English Law Before Magna Carta

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English Law Before Magna Carta

Medieval Law and Its Practice
Managing Editor

John Hudson (St Andrews)
Editorial Board Members

Paul Brand (All Souls College, Oxford)
Dirk Heirbaut (Ghent)
Richard Helmholz (Chicago)
Caroline Humfress (Birkbeck, London)
Magnus Ryan (Cambridge)
Stephen White (Emory)

VOLUME 8

English Law Before
Magna Carta
Felix Liebermann and
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen

Edited by

Stefan Jurasinski, Lisi Oliver and Andrew Rabin

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2010

On the cover: Frontispiece to Texte und Forschungen zur englischen Kulturgeschichte.
Festgabe für Felix Liebermann zum 20. Juli 1921. Edited by Heinrich Boehmer et al.
(Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1921)
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
English law before Magna Carta : Felix Liebermann and Die gesetze der angelsachsen /
edited by Stefan Jurasinski, Lisi Oliver, and Andrew Rabin.
p. cm. — (Medieval law and its practice ; v. 8)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-18756-6 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Law, Anglo-Saxon. 2. Law—England—History. 3. Magna Carta. 4. Gesetze der
Angelsachsen. 5. Liebermann, F. (Felix), 1851–1925. I. Jurasinski, Stefan. II. Oliver,
Lisi. III. Rabin, Andrew. IV.
Title. V. Series.
KD554.E54 2010
349.42—dc22
2010027359

ISSN 1873-8176
ISBN 978 90 04 18756 6
Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing,
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated,
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Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS
Preface .................................................................................................
Lisi Oliver
Abbreviations .....................................................................................

xi
xiii

1. Felix Liebermann and Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen ..............
Andrew Rabin

1

2. Felix Liebermann: A Selected Bibliography ..............................
Daniela Fruscione

9

SECTION ONE

FELIX LIEBERMANN
3. Liebermann’s Intellectual Milieu ................................................
Daniela Fruscione

15

4. The Liebermann Library in Tokyo .............................................
Hideyuki Arimitsu

27

SECTION TWO

LANGUAGE AND DATING
5. L1 Interference in the Editing Process: Felix Liebermann,
the Gesetze and the German Language .....................................
Jürg Rainer Schwyter
6. Localizing and Dating Old English Anonymous Prose, and
How the Inherent Problems Relate to Anglo-Saxon
Legislation .......................................................................................
Robert D. Fulk
7. The Dating of Quadripartitus Again ..........................................
Richard Sharpe

43

59

81

viii

contents
SECTION THREE

ANGLO-SAXON TEXTS AND MANUSCRIPTS
8. The Old English Penitentials and the Law of Slavery ...........
Stefan Jurasinski
9. I Æthelred in Felix Liebermann’s Die Gesetze der
Angelsachsen and in the Mise-en Page of Cambridge,
Corpus Christi College 383 .......................................................
Thom Gobbitt
10. I–II Cnut: Wulfstan’s Summa? .................................................
Mary P. Richards

97

119

137

11. Royal Protections and Private Justice: A Reassessment of
Cnut’s ‘Reserved Pleas’ ...............................................................
T. B. Lambert

157

12. Ritual Magic or Legal Performance? Reconsidering an Old
English Charm Against Theft ....................................................
Andrew Rabin

177

SECTION FOUR

BEYOND ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
13. Rethinking the Leges Henrici Primi .........................................
Nicholas Karn
14. From the Leges to Glanvill: Legal Expertise and Legal
Reasoning .....................................................................................
John Hudson

199

221

15. Laurence Nowell’s Old English Legal Glossary and His Study
of Quadripartitus ......................................................................... 251
Rebecca Brackmann

contents

ix

16. “St. Edward’s Ghost”: The Cult of St. Edward and His Laws
in English History .......................................................................
Janelle Greenberg

273

Bibliography ........................................................................................
Contributors .......................................................................................
Index Legum .......................................................................................
Index Manuscriptorum .....................................................................
Index Nominorum ............................................................................

