, in which Joseph Görres found the material for his publication on German chapbooks. One event in Paris particularly enraptured Savigny and he reported on it long and often in his letters. On 11 April 1805 his daughter Betine was born in Paris: “For 8 days now, dear Clemens, I have been so pleased and happy... Gundel had few labor pains, she was sound right to the last moment and was very soon up and about again... “. Still that same day he also wrote Friedrich Creuzer: “I am very happy, dear Creuzer, I feel myself more warmly tied to life than ever before. My child is so cute and healthy and what makes my delight so complete is that her mother had so few pains during the birth...” He also wrote a letter to Weis, expressing his great joy: “Even the realization that the child cannot now become a jurist, troubles me not in the slightest.” Indeed, his daughter Betine was to remain all her life his especially guarded and closest child. From now on, he kept his correspondents informed about her state of health, the weight she gained, her first words; in Savigny we now see a movingly concerned father. Apart from the sad news about the death of Clemens and Sophie Mereau’s little daughter - “Your misfortune... has shaken me...”- the months passed without major incidents. On 18 September 1805 the Savignys departed from Paris. Napoleon’s troop movements forced them to travel via Metz and Koblenz, where he visited Görres, to Frankfurt am Main, and finally in early October they arrived at Trages Manor. X. Savigny’s failure to be appointed a chair in Heidelberg

Immediately after, Savigny paid a short visit to Heidelberg. In the late autumn he and his family moved to Marburg, not returning to Trages Manor until the spring; from there they set off on his second major library tour on 6 June 1806, which took them from Nuremburg, Altdorf, Erlangen, Augsburg, Munich and ended in Vienna. This journey was to take almost18 months, again Gunda is heavily pregnant and on 31 July gave birth to Savigny’s first son, who however died a few days later. “A young son was born to Savigny for 3 days” wrote Bettina Brentano to Arnim.

The year 1806 was an especially painful one for Savigny. His first son died after a few days. “You might perhaps know already from Christian [Brentano]”, he wrote on 25 August in his first letter after this event to Bang in Nuremburg, “how my great pleasure over a son changed after a few days into bitter sorrow over his death. It was a very sad time for us both...” It had begun on 21 February 1806 with the death of his friend Stephan August Winkelmann, poet, philosopher and lastly doctor, who succumbed to typhoid in Braunschweig at the young age of 26. On 26 July Caroline von Günderrode, only 26 years old, fatally stabbed herself while in Winkel am Rhine. Savigny learned of this in Nuremburg and wrote to Clemens Brentano on 25 August: “The fate of Günderrode has shaken me greatly...”. On 31 October 1806, at the age of 36 years, Sophie Mereau died giving birth to her third child, also a girl, who did not survive the birth either. The circle around Savigny thinned. And Savigny became tired of such journeys. Not only in the company of his entire family, with his wife mostly pregnant: “... for travelling with the child is not without its problems”. Even in times of peace, travelling was arduous. Shortly before its dissolution in 1806, the Holy Roman Empire comprised no fewer than 1,125 separate territories and practically every one of them had its own toll and customs borders, with the charges having to be paid in local currency, painstakingly obtained before embarking on the journey. Time and again, bribery was the sole means of passing the many borders quickly and without complications; dangers lurked everywhere, even Savigny carried pistols; the horses had to be changed constantly and Savigny even had the advantage of owing his own, relatively comfortable coach. All in all, traveling was quite expensive; which is why students went from Marburg to Jena on foot as a rule. Now came Napoleon’s field campaigns too, ever more often with troop movements through Europe, meaning that entire routes were blocked off for civilians. On 9 October 1806 Prussia declared war on France. In Göttingen, Achim von Arnim circulated war songs to the Prussian soldiers. On 14 October 1806 Prussia lost the war against Napoleon in the double battle of Jena and Auerstedt, the French now entered Berlin. Arnim fled to Königsberg, to where the Prussian king had also fled.

