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part iii • contemporary legal history • michael stolleis for the first time, a separate and independent judiciary for social law, there were the first ‘social inquiries’ in the Parliament, and there was the first ‘social budget’, meaning that the state totted up its social expenses for the first time. Ultimately the work was done to codify these materials in a ‘social code’ in 1970. It was completed forty years later. The jurists were late in reacting to this development. As late as 1960, the leading academic in the field, Hans F. Zacher, was denied the venia legendi for social law in Munich because ‘this area does not exist’. Today, every regular law faculty has a chair in social law. The meaning of this branch of jurisprudence has fluctuated according to the economic cycle and public mood. In the years of Willy Brandt’s (1969–1973) socio-liberal coalition euphoria prevailed. In the era of neoliberalism, social law was viewed with suspicion. Today, the tide has turned again, because all of Europe understands how tightly the social state and democracy are interlinked. Zacher was not only an important and creative scholar who fascinated many young people (including me), but he was also a great organizer and something of a posterboy for social law. He founded the Max Planck Institute for Social Law in Munich (it later added Social Policy to its name) and was elected president of the Max Planck Society, which under his tenure established eighteen new institutions in the former DDR. Zacher was not one to let the opportune moment pass. When he was looking for a successor at the institute in Munich and asked me, I had to decline, unfortunately. Legal history has become more important to me, but the social rights-related experiences stayed with me and ultimately resulted inHistory of Social Law in Germany.1 Second we have legal history, the prevailing topic after 1965 and in the circle of students around Sten Gagnér. From old Nordic studies to the nineteenth century, all options seemed available. In 1968, however, contemporary legal history was more in evidence. From California to Tokyo and Paris, from there to Berlin and Frankfurt, an international wave of protest crashed against colonialism, the Vietnam War, and the Shah of 1 Michael Stolleis, History of social law in Germany (Berlin: Springer, 2014). 160

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