Gottfried Mascov

Gottfried Mascov (also Mascovius: 26 September 1698 – 5 October 1760) was a German jurist and university professor.

Life Gottfried Mascov was born in Danzig. At that time, Danzig was a large semi-autonomous trading city on the Baltic coast of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The city at this time was multi-cultural: Mascov's family was prominent in the German speaking merchant community, his grandparents having fled to Danzig from the west during the Thirty Years' War. Gottfried Mascov's elder brother, remembered as a jurist and historian, was . The boys lost their parents before reaching adulthood, and responsibility for their upbringing fell to Reinhold Schuhmacher, a maternal relative, who attended to their education.

In 1716 he enrolled at the University of Leipzig where his brother, by this time, had received his first degree and held a teaching position. In 1728 he received a licentiate in law and in 1729 a doctorate in philosophy from Altdorf. His colleague emerged with a badly scratched face, and a disciplinary enquiry against Mascov ended up condemning his intemperate conduct and dismissing him from his post.

He now turned to his brother, whose entire academic career had unfolded at Leipzig, where by now he also held important court appointments and a post as State librarian. Gottfried Mascov returned to Leipzig, now as a senior academic ("Privatdozent") for Roman Law and Natural Law, later, between 1748 and 1760, serving as a full professor at the university.

Gottfried Mascov died at Leipzig on 5 October 1760.

An appreciation His academic research was characterised by thoroughness and precision ("scribebat non multa – sed multum"); he knew how to express his thoughts with well chosen words and in lucid style, as a result of which he was esteemed by contemporaries as a leading exponent of "elegant jurisprudence" ("als eleganter Civilist" ) Even as a youth he became accustomed to an independent lifestyle, and while he was not opposed to women, he remained unmarried because he feared quarrels and domestic power struggles.

Publications (not a complete list)

De sectis Sabinianorum et Proculianorum, 1724 De Herciscundis, 1728 De usu iuris cum scientia eiusdem coniungendo, 1735 De paroemia iuris Germanici, 1736 Notitia iuris et iudiciorum, 1736 Notitia iuris et iudiciorum Brunsvico-Luneburgicorum, 1738 De saltu Leucadio prolusio. Leipzig: Langenheim, 1754 Oratio de usu et praestantia historiae Augustae in iure civili (published posthumously by Josias Ludwig Ernst Püttmann), 1774 Opuscula iuridica et philologica (published posthumously by Josias Ludwig Ernst Püttmann), 1776