Savigny’s departure from Trages Manor on 5 July lacked the euphoric mood of the last library tour: “The day after tomorrow I set off from here with bag and baggage, this time without my sister-in-law of course, heading first for Nuremburg...”. He travelled hither and thither, often even leaving his family in a particular place and travelling alone to the various libraries. From Munich, where he was staying in November 1806, he took a short trip to Landshut, reporting on this to Friedrich Creuzer: “Above all, count yourself lucky that you did not come to Landshut after all. This is the most loathsome university, nothing but hate and cliques, a very unliterary mind, and corresponding resistance of all the professors against life in this place. Altogether I doubt where academe can thrive among people of this ilk. My stay here has filled me with respect and love for them. But that is just between us. I am often outraged when I hear how they delight in the misery of the North Germans, and that from sheer stupidity and envy of Jena’s higher learning. There is nothing shared, national in the people, at most hate of the Austrians; that there may be Germans in the world, let alone that they are themselves Germans never occurs to them for one moment. The minister who does everything is an arch enemy of the universities, which he of course only knows from Ingolstadt...”

Savigny spent the winter of 1806/7 in Vienna, where he lodged until July 1807 with Franz Brentano, who had opened a subsidiary of his Frankfurt business in Vienna. Savigny now seems to be completely exhausted: “I have now arrived here, where I am thinking of spending the winter. Here I have been living up now in great distraction, I still have not started work, also doubt whether I will find very much...” In March Savigny revealed his mood in a letter to Creuzer in Heidelberg: “I am yearning for a peaceful place for me and my family and for my studies, and there where you are is the very university that attracts me.” And a little later in the same letter: “I do wish to come to Heidelberg, but under certain conditions, on which I must digress to explain...” To the question ov payment:

“... Lastly a few words on remuneration...” Savigny did not want his payment to be measured against Thibaut or Martin, but nor did he want to be downgraded either: “But on the other hand, I cannot accept being too far behind them...” Out of the blue Savigny conceded that his many travels and no doubt his book purchases had eaten into his wealth, at any rate he seems to have lost track somewhat: “... that I... have always lived in a kind of disorder, which was at times quite embarrassing. My travels have increased that chaos...” He acknowledges that an additional income from a professor’s salary is much required: “... A significant contribution from outside alone can solve this disorder, and so this very natural wish is fully in harmony with my inner urge to be active... “. Altogether Savigny remained optimistic, suggesting only in Thibaut’s appointment a difficulty which he aimed to overcome with his demands. He ends the letter insistently: “... Even though I cannot come before the autumn, I must request a reply as soon as possible...”

The university situation had become so much more difficult for Savigny, however. Austria was out of the question. As he wrote to Friedrich Creuzer: “... I must tell you that I consider an appointment here in Vienna... as absolutely impossible. And anywhere else that is Austrian...”. At that time, this also included Würzburg, which had become Habsburg, causing Schelling to move from Würzburg to Munich. Göttingen would have been acceptable, but was now under French rule as part of the Kingdom of Westphalia, just as Jena was later: “I am not now considering Göttingen, nor can I recommend it for the time being, since the fate of the entire region is still very uncertain”. All in all, Prussia’s defeat by Napoleon had rendered it unsafe terrain and no less than three months after this letter from Savigny Göttingen was annexed to the Kingdom of Westphalia. And his verdict on Landshut was, as we have seen, quite unmistakable. But the situation in Heidelberg developed differently to what Savigny had envisaged or hoped. In early 1807 the Ruperto-Carola suffered a shortage of funds. Fears were expressed that the entire Heidelberg University might be merged with Freiburg im Breisgau. Only in 1811 did the situation at Heidelberg University become more settled under Grand Duke Karl Ludwig (1811-1818). Now on 7 May the Grand Duke of Baden refused to appoint Savigny on the grounds that “there was no money there”. Savigny still knew nothing about the Grand Duke’s decision, but certainly about the money problems. Now even more reserved, he wrote to Friedrich Creuzer on 22 May 1807: “All in all I would still rather like to go to H.[eidelberg]”. Now uneasy, Savigny mentioned the university’s wish of appointing him professor four years earlier, and urged Creuzer to promote his cause by writing to the crucial persons, “to call to mind that a few years ago a professorship was offered to me, and that the then Curatel had, after I had turned it down because of my journey, expressed the wish that I would take up that offer after completing by journey”. Savigny sensed, however, that he might be going too far, was perhaps becoming far too imposing, and back-pedaled: “At any rate you will know best how to go about the matter so that I do not come across as a supplicant...”. Ultimately, Savigny learned about the rejection in Heidelberg and wrote to Creuzer defiantly: “I consider the matter finished, and I must admit to you that I set little store or hope from it for the future either.”

