part iii • contemporary legal history • mats kumlien on Tatarin-Tarnheyden in his book Recht im Unrecht.13 In 1938 Herlitz wrote to his German colleague and erstwhile friend: The second factor was that the Book of Judicial Procedure in the Code of 1734 was to be replaced, and could no longer be used for analogical application by administrative courts and public authorities. The third and probably most important reason was that he was worried by the Social Democrats’ expansion of Sweden’s public administration. In his memoirs, Herlitz said of the 1940s: Thus in 1942, as a member of Parliament, Herlitz suggested that an official committee should investigate how Swedish administrative courts and authorities could guarantee more universal, complete, and legally secure procedures when they handled cases which concerned individual 13 Stolleis 1994, 20, 113, 132, 142, 178. 14 Riksarkivet (Swedish National Archives), Stockholm, Nils Herlitz arkiv, vol. 45, Herlitz to Tatarin-Tarnheyden, 2 Jan. 1938: ‘Eder skrift om judendomen har jag läst med intresse, men såsom Ni väl förstår–icke med glädje. Vad ni uppfattar som karakteristiskt för judendomen är till icke ringa del sådant som jag känner som en väsentlig och omistlig beståndsdel i min vetenskapliga och allmänmänskliga utrustning. Och så känna väl också de allra flesta vetenskapsmän imitt land… Ja, det är som jag sagt flera gånger förr; vi tala numera skilda språk.’ 15 Nils Herlitz, Tidsbilder: Upplevelser sedan sekelskiftet (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1965), 318–22: ‘Till min ungdoms trossatser hade det hört att hålla styvt på staten. Men det var en annan stat. Nu var det fråga om en stat med våldsamt, stundom vidskepligt högtspända ambitioner … Där regeringen och myndigheterna hade att besluta i frågor som angick medborgarnas rätt, blev det mycket vanligt att de inte var bundna av särdeles strikta lagregler. Då lurade ofrånkomligen faran för godtycke …Staten skiftade ansikte; den stod där i sin faktiska maktfullkomlighet.’ 184 In my youth it had been one of my articles of faith to cleave to the state. But that was a different state. Now it was a state with tremendously, sometimes irrationally overweening ambition. …When the government and the authorities had to decide in matters which concerned citizens’ rights, it was very common that they were not bound by particularly strict legal rules. Inevitably, the danger of arbitrariness awaited. … The state changed complexion; there it was in all its very real despotism.15 I have read your book about Judaism with interest, but – as I am sure you understand – with no enjoyment. What you hold to be characteristic of the Jews is in no small measure what I know to be an essential and indispensable component of my scholarly and human equipment. And this is the feeling of the vast majority of scholars in my country …Yes, it is as I have said several times before; these days we speak different languages.14
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