Heinrich Dernburg

Heinrich Dernburg was a German jurist, professor and politician who lived from 3 March 1829 to 23 November 1907. He became a leading authority on Prussian civil law as codified in the Allgemeines Landrecht, taught Roman and Prussian law at the University of Berlin from 1873, and represented the University of Halle in the Prussian House of Lords. His scholarship sought to balance commercial interests against sweeping social ideals, and he wrote extensively on Prussian private law, guardianship law and hypothecary rights, publishing in a style that avoided the doctrinaire, reactionary legal positivism for which some contemporaries were criticized.