Although the state did not regulate the negotiations, it supplied institutions for arbitration in these matters.An act in1926 further developed the judicial system for labour disputes and established a three-tier system of labour courts, with the Reichsarbeitsgericht at the top. By around 1930 Germany had recognised labour law as a legal discipline of its own.321 The complex issue of the content of the contract of employment, however, was not solved. One important line tended to treat the employment relationship as a branch of the BGB’s law of obligations, still equipped with certain implied terms of inequality between the parties. Hugo Sinzheimer elaborated his idea that the employee, as an implied consequence of the contract of employment, surrendered himself and his personality to the supremacy of the employer.According to Sinzheimer, the legal foundation for this personal restraint was that the employer owned and controlled the means of production.322 Several other authors preserved the tradition from Savigny and Gierke by defining employment as a “community” (Gemeinschaft). Many legal textbooks during theWeimar Republic adopted the doctrine of the employee’s unilateral duty of fidelity as an independent duty of conduct (Treuepflicht als selbständiger Verhaltenpflicht).This duty was often derived from the now abolished Gesinderecht with explicit reference to the purpose of meeting the employer’s need of an effective organisation.According to Arthur Nikisch’s famous theory on “incorporation” (Eingliederung), the worker had renounced his independence and joined the employer’s enterprise and private sphere of living.Thus the employee’s position was not based on contract, but status, which included a collection of rights and duties, among others obedience and loyalty.323 p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 6 158 321 Halbach 1994, pp. 24-27; Löwisch 1991, pp. 27-28; Münchener Handbuch zum Arbeitsrecht 1992, pp. 24-28. 322 Sinzheimer 1927, pp. 27, 144, 145; Sinzheimer,“Otto von Gierkes Bedeutung für das Arbeitsrecht”, 1976, I, p. 407. 323 Nikisch 1955; Münchener Handbuch zum Arbeitsrecht 1992, pp. 743-745, 814-815.
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