Sachsenspiegel

The Sachsenspiegel, the Saxon Mirror, is one of the most important law books and custumals compiled anywhere in the Holy Roman Empire, recording the customary law and legal rulings of the Saxon region. It was compiled between roughly 1220 and 1235 by Eike von Repgow, a Saxon administrator, at the request of Count Hoyer of Falkenstein, who translated and reworked earlier Latin legal material into Middle Low German under the title Sassenspeyghel, making it the first comprehensive law book written in a German vernacular rather than Latin and an early landmark of German prose writing. Its influence on German and Dutch law was profound and long-lived, shaping later rules on property, inheritance and neighbor relations; the work remained authoritative in Prussia until 1794, in Saxony until 1865, and in parts of Germany as late as 1900. It is also historically notable for explicitly condemning slavery as a violation of human dignity.