Eduard Gans

Who was Eduard Gans?

Eduard Gans was a German jurist.

He was born in Berlin of prosperous Jewish parents. He studied law first at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin, then at Göttingen, and finally at Heidelberg, where he attended G. W. F. Hegel's lectures, and became thoroughly imbued with the principles of Hegel's philosophy. In 1820, after taking his doctor's degree, he returned to Berlin as a lecturer. In 1825 he converted to the Evangelical Church in Prussia, and the following year was appointed extraordinary, and in 1828 ordinary, professor in the Berlin faculty of law. Before converting, he was a member of the Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews, alongside Joel Abraham List, Isaac Marcus Jost and Leopold Zunz.

At this period the historical school of jurisprudence was coming to the front, and Gans, his Hegelian tendencies predisposing him to treat law historically, applied the method to one special branch—the right of succession. His great work, Erbrecht in weltgeschichtlicher Entwicklung, is of permanent value, not only for its extensive survey of facts, but for the admirable manner in which the general theory of the slow evolution of legal principles is presented.