Much has been said and written about Germany as a 'belated' nation and its failed revolution of 1848, which deprived the country of a unifying experience and sent Germany on its 'Sonderweg' (exceptional path) towards national unity. Margret Barber Crosby's argument, therefore, that there was indeed a successful German revolution-albeit a slow and nonviolent one that stretched over generations-is a welcome change. She argues that, after 1848, many of the German bourgeois revolutionaries took up the legal profession, where they slowly worked towards a 'constitutional transformation'. The subsequent introduction of the Biirgerliche Gesetzbuch (BGB, Civil Law Code) in 1896 was, Crosby claims, 'modern Germany's bourgeois revolutionary moment'.
展开▼
