"Lieber in Gießen als irgendwo anders ..."

Rudolf von Jhering lectured at Ludoviciana, the state university in Giessen, for sixteen years from 1852 to 1868, during which time he enjoyed an upper-middle-class lifestyle and a productive spell of teaching, research and writing. It was not an isolated road to Damascus occurrence that led Jhering to his famous discovery of and his emphasis on the purpose of the law, which established him as one of the founders of modern legal studies, but a long process of intensive reflection. This book by the legal historian and Jhering scholar Michael Kunze depicts Jehring’s road to Giessen and his life and work in this Hessian town, and places his work there into its historical context. The book ends with a detailed biography of Rudolf von Jhering by Dr Thomas Pierson.