theorists, Hans Frank' and Roland Freisler. Fhe central Leitsatz was "h2\ er\'thing that henetits tlie pet)ple is law; e\ er\ thing that harms the people is anti-law (Unrecht)." Fhe sentence is from Hans 1-Vank and goes hack to 1926.''' A variant fn^m 1929 is "\\ hat benefits the people must he law, what harms the peopie anti-law. Fhus law must he for the benefit of the people, the \olk.-' I'he \blk is then defined in terms of race; abo\e all, Jews are excluded from being members of the \blk. ' Fo make law, the Xblk must he organized, and the National Socialist Cjerman Workers Farr\’ is the \'olk organized. It is contemptible, the claim was made, that (iermanv he go\erned hv Redman law, especially hv corrupt medie\al Roman law, especially h\' Roman-Byzantine-Jewish law.'* One must ha\e a true Ciermanic law, and this is the task ot the Akademie fiir Deutsches Recht, the Acadenn' for Cjerman law, whose first Rresiis ti Jo 17 Nationalsozialistiches Handbuch fur Recht and Gesetzgebung (Muwch, 1935); Im Angesicht des Galgens (Neuhaus bei Schliersee, 1945) (a version appeared in 1953 and a second edition in 1955). See notably the extracts of his speech delivered in the Great Auditorium of the University of Munich on 20 July, 1942, printed from p. 429 of the tatter work. 18 Nationalsozialistiches Recht und Rechtsdenken (Berlin, 1943). I have also found particularly helpful: Hans-Helmut Dietze, Naturrecht in dec Gegenwart (Bonn, 1936), especially his conclusions frompp. 3i5ff.; Heinrich Lange, Lage und Aufgabe dec Deutschen Privatrechtswissenschaft (Jub'tn^en, 1937); Justus Wilhelm Hedemann, Das Volksgesetzbuch der Deutschen: ein Bericht (Munich and Berlin, 1941); Joachim Gernhuber, 'Das Völkische Recht,' Tubingen Festschrift fur Eduard Kern (Tubingen, 1968), pp. i67ff. And in English: Karl Loewenstein, 'Law in the Third Reich,' 45 Yale LawJournal (1936), pp. 779ff. 19 Quoted by Gernhuber, 'Recht,' p. 167. 20 Quoted by himself in Angesicht, p. 162. For fundamental principles see, e.g., Hedemannn, Volksgesezbuch, pp. 3off. 21 Indeed, for some theorists the Volk and lawwerevirtually synonyms; Frank, Angesicht, p. 429: "Law is quite simply the content of the communion of the Volk." At p. 430: "Law contains one of the most decisive cultural German messages. Without law no community." 22 See e.g., Gerke, in Frank, Handbuch, pp. i4ff.; Kier, in Frank, Handbuch, pp. i7ff. 23 See, e.g., Loewenstein, 'Third Reich,' pp. jSzff. Jews were prominent among law professors, and the German civil code of 1900 was regarded as based on Roman law and 19th century concepts. See, e.g., Lange, Lage, p. 13. As early as 1920 in the programof the National Socialist German Workers' Party we find as article 19: "We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the world, be replaced by German common law." 172
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