301
319
323
325
326

PREFACE
Lisi Oliver
The chapters in this volume represent a selection of papers presented at
the conference, “Early English Laws: A Centenary Conference Celebrating the Publication of Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (1903–16) by Felix
Liebermann.” Two primary motivations inspired the organizers in congregating this meeting. First was the announcement of a grant awarded
by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain to the
Early English Laws Project. The focus of this undertaking is to produce
new editions and commentaries for all the laws of Anglo-Saxon and
Anglo-Norman England—in effect, an updated Gesetze der Angelsachsen
informed by scholarship from the century since its publication. Second
was an investigation of the current status of scholarship on early
English laws, and the possible directions in which future study might
inform new investigations of Anglo-Saxon legal texts. Emphasized
was the importance of collaboration on the editions to be produced
under the aegis of the Early English Law Project: historians, literary
and legal scholars, and linguists discussed how the methodologies of
their respective fields might contribute to the new editions.
This collection of essays provides only a glimpse of what modern
innovations in scholarship can offer to contemporary editors of Anglo-Saxon laws. We hope that these studies will provide inspiration to
scholars investigating with all the modern resources at their command
the rich and varied corpus of legal materials which governed AngloSaxon society.
The editors would like to acknowledge important contributions
without which this volume would not be possible. First, to the participants in the conference: those who gave papers not included in this
volume; those who moderated sessions; and those who attended and
contributed to the lively discussions which followed the presentations.
All of the published papers have benefited greatly from the insights of
these colleagues. Second, to John Hudson Marcella Mulder, and Brill
Press for providing the publication venue for these essays. Third, to
the staff of the Institute for Historical Research for flawlessly arranging the details of the conference; and, finally, to Bruce O’Brien, whose
efforts have provided the impetus for a much-needed re-evaluation of
our understanding of Anglo-Saxon laws.

ABBREVIATIONS
ANS: Anglo-Norman Studies
ASE: Anglo-Saxon England
British and German Historiography:
Stuchtey, Benedikt and Peter Wende, ed. British and German Historiography 1750–1950. Traditions, Perceptions, and Transfers. Oxford,
2000.
Burns, Medieval Political Thought:
Burns, J. H., ed. The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought
c.350–c.1450. Cambridge, 1988.
Cross and Culture:
Jolly, Karen Louise, Catherine E Karkov, and Sarah Larratt Keefer, eds.
Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies in Honor of George
Hardin Brown. Morgantown, 2008.
Dammery, “Editing Anglo-Saxon Laws”:
Dammery, Richard. “Editing the Anglo-Saxon Laws: Felix Liebermann and Beyond.” In The Editing of Old English: Papers from the
1990 Manchester Conference, eds. D. G. Scragg and Paul E. Szarmach,
251–61. Cambridge, 1994.
Downer, Leges Henrici Primi:
Downer, L. J. Leges Henrici Primi. Oxford, 1972.
EETS: Early English Text Society
EHR: English Historical Review
JEGP: Journal of English and Germanic Philology
JLH: Journal of Legal History

xiv

abbreviations

Ker, Catalogue:
Ker, N. R. Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford,
1957.
LHR: Law and History Review
Liebermann, Gesetze:
Liebermann, Felix. Die Gesetze Der Angelsachsen, 3 vols. Halle,
1903–1916.
Maitland, “Laws of the Anglo-Saxons”:
Maitland, Frederic William. “The Laws of the Anglo-Saxons.” The
Quarterly Review 399 (1904): 139–57. (Republished in The Collected
Papers of Frederic William Maitland, ed. H. A. L. Fisher. Cambridge,
1911).
O’Brien, “From Morðor to Murdrum”:
O’Brien, Bruce R. “From Morðor to Murdrum: The Preconquest
Origin and Norman Revival of the Murder Fine.” Speculum 71 (1996):
321–357.
O’Brien, God’s Peace:
O’Brien, Bruce R. God’s Peace and King’s Peace: The Laws of Edward
the Confessor. Philadelphia, 1999.
Oliver, Beginnings of English Law:
Oliver, Lisi. The Beginnings of English Law. Toronto/Buffalo/London, 2002.
Plucknett, Early English Legal Literature:
Plucknett, T. F. T. Early English Legal Literature. Cambridge, 1958.
Szarmach, Basic Readings:
Szarmach, Paul E. Old English Prose: Basic Readings. New York,
2000.
TRHS: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

abbreviations

xv

Whitelock, EHD:
Whitelock, Dorothy, ed. and trans., English Historical Documents c.
500–1042, 2nd ed. London, 1979.
Wormald, Legal Culture:
Wormald, Patrick. Legal Culture in the Early Medieval West: Law as
Text, Image and Experience. London, 1999.
Wormald, Making of English Law:
Wormald, Patrick. The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the
Twelfth Century. Oxford, 1999.