In the same letter to Creuzer Savigny admitted that he was at a loss: “Whither I shall go, I still do not know.” He is deeply offended, completely knocked off course, and trying to get a grip by seeing the whole of academe as endangered: “Some very important and general things are at stake, on which the life and the work of every individual increasingly depend. It remains to be seen whether Germany will lose everything that forms part and parcel of its learning and academic institutions, in manners and customs; if that happens, then even the German scholars will be pensioned off...” In this situation it was even rumored that Thibaut had prevented Savigny’s appointment. This led Thibaut to write a letter to Savigny, in which he took up the conspiracy theories circulating among law professors and said that there was no truth in the rumors. Thibaut reported in this letter, a colleague in the law faculty, he means Klüber, had spread the rumor, “Your call to Heidelberg was prevented here by the jurists [i.e. Martin, Heise and me]. Most probably something similar has reached your ears...”

It was a dismal situation for Savigny, now that Heidelberg was no longer possible, as it in effect left no other university, all were either Habsburg or closed down or controlled by the French. In this situation he turned to Landshut University. From Vienna he travelled through the Salzburg lands to Munich and from there to Frankfurt am Main via Weimar and Kassel.

XI. Call to Landshut University and disbanding of Heidelberg Romanticism

Already in early January Savigny was corresponding with Hufeland, whom he knew and admired from his stay in Jena. This time it was about a copy of the legal historical work by Thomas Diplovataccius (1468-1541). Hufeland had a full professorship in Landshut and was about to take up the post of mayor in his home city of Danzig. On 5 September Savigny was staying in Munich: “... for three days, my very esteemed friend, I have been near you again, but not for very long...” and urged Hufeland to meet: “... Perhaps you might like to come here? And when? I must and will see you, come what may...” Savigny ends by recalling his gift: “... The second edition of Das Recht des Besitzes you have no doubt long since held in your hands...” And at the close of the brief letter once again insists: “... I am writing shortly and in fragments because I hope to be able to speak long and coherently to you soon...” Details of this meeting are not known, only the outcome: A year later Savigny succeeded Hufeland in Landshut. Then Savigny travelled to Weimar and visited Goethe. The Brentanos came to meet him and there was a large reunion: Bettina and Meline Brentano, Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim and the Savignys. On 10 November they all travelled to Kassel, which had become the residence city of the Kingdom of Westphalia under King Jerome, the brother of Napoleon, on 18 August of the same year. There they all gathered at the Brothers Grimm, who made the acquaintance of Bettina Brentano and Achim von Arnim. Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim and also the Brothers Grimm immediately set to work on the second and third volumes of “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”, which were published by Mohr and Zimmer the following September. In the following period, as a clear indication of his despondency following his failed appointment in Heidelberg, the Savignys stayed with the Brentanos in Frankfurt am Main, where they were visited by Madame de Stael and her companion August Wilhelm Schlegel. On 19 July the Savignys travelled to Schlangenbad, where the entire (Romantic) society assembled by and by. In mid August there was a trip on the Rhine to Cologne. On 12 September the gathering set off for Landshut: the Savignys, Clemens and his wife Auguste, Bettina Brentano and at the beginning also Achim von Arnim. Ludwig Tieck was spending a longer sojourn in Munich because he was now striving for an appointment in the Bavarian metropolis following his attempt to obtain a professorship at Heidelberg University, which had failed despite the support of Brentano and Savigny. The stay was financed by a generous surety from Savigny. On 2 November Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) arrived in Munich from Rome, where he was serving as Prussian envoy to the Vatican. There Humboldt made the acquaintance of Bettina Brentano: “A young Brentano, Bettina, 23 years old, has left me most astonished. Such vivacity, such flights of thought and movement (now she is sitting on the ground, now by the fire) so much spirit and so much folly is incredible. Seeing this after six years in Italy is more than unique....” After his visits to Weimar and Kassel Savigny travelled to Frankfurt am Main, where he spent the winter of 1807/8 before leaving for Landshut on 10 September 1808. In this period Savigny wrote hardly any letters, but did receive the call to the Bavarian Landshut University. On 30 March he wrote to Bang from Frankfurt am Main: “You no doubt know that I will be moving to Landshut as professor in autumn? I cannot drop the matter now, and Bavaria does have for the moment much more to recommend it than most of the other German states. If you have any objections, or want to know more details, then let me know, and you will surely hear from me.” Such an expression is most unlike Savigny, but his career as professor ending in failure - “I cannot drop the matter now” - seemed to be more than a remote possibility now. Even the news about the birth of his third child, a son, was quite muted; for example he wrote he to Bang on 17 March 1808: “On Monday a son was born to me, everything went well and mother and son are quite sound. Just imagine my pleasure!” And only on 28 April did Savigny start negotiating his call to Landshut.

