For the first time after WorldWar II Friedrich’s paintings from both sides of the German iron wall were exhibited together. Since then, Friedrich’s position in art history has steadily increased, peaking with the three exhibitions in 2024. In several articles during the last decades I have returned to Caspar David Friedrich and his romantic paintings, especially those showing ruins. Friedrich was born in Greifswald, in his lifetime located in a Swedish province, Pomerania. Just outside Greifswald there is an old medieval Cistercian monastery, Eldena Abbey, whose ruins had been absorbed by nature over centuries. For Friedrich those ruins were regarded as “Living ruins”, a part of a living past. In one painting monks walk into the ruins to celebrate mass, indicating that even if only the ruins remained of the monastery, the functions of the institution continued. This painting no longer exists. It was destroyed in Berlin in April 1945 when the Soviet army reached Berlin. I argue that today we can characterize our turn to history as a new legal romanticism, and use the metaphor “Living ruins of the Law” to identify the old law, which is still in use. It was Christina Ramberg who actually indicated this phenomenon to me. She participated in a symposium at Lund which celebrated the centennial of the Swedish Contract Law from 1915. In her talk, Christina recalled her last visit to her mentor, the professor emeritus of civil law at Gothenburg university, Kurt Grönfors, who passed away in the fall of 2005. They had a discussion on contracts and Kurt complained that the legislator had failed to update the Swedish contract law. “The Contract law [of 1915] is just a ruin”, Kurt told Christina. I found this metaphor relevant, but had to add: “Yes, it’s a ruin, but it’s still a living ruin”. The paragraphs/rules still in use give us a concept of historical remains in a time of change. Thus, the living ruin is a metaphor that makes us turn to history – and to romanticism. I used to joke with the students and show another painting by Friedrich, again with the ruins embedded in nature, but in this case a family had built a new house within the ruin. And here I found another useful metaphor. The new house constructed in the ruin can be looked upon as the new article 36 in the contract law of 1915, added to the law in the 1970s. Article 36 provides that a contract term or condition may be modified or set aside if such term or condition is unconscionable having regard to the contents of the agreement. 123 kjell å modéer
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