part iii • contemporary legal history • michael stolleis search, with its main locii in Munich (the Institute of Contemporary History), Frankfurt (the Fritz Bauer Institute), and Berlin (the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism). The study of Nazi era constitutional history and legal history was taken to a new level. The jurisdiction of many courts was assessed, as were singular legislative acts and the regime’s legislative projects. Entire series of biographies about jurists were published, but of varying quality. Today the general focus of contemporary legal history is the establishment of the Federal Republic and the DDR. Topics include German– German rivalry during the Cold War and the reasons for theDDR’s collapse and Germany’s spectacular reunification. There is a special interest in the victims of the DDR, who suffered at the hands of the regime: everyday forms of repression, shootings at the border, the permanent presence of state security. Researching this repressive system is not easy because there was almost no communication with the West. But because it collapsed as quickly as it did, many sources survived intact, especially the Stasi files, which are basically open to everyone today. The third complex I wish to outline is the intellectual history of public law in Germany.3 It has always been customary for jurists to combine historical subjects with applicable law. Those who devoted themselves to ‘antiquarian’ studies also had to participate in normal classes. Thus, in the nineteenth century, the history of Roman law was the prehistory of common law, and this, in turn, resulted in civil law. The Romanist was, without exception, aprivate law jurist, because Roman state law had long since become ‘antiquarian’, even without current interest in the subject. The Germanist usually followed much the same path of private law in legal history and in teaching a parallel of his self-written German private 3 Michael Stolleis, Geschichte des öffentlichen Rechts in Deutschland, i: Reichspublizistik und Policeywissenschaft 1600–1800 (Munich: Beck, 1988) ii: Staatsrechtslehre und Verwaltungswissenschaft, 1800–1914(1992), iii: Staats- und Verwaltungsrechtswissenschaft in Republik und Diktatur 1914–1945 (1999), iv: Staats- und Verwaltungsrechtswissenschaft in West und Ost 1945–1990 (2012). Vol. ii translated by Pamela Biel (Public law in Germany, 1800–1914 (New York: Berghahn, 2001), vol.iii translated by Thomas Dunlap (A history of public law in Germany, 1914–1945, (Oxford:OUP, 2008). A summary of the four volumes appeared as Public law in Germany: A historical introduction from the 16th to the twenty-first century, tr. Thomas Dunlap (Oxford: OUP, 2017). 162
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