FELIX LIEBERMANN AND DIE GESETZE
DER ANGELSACHSEN1
Andrew Rabin
In 1883, the noted legal historians J. W. von Planck, Konrad von
Maurer, and Heinrich Brunner approached the Royal Academy of
Sciences in Munich about the need to re-edit the Anglo-Saxon laws.
For all of its many virtues, Reinhold Schmid’s then-standard 1832
edition (rev. 1858) had been produced without reference to a single
manuscript. Benjamin Thorpe had consulted approximately forty
manuscripts in producing his 1840 edition, yet his work suffered both
from transcriptional errors and from his over-reliance on the Textus
Roffensis. The Royal Academy consented to fund the project and the
Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtgeschichte invited the thirty-two year old
Felix Liebermann to serve as editor. Liebermann was an appropriate choice for several reasons. First, despite his relative youth, he had
already distinguished himself as an editor and philologist through his
groundbreaking dissertation on Richard FitzNigel as well as his work
on the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Just as important, though,
was Liebermann’s status as a Privatgelehrte, a private gentleman of
independent means able to dedicate his time entirely to scholarship
without having to seek other employment as a professor or tutor. In
Liebermann, the Academy found a scholar with the unique combination of skill and wherewithal to complete the task of a new, comprehensive edition of the earliest English laws.

1
For previous discussions of Liebermann’s life and work, see H. W. C. Davis,
“Felix Liebermann,” HER 41 (1926), 91–7; Harold Dexter Hazeltine, “Felix Liebermann, 1851–1925,” Proceedings of the British Academy 24 (1938), 319–60; Ernst
Heymann, “Felix Liebermann,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte,
Germanistische Abteilung 46 (1926), xxiii–xxxix; W. S. Holdsworth, The Historians of
Anglo-American Law (New York, 1928), pp. 126–9; Thomas Frederick Tout, “Felix
Liebermann (1851–1925),” History N.S. 10 (1926), 311–9; Patrick Wormald, “Liebermann, Felix,” in The Blackwell Dictionary of Historians, ed. John Cannon, et al.
(Oxford, 1988), pp. 245–7.

2

andrew rabin

Felix Liebermann was born in 1851 to a family of wealthy GermanJewish textile merchants.2 His grandfather is reported to have told King
Frederick William III of Prussia, “Your majesty, I am the man who
drove the English out of Europe, that is, in the calico trade.”3 As his
two older brothers showed aptitude in fields other than commerce—
Carl would go on to become a chemist while Max became a prominent
artist—Felix was groomed by his father from a young age to enter the
family business. He graduated from Berlin’s Werder Gymnasium in
1869 and immediately took a position with the banking house Delbrück and Company. Eighteen months later, he moved to England to
join a German yarn-exporter in Manchester. During the two years he
spent in England, he mastered the English language and developed an
interest in medieval English history. It is unclear whether it was during this stay that he first visited the Rylands Library, but by the time
he returned to Germany in 1872, he had set his mind on a career as
a scholar. During the winter of 1872–73, Liebermann attended Theodor Mommsen’s lectures at the University of Berlin. After a health
crisis in the spring prompted a trip to Italy, Liebermann finally managed to convince his father to permit him to enroll at the University of
Göttingen to study Germanic history and philology. During his time
in Göttingen, Liebermann worked most closely with the historians
Georg Waitz and Reinhold Pauli, as well as the legal scholar Ferdinand
Frensdorff (future teacher and friend to Max Weber). It was also during this time that he completed his year of mandatory military service.
In 1875, Liebermann published his doctoral dissertation, Einleitung in
den Dialogus de Saccario, which, among other things, corrected many
of the shortcomings of Thomas Madox’s 1711 text, later incorporated
in Bishop Stubbs’ Select Charters (1870). Stubbs would later become
one of Liebermann’s great friends and sponsors in England, and it
seems likely that it was this work which first brought the young German to his attention.
In the same year that Liebermann received his doctorate, Waitz
assumed the directorship of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.
Along with Pauli, who had been working with the MGH since 1848,
he convinced his student to join the project as an editor. Over the

2
For a complete history of the Liebermann family, see Regina Scheer, Wir Sind Die
Liebermanns. Die Geschichte Einer Familie (Berlin, 2006).
3
Hazeltine, “Felix Liebermann,” p. 319.

