Friedrich Julius Stahl

Who was Friedrich Julius Stahl?

Friedrich Julius Stahl, German constitutional lawyer and politician, was born at Würzburg, of Jewish parentage.

Although as Joël Jolson brought up strictly in the Jewish religion, he was allowed to attend the gymnasium, and, as a result of its influence, was at the age of seventeen baptized into the Lutheran Church at Erlangen in November 6, 1819. To this faith he clung with earnest devotion and persistence until his death. Having studied law at Würzburg, Heidelberg and Erlangen, Stahl, on taking the degree of doctor juris, established himself as Privatdozent in Munich, was appointed ordinary professor of law at Würzburg, and in 1840 received the chair of ecclesiastical law and polity at Berlin.

Here he immediately made his mark as an ecclesiastical lawyer, and was appointed a member of the first chamber of the general synod. Elected in 1850 a member of the short-lived Erfurt parliament, he bitterly opposed the idea of German federation. Stahl early fell under the influence of Schelling, and at the latter's insistence, began in 1827 his great work: Die Philosophie des Rechts nach geschichtlicher Ansicht, in which he bases all law and political science upon Christian revelation, denies rationalistic doctrines, and, as a deduction from this principle, maintains that a state church must be strictly confessional.