Savigny made his demands with the reference that he had received a call to Jena. He demanded a salary comparable to Thibaut’s in Heidelberg and also asked for a 50% higher reimbursement of his removal costs; after all these removal costs were half of his annual salary. He justified this with his library, which he intended to take with him: the “removal money would not suffice due to the transporting of my voluminous library”.

He doubted whether he could take up the post already in autumn, and also demanded a get-out clause, “... if I am given the assurance immediately with my appointment that should a new Bavarian university be organized in Erlangen (or elsewhere) I may transfer my current appointment there”. In addition, he demanded to be spared “faculty work”, i.e. sitting on the faculty’s decision tribunal, “since my sole wish is to devote all my efforts to teaching and such literary works that are most closely linked to the same”.

On 13 May while Savigny was still staying with the Brentanos in their main home, the “Goldener Kopf” in Frankfurt am Main, he wrote to the Brothers Grimm: “In two months we shall be going to Schlangenbad, and at the end of the summer to Landshut, where I have taken Hufeland’s post with 3000 fl. salary, so that I can now at last think of more continuous work than before.” The next day he informed Friedrich Creuzer about his accepting the call and justified it once again: “In addition, the choice of such places grows shorter by the day, as the prospects for Göttingen are most unfavorable, and as for moving to Jena (from where I had received an offer that very same day) I am least inclined, especially because of the faculty members...”. Scarcely was his way of life settled again, the professorship in the autumn of 1808 in Landshut in the bag, Savigny began to look around to see who from his circle he could persuade to move to Landshut with him. Already on 27 May he tried to win Clemens Brentano for Landshut: “Hear my opinion of Landshut so heartily and unbiased as I put it to you. As far as I concerned, your presence cannot be other than greatly desired.” Savigny did not leave out his reservations about Landshut either: “However, I am not at all sure whether you will find staying in L. pleasant. The people are on the whole somewhat off-putting, in L. itself there are yet as not many affable people: you must not expect life and activity as in Heidelberg now, and the good is as yet more to be expected than enjoyed.” And typical for Savigny, he cautioned his friend Friedrich Creuzer to comply with bourgeois customs: “In the main, however, I do not wish that you reach a decision about your future for a longer time without taking your wife into consideration. This relationship is after all there, you cannot simply ignore it, and you cannot, as long as it persists, make any plans for yourself without at the same time contemplating a plan for your wife.... You cannot avoid considering your wife even if you knew for certain that you will never be able to live with her...” A little later Savigny learned that Friedrich Creuzer was thinking of leaving Heidelberg and did his utmost to lure him to Landshut and, from Frankfurt, fought for his being offered a position as librarian and lecturer. After his cure in Schlangenbad, Savigny stayed at Trages Manor until the end of August, only to write in mid September: “Today I would have set off, if my little girl’s illness had not intervened. Now it will be in a few days.”

Once again the Romantics gathered around Savigny to set off together for a new destination. The journey was far more than symbolic, a little later the Heidelberg Romanticism disbanded. In two coaches, Landshut was reached on 26 September, but the party only stayed one day because the furniture and the library had still not arrived and so they travelled on to Munich, taking quarters there on 29 September. Gunda Savigny and the children remained in Munich until December before being able to move into the now furnished home in Landshut.

