Franz von Zeiller

Franz Anton Zeiller, ennobled as Edler von Zeiller in 1797, was an Austrian jurist who lived from 14 January 1751 to 23 August 1828. Trained in the natural-law tradition of his teacher Karl Anton von Martini, he became a leading legal scholar of the Habsburg Monarchy, serving as a Hofrat, or court councilor, at the Supreme Court of Justice from 1802 and as rector of the University of Vienna from 1803 to 1807. He directed the revision of Martini's draft civil code through to its publication in 1811 as the Allgemeines Burgerliches Gesetzbuch, the General Civil Code for the German hereditary lands of the Austrian monarchy, which took effect in 1812, established the principles of individual freedom and legal equality among subjects, and remains the foundation of Austrian private law to this day. He also drafted the legal-political study regulations of 1810 and served as referee for the first part of Austria's 1803 criminal code.