c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 151 as a commodity.The worker was considered to need some kind of social protection, in particular in case of illness or dangerous work. Section 618 emphasised that the party entitled to service should protect the workers’ welfare by guaranteeing a secure and healthy workplace. This switch illustrated well the revival of the Gesinderecht’s principles about the master’s Fürsorgepflicht, that is to say, his duty to care for the servant.The employment relationship could be treated as an authoritative relationship, as a category that included the relationship of superior parents vis-à-vis their subordinate children.To what extent and under what circumstances this principle on inequality should be upheld, however, was a controversial issue. German legal scholars around 1900 have been characterised as the founding fathers of modern European labour law writing. In contrast to the learned Swedish lawyers, in Germany a great number of remarkable jurists tried to analyse the legal character of the modern contract of employment and of the collective agreement.305 From the 1870s an increasing number of them tended to leave the traditional intercourse with locatio conductio operarumor Dienstmiete and the Gesinderecht in favour of taking a general approach which would include industrial workers. The “social issue” gained great attention indas Gesellschaft für Soziale Reform, at the Deutsche Juristentag, and in the German section of die Internationale Kriminalistverein.306 Significant discussions on legal policy also developed in theVerein für Sozialpolitik, or the Kathedersozialisten (the academic socialists), as their opponents called them.The name of the association reveals the members’ 305 von Amira 1882; Anton 1891; Bornhak 1892; Bernhard 1903; Endeman 1896; Frankenstein 1896. Hedemann 1910; Hertz 1879; Lotmar 1902, 1908; Sinzheimer 1902; Stadthagen 1904; Schmoller 1890. 306 Hepple 1986a, p. 7; Kumlien 1997, pp. 111-116. 6. 3. 2 cri t i s i sm of the bgb : die Kathedersozialisten and otto von g i e rke
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