Savigny was now full professor of law at Landshut University: In vacuam per eius abitum Iuris Romano-civilis cathedram perillustris Fr. Car. De Savigny suffectus est. Is, die XIII Maji huius anni Landishutum arcessitus et cum annuo trium milium florenorum, florenis autem mille et quingentis pro transmigra-tione numeratis, regius Consiliarius aulicus atque juris civilis Romani Professor p. o. designatus est, addita speciali permissione, ut post biennium, si forte Landishutum minus sibi gratum foret, aliam eligendi Academiam haberet potestatem.

Romanticism had already taken root in Landshut too, even before the arrival of Savigny. Friedrich Ast, who had experienced the early Romanticism in Jena from the very start as student and lecturer and who was professor for classical philology in Landshut from 1805, edited the Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Kunst [magazine for science and art] from 1808, in which included from the first issue on not only contributions on classical philology but also poems and reviews of Romantic authors, for example of Joseph Görres’ “Die teutschen Völksbücher”. Ast admired Friedrich Schlegel as being the acme of German poesy. The magazine was also known in Heidelberg, where it was read and discussed in the reading room of the Zimmer and Mohr publishing house. There was also occasional mention of the Landshut Romanticism.

Savigny began his lectures in the winter semester of 1808/9. Already in November of 1808 Clemens Brentano wrote to his sister Bettina: “Recently Savigny told me: If a university is set up in Berlin, I shall make sure that I get there!” Already in early 1809 Savigny responded to Arnim in Berlin: “Your suggestion that I move to Berlin is not to be dismissed. But the whole thing is probably a joke. Wolf was surely thinking more of Hugo than me...”

All in all, Savigny’s teaching turned out to be more pleasing than he first feared: “Much unpleasantness I have experienced here, but also much that is worth keeping for recollection, and on the whole I must call my life here in this state as rich...” Clemens, the acerbic poet, described the university in Landshut in a letter to the Brothers Grimm in choice term: “Marburg in its worst of days is an Athens, a Bologna in comparison. Not one of the students can spell properly, few know any Latin, mostly sons of craftsmen and peasants.” Savigny’s splendid salary on the other hand permitted a very sociable life in Landshut, Savigny was as generous as ever. Gunda invited Ludwig Emil Grimm to Landshut again Christmas 1809 to paint Savigny’s portrait. “I was frequently invited by Savigny,” he wrote, “that was always a great pleasure for me”. The stay was once overshadowed by the hefty, coarse, in part violent quarrel between Clemens Brentano and his young wife Auguste, which also brought Savigny to the verge of exasperation, and once by the encroaching French forces, which waged a number of battles with the Austrians near Landshut from 16 to 23 April 1809. Napoleon regarded this campaign as his masterpiece. It also severely affected the Savigny family, since two armies each 150,000 strong marched through the city within the short space of eight days. There was also fighting within Landshut’s city walls. Among the retreating Austrians was Friedrich Schlegel, who unexpectedly appeared at the Savigny’s front door. All in all, the military action in and around Landshut proved to be dangerous and quite threatening: “You cannot imagine how unsettled and fearful our situation here was; at once constant, inconsolable, tingling fear and Gunda’s worry and hope bordering on convulsions and Savigny’s great distress about her state, and the continuous billeting of troops...

In Munich Savigny made the close acquaintance of Paul Anselm von Feuerbach, whose house he moved into (Oberneustadt Strasse) in Landshut. Savigny had attended the lectures by the young Feuerbach during his stay in Jena in 1799. He developed an especially intensive friendship with Josef Michael Sailer (1751-1832), at that time professor of theology in Landshut and later bishop of Regensburg. Towards the end of 1809 the old Romantic literary circle around Savigny came to life again. At that time Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften [Elective Affinities] was published and triggered a storm of enthusiasm, even though occasionally reservations of a moral nature were also heard, above all from the Brothers Grimm. On 19 November Bettina Brentano spent a moon-lit night reading it from cover to cover. In the letters of Savigny, who had received the novel from Goethe personally, we also find many a reference, for example on 25 December 1809 to Friedrich Creuzer: “Have you read Wahlverwandtschaften? Many find it heart-rendering and are incensed at the author for the painful sensation. I find the impression so great, harmonious and noble that I prefer no other work by Goethe: it is the most magnificent portrayal of these confusing days, and on the whole more tragic than romantic.” As in Marburg times Savigny read to his circle from Goethe’s novel, reported Ludwig Grimm. At the end of the reading Savigny remarked: “It really is impressive how lively the old man still writes.”