felix liebermann and die gesetze der angelsachsen

3

next seven years, Liebermann assisted Pauli in the production of
volumes xxvii (Ex rerum Anglicarum scriptoribus saec. XII. et XIII)
and xxviii (Ex rerum Anglicarum scriptoribus saec. XIII). His association with the MGH enabled Liebermann in 1877 to make the first
of what would be many visits to the British Library. It was also during this period that he published his second monograph, Ungedruckte
Anglo-Normanische Geschichtsquellen (1878). As a result of both his
books and his involvement with the MGH, Liebermann’s skill as an
editor and historian began to attract notice. In 1883, he received the
Royal Academy’s invitation to edit the Anglo-Saxon laws. The timing,
however, was not propitious: at Pauli’s death in 1882, the unfinished
MGH volumes had become Liebermann’s responsibility. He eventually brought volume xxvii to publication in 1885, followed by volume
xxviii three years later. It was only then, five years after receiving the
Academy’s commission, that Liebermann could turn his full attention
to the monumental task of assembling, editing, and annotating the
manuscript records of early English law.
Liebermann embarked on what would become Die Gesetze der
Angelsachsen by focusing on the material with which he felt most comfortable: the Anglo-Norman laws produced in the century following
the Conquest. Beginning in 1892, Liebermann published a series of
important studies on such texts as Quadripartitus, the Instituta Cnuti,
the Leges Anglorum or “London Collection”, and the Constitutiones de
Foresta of Pseudo-Cnut. He quickly achieved international recognition for his talents as a legal historian and his skills as a philologist. In
particular, contemporaries commented on his gift for identifying legal
manuscripts and situating them within a textual tradition. Frederic
William Maitland, who began corresponding with Liebermann sometime in the mid-1880’s and by the mid-1890’s was among his closest
friends, wrote of his “lynx-eye” for obscure texts and praised his ability
to combine detail with comprehensiveness.4 Liebermann’s increasing
reputation led the government of Prussia in 1896 to bestow upon him
the honorary title of “Professor” and, in the same year, the University of Cambridge (at Maitland’s urging) to grant him an honorary
doctorate.
The first volume of the Gesetze appeared in installments beginning
in 1898 and, by 1903, Liebermann was ready to release it in its entirety.

4

C. H. S. Fifoot, ed. The Letters of Frederic William Maitland (London, 1965), p. 206.

4

andrew rabin

He had consulted approximately 180 manuscripts—more than four
times the number examined by Thorpe—and spent more than fifteen
years preparing his texts. The edition was immediately acclaimed as
a masterpiece, yet it is a sign of the extent to which these texts had
been neglected that few reviewers could be found (especially in the
English-speaking world) competent enough to assess Liebermann’s
efforts. Maitland agreed reluctantly to provide a piece for the Quarterly Review, and then only because he “did not want the little man
to go unpraised.”5 In his review, Maitland touched upon the general
ignorance of Anglo-Saxon law among English scholars: “That this task
should have been performed by a German scholar at the insistence
of a German academy, and with the support of a German trust fund,
may not be what we in England should have liked best, but must not
detract from the warmth of our welcome and our praise. If Englishmen cannot or will not do these things they can at least rejoice that
others can and will.”6 Praising Liebermann’s ability to work out textual puzzles, Maitland calls him “a Sherlock Holmes of today” and he
singles out especially for comment Liebermann’s “keen criticism of
literary style.”7 In short, for Maitland, Liebermann had produced “an
edition which will bear comparison with the very best work that has
hitherto been done upon any historical materials of a similar kind.”8
Liebermann spent the next nine years readying the Gesetze’s second
volume, which he released in two instalments: the Wörterbuch in 1906
and the Rechts- und Sachglossar in 1912. Finally, in 1916, Liebermann
published the final volume of the Gesetze containing his introduction and notes to the texts, yet two events of the intervening years
would deeply affect Liebermann personally and significantly alter the
reception of his work. First, Maitland’s death in 1906 left Liebermann
bereft of one of his closest friends and chief supporters in the Anglo-American academic community. Secondly, the outbreak of World
War I in 1914 isolated Liebermann from his English colleagues, cut
him off from the libraries so necessary to his research, and—as it did
for so many of his contemporaries—tragically contradicted his ideal
of an international community of scholarship. Liebermann’s dedication of the final volume to the memories of Maitland and Heinrich
5
6
7
8

