August von Bethmann-Hollweg

Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg (8 April 1795 – 14 July 1877) was a German jurist and Prussian politician.

Early life Bethmann-Hollweg was born on 8 April 1795 in Frankfurt am Main, He was the son of the banker Johann Jakob Bethmann-Hollweg and Susanne Elisabeth von Bethmann. As a child he was tutored by Carl Ritter and Georg Friedrich Grotefend.

Career On New Year's Eve, 1817, he was transformed by a conversion experience into a born-again Christian. In the German Table Society, an exclusive society restricted to ethnic German Christians from birth, he met the brothers Leopold, Ernst Ludwig and Otto von Gerlach as well as Ernst Senfft von Pilsach and conversed with the Crown Prince, who would later, as king, elevate him to nobility. In 1819 he attained his habilitation in Berlin and became a tenured professor there in 1823. In 1824 he cofounded the Berlin Missionary Society with Leopold von Gerlach, August Neander and others in Berlin. From 1827 to 1828 he also served briefly as rector of his alma mater. He specialized in the history of civil legal procedure and made many pioneering contributions demonstrating a deep grasp of his subject and an independence from received doctrine, and showing the value of the historical viewpoint. He had an ongoing concern to reconcile his religious convictions with the rest of his life. He stayed away from politics and was repelled by the persecution of the so-called demagogues.

From 1849 to 1855 he served as a deputy in Prussia's first and second houses of parliament, apart from a few brief interruptions. Notwithstanding its small size, his faction was significant through its political integrity and intellectual prominence. From 1858 (advent of the regency of Wilhelm I) to 1862 (advent of Bismarck's ministry) von Bethmann-Hollweg served as the Prussian minister of education, culture and medicine. After his retirement he wrote the book for which he became chiefly known, Der Civilprozeß des Gemeinen Rechts in geschichtlicher Entwicklung (Civil Procedure in Common Law, A Historical Overview).

Legacy As a writer on jurisprudence he had a deep influence in the reforms of the German laws following the enactment of the German Civil Code in 1896.

Personal life Bethmann-Hollweg was married to Auguste Wilhelmine Gebser of the noble Prussian family dating back to the Teutonic Order of Knights. Her nephew was the philosopher Jean Gebser. Together, they were the parents of:

Johann Philipp Karl Theodor von Bethmann-Hollweg (1821–1886), who married Countess Freda Anna Karoline von Arnim-Boitzenburg.

Descendants Through his son Felix, he was a grandfather of Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1909 to 1917.

Publications Grundregeln zu Vorlesungen über den allgemeinen Civilprozeß, 1821 (1832) Versuch über einzelne Teile der Theorie des Civilprozesses, 1827 Die Gerichtsverfassung und der Prozeß des sinkenden Römischen Reiches, 1834 Die Entstehung der lombardischen Städtefreiheit, 1846 Der Civilprozeß des Gemeinen Rechts in geschichtlicher Entwicklung I-IV/1, 1863–74 Ueber Gestezgebung und Rechtswissenshaft als Aufgabe unserer Zeit (On law making and jurisprudence as tasks for our time), 1876