XII. The foundation of the University of Berlin and Wilhelm von Humboldt’s negotiations with Savigny

Right from the start, Savigny’s teaching in Landshut was accompanied by reports and correspondence on the work preparing the foundation of the University of Berlin. Already at the start of the new century, there developed a public discourse on the question whether Berlin should have a new university. The start was made by Johann Jakob Engel (1741-1802) with his “Denkschrift zur Errichtung einer grossen Lehranstalt in Berlin” [Memorandum on the founding of a major teaching institution in Berlin] published on 13 March 1802. This led to a large number of pamphlets in favor of and against founding such a university. Following the closing of the University of Halle appeared Heinrich Schmalz’s (1760-1831) “Denkschrift über die Errichtung einer Universität in Berlin” [Memorandum on the founding of a university in Berlin] on 22 August 1807. There followed the publications and expertises by Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (undated, about 1807), Karl Friedrich von Beyme (5 September 1807), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1807), Friedrich Daniel Schleiermacher (1808) and lastly Wilhelm von Humboldt (undated, 1809 or 1810). The intensive public discourse in the run-up to the foundation of Berlin University led Theodor Mommsen to point out in his directorate speech of 1875 that “in the magnificence of the justification... no university in Germany can compare with ours.” Savigny promptly reviewed what F. Schleiermacher had written. When Savigny accepted his call to Landshut, the debate over the founding of Berlin University had not only erupted, but the preparatory phase for its being built had also commenced. Savigny knew full well about this development, hence his situation after his thwarted wish for a Heidelberg professorship became all the more dramatic because a move to Berlin was probably out of the question if he was not already an Ordinarius. And he compensated for the defects of Landshut university which he himself had described with extreme industriousness, not only outlining his entire program for his time Berlin but also fleshing it out This cause and effect was already described by Franz Wieacker. Berlin University was, in the early phase at least, a revival of the ideals of Jena University, as it was in its heyday in the Romantic era and when Savigny visited it during his cultural trip.

There were increasing signs that Savigny was the focus of interest for filling the professorship in the faculty of law. And Humboldt justified the call to Savigny with both the latter’s undoubted leading role in jurisprudence and also his young age: he stood out “through his philosophical approach to his field of science and a genuine and rare philological erudition alike.” Already in March 1809 Arnim wrote to Savigny from Berlin: “... Humboldt was just here... about you, I am officially passing on his request, as he instructed me to do. He wishes to see you as the head of the faculty of law, so that partly your knowledge partly your counsel and character can foster this planned university undertaken with many a fair ethos... Only one thing he would desire on account of the honor of the new university, which could easily suffer a blow to its reputation from a negative response: should you not be disposed to becoming involved, do not tell anybody, I too should keep my mouth shut, even though he would like a reply very soon, do not forget Görres, your recommendation would have more effect than mine.” On 25 October 1809 Savigny wrote from Landshut to Arnim in Berlin: “you have said nothing about the University of Berlin for so long. Now, since the mainland apart from the peninsula [Spain] is now at peace [Peace of Vienna, 14 October] no doubt everyone must be inclined to make themselves as comfortable as possible at home, and this coziness includes for you the university as well. Tell me what people are thinking about it...” In effect everything had already been decided in March 1809. Even during his first semester in Landshut, his call to Berlin was already cut and dried. The formal call to Berlin came on 11 January 1810. Already on 27 February Savigny announced that he would accept it for 2,500 thaler. On 9 April 1810 Savigny sent his acceptance of the call to Humboldt in Berlin: “In reply to the esteemed offer of a professorship in Roman law at the University of Berlin I have the honor of firmly declaring that I accept that offer on the following terms, and that I hope to arrive in Berlin in the very near future.”