Ibid., p. 306.
Maitland, “Laws of the Anglo-Saxons,” p. 447.
Ibid., pp. 470–1.
Ibid., p. 447.

felix liebermann and die gesetze der angelsachsen

5

Brunner (d. 1915) spoke to his deep desire for reconciliation; at the
same time, however, his patriotism (and perhaps also his naïveté) led
him to attribute the war’s causes to “the historical necessity of conflict
between the heedless claims of a world empire, familiar with power,
to continue to dominate navigation and world trade, and the justified
determination of a unified German people to contend peacefully and
circumspectly for the goods of the earth.”9 Although he concluded his
dedication with the desire that “today’s enemies might again learn to
respect each other and help each other as before toward the higher
goals of mankind,” his impolitic foray into world affairs offended his
English readers and left his work largely ignored by Anglo-American
scholars for the first few years after its publication. The dedication of
a Festgabe to Liebermann in 1921 reflects the esteem with which he
was held in Germany; however, the absence of English contributors
indicates that the war’s wounds had not yet healed. Shortly thereafter,
though, Liebermann began a correspondence with T. F. Tout—eventually to become Liebermann’s closest English friend during his later
years—and gradually his relations with the Anglo-American scholarly
community came to be renewed.
Over the course of his career, Liebermann exhibited a singular
capacity for earning the respect and friendship of his colleagues. In
one of the many memorial essays produced following Liebermann’s
death, Hazeltine described him as “courteous, kindly, and modest;
and his plain and unassuming bearing impressed all who came into
contact with him.”10 H. W. C. Davis wrote that he “was invariably
a generous and encouraging critic of those who worked in his own
field, even when he differed from them.”11 Even after the war left him
in somewhat straitened circumstances, Liebermann continued to contribute a significant portion of his income to a wide variety of charities, favouring in particular those concerned with veterans’ welfare. In
his house at number 10 Benderstrasse, he and his wife Cäcilie hosted
numerous visitors, including Tout, Sir Frederick Pollock, and Mary
Bateson. These visitors commented, not only on the warmth of the
welcome they received, but also on the obvious happiness of the Liebermanns’ marriage. Cäcilie Liebermann shared her husband’s historical
9

See Liebermann, Gesetze), 3 (1916). For a discussion and translation, see Wormald, Making of English Law, p. 20 n. 96.
10
Hazeltine, “Felix Liebermann,” p. 392.
11
Davis, “Felix Liebermann,” p. 97.

6

andrew rabin

interests, joined him on his travels, and frequently offered suggestions
on his work as well as that of their visitors. It is impossible to know the
extent to which Cäcilie influenced her husband’s work; however, she
seems to have made a strong impression on outside observers. Tout
in particular mentions her “unostentatious but liberal acts of benevolence and kindliness, notably to poor students and scholars.”12
In discussing Liebermann’s personal life, some mention should be
made of his religion, a topic largely neglected by previous commentators. Like so many other German Jews of the time, the Liebermann
family was largely secularised and assimilated. Nonetheless, Liebermann seems to have had a strong sense of religious identity and maintained many ties within the Jewish community. Both he and his wife
gave extensively to Jewish charitable organizations in Germany, Britain, and the United States.13 He was a corresponding member of the
Jewish Historical Society of England and, in a lecture to that organization, suggested that modern Jews should see Alfred’s use of Mosaic
law in his legislation as a source of honor.14 He could also be quick to
attack the complacent anti-Semitism so common among early twentieth-century (especially British) academics. In a 1902 review, Liebermann took J. M. Rigg to task for suggesting that the medieval “blood
libel” might be based on fact:
Nor can we leave uncontradicted what Mr. Rigg says about those cases of
alleged murder which nowadays ought no longer even to be called ritual
murders, because, if true and if due to religious fanaticism, they still can
never have served in a Jewish religious ceremony. The crucifixion of little
Hugh of Lincoln, incompatible as it was with rabbinical law, might, Mr.
Rigg deems, become less incredible if “the practice be supposed to have
been confined to a small and obscure sect of fanatical zealots.” Where
is there a trace of such a sect in Lincoln in 1244? Where is there an
instance that any Jewish sect did or does deviate from the ritual of the
community into a sanguinary practice?15

12

Tout, “Felix Liebermann,” p. 317.
The American Jewish Year Book, for instance, records a gift in 1914–15 from
“Frau Cäcilie Liebermann” on behalf of “the F. and C. Liebermann Foundation” for
5000 marks. Herman Bernstein, ed. The American Jewish Year Book, 5675, vol. 16
(Philadelphia, 1915), p. 191.
14
“And Englishmen of the Jewish persuasion ought to gratefully remember that
the gem so honoured by their greatest king, the founder of the English constitution,
as Alfred was called in the twelfth century, was the Mosaic law.” Felix Liebermann,
“King Alfred and Mosaic Law”, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England
6 (1908), 31.
15
Felix Liebermann, rev. of J. M. Rigg, Select Pleas, Starrs, and Other Records from
13

felix liebermann and die gesetze der angelsachsen

7

Maitland found his friend’s vehemence surprising, writing to R. L.
Poole that “the good F. Liebermann is more crabbed than usual;”16
however, it is also in Maitland’s letters that we learn of Liebermann
being referred to derisively by the great Anglo-Saxonist E. A. Freeman
as “Stubbs’s Jew”.17 Liebermann did not live long enough to witness
to see the direction European anti-Semitism would take during the
1930’s and 1940’s, yet others in his family were not so lucky. Cäcilie
Liebermann died in 1943, shortly before the family was to be deported
to Theresienstadt concentration camp; Martha Liebermann, wife to
Felix’s brother Max, committed suicide soon after to avoid the same
fate.18 After the war, Karl August Eckhardt—former editor for the
MGH, but also a Sturmbannführer in the SS and close friend of Heinrich Himmler—dedicated his own edition of the Anglo-Saxon laws
to Liebermann as part of a transparent (and ultimately failed) attempt
to diminish his involvement in the Nazi persecutions and regain his
MGH post.19 The relationship between Liebermann’s Jewishness, his
scholarship, and the reception of his work is a topic about which much
remains to be said; for now, however, let it suffice to say that to understand both Liebermann and the Gesetze, both must be situated in the
history of early-twentieth century Jewish culture as well as the history
of early medieval scholarship.

the Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews, A. D. 1220–1284, English Historical Review 17
(1902), 554.
16
Fifoot, ed. Letters, p. 246.
17
Ibid., p. 301.
18
Emily D. Bilski, Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1890–1918 (Berkeley, 1999), p. 161.
19
Karl August Eckhardt, ed. Leges Anglo-Saxonum, 601–925 (Göttingen, 1958). As
a department head in the Reich Ministry for Science, Education, and People’s Education, Eckhardt restructured German legal education to conform to Nazi ideology (a
duty which included firing Jewish scholars and those academics deemed unsound) and
authoured numerous articles justifying party policies, in particular those regarding the
internment of homosexuals. It was he who was reportedly responsible for Himmler’s
1934 statement, “As National Socialists we are not afraid to fight against this plague
[homosexuality] within our own ranks. Just as we have adopted the ancient Germanic
approach to the question of marriage between alien races, so, too, in our judgment
of homosexuality—a symptom of racial degeneracy destructive to our race—we have
returned to the guiding Nordic principle that degenerates should be exterminated.
Germany stands or falls with the purity of its race.” On Eckhardt’s career, see Richard
Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against the Homosexuals (New York, 1986),
pp. 111, 229n. 6; Michael Stolleis, The Law under the Swastika: Studies on Legal History in Nazi Germany (Chicago, 1998), pp. 49ff.; R.C. van Caenegem, European Law
in the Past and the Future: Unity and Diversity over Two Millennia (Cambridge, 2002),
pp. 120ff.

8

andrew rabin

Liebermann died after being hit by a car outside his home on 7
October, 1925. It is reported that, in his last hours, he absolved the
driver of any blame for the accident. By the time of his death, Liebermann had published more than 600 books, articles, notes, and reviews:
the complete bibliography of his works runs more than sixty pages.20
He was recognized around the world as the foremost expert of early
medieval English law. The three volumes of Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen remain both the foremost editorial accomplishment in the history
of Anglo-Saxon studies and a lasting tribute to the man eulogized by
Tout as “the last and deepest of the great German masters of our medieval antiquities.”21

20
Harald Kleinschmidt, Felix Liebermann, 1851–1925: Bibliographie Seiner Schriften,
1875–1927 (Stuttgart, 1983).
21
Tout, “Felix Liebermann,” p