On 13 April Savigny was already prepared for his “departure to Berlin”, all the books had already been wrapped and put in crates. Savigny was still expecting, at least according to his correspondents, a call for Hugo to Berlin at the same time, he himself announced that he had received a call to Göttingen: “The call to Göttingen I needless to say received repeatedly, but that the current circumstances do not tempt me, you can no doubt imagine.” The same day he wrote a letter to Bang: “However, I will be going to Berlin, and this, God willing, in the next 8-14 days. Since you say that you are sorry to hear this, then you really must give me your reasons, otherwise I shall sue you in the name of the University...” Savigny is in a good mood. “Appointed up to now are: Wolf, Fichte, Schleiermacher, Reil, my humble self, probably Hugo, some say Kielmeyer and I am thinking of Heeren.” Without doubt, this call put Savigny at the very peak of his guild. In the same letter to Bang he revealed his literary projects for the future, which as is generally known were to last his whole life long: “Firstly, I have two major projects that are related, and their conjunction made clear perhaps through a third smaller one, which is very very close to my heart. The first is an exhaustive literature history of the R.R.s, for which I have indeed an abundance of materials, and which also for the general literature may well be new and strange, especially in the unrecognized 12th and 13th centuries, to which I wish to restore to full honor. Much unprinted material will be made known in the process. - The second is an extensive systematization of Roman law, coupled with its history, and taken directly from its sources. For this I have most of the materials ready, but it may be some time before I take it in hand because it is at the same time to be a complete and critical bibliography, and I do not want to cite anything that I have not myself read. Here in Landshut the matter of the Pandectencollegium has brought my own study of sources a major step forward, so that now the lion’s share has been completed or at least thoroughly prepared. - The third, which is to deal with the spirit of legislation, is still entirely vague in my mind as to its form.”

By 1810 Savigny had thus already staked out his literary program for the next decade, in actual fact for the rest of his life: “Vom Beruf unserer Zeit”, Heidelberg 1814, “Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter”, Heidelberg 1815-1831 and the “System des heutigen römischen Rechts”, Berlin 1840-1849.

When Savigny left Landshut, the entire city was in tumult. Bettina Brentano gives an impressive description of the departure: “Even while writing I am unable to gather my thoughts, the swarm of students ceases to leave the house now that Savigny’s departure has been set for a few days’ time... In the evening they often break into a serenade accompanied by guitars and flute which often lasts until midnight, to the music they dance around the fountain in the market square before our house. The general consternation over Savigny’s leaving has soon turned into a festival; it has been decided to accompany us with horse and wagon through the Salzburg lands, those who cannot lay their hands on a horse will be walking ahead; now all are greatly enjoying the pleasure of these last days, with spring breaking out over a glorious region, and travelling with their beloved teacher.”

On 2 May 1810 Savigny departed from Landshut, leaving his furniture to be auctioned there, including 5 buckets of Rhine wine (68 1/2 liters each). The Savignys travelled with Bettina Brentano to Bukowan Manor in Bohemia, where they met Christian Brentano, the estate bailiff. Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim headed there from Berlin. They spent four weeks together at Bukowan. The university annals noted the leaving of Savigny, with Permaneder once again the author: Decimo septimo Aprilis clarissimus Fr. Car. de Savigny, regius Consiliarius aulicus et Jurium professor p. o. ad supplices preces suas ab universitate Ludovico-Maximilia-nea clementissime dimissus est. Magnam sane per ejus abitum alma nostra Academia jacturam fecit; fuit enim vir humanissimus aeque ac doctissimus carus omnibus qui noverunt eum. Secundo Maji ad meridiem urbi nostrae valedixit et per Vindobonam Berolinum profectus est, insigne ab hoc tempore futurus illius Universitatis ornamentum.

On 5 July 1810 Friedrich Carl von Savigny, at the young age of 31, arrived in Berlin with his family, the Brentanos and Arnim. On 29 October of the same year Savigny began his lectures in Berlin. A new stage of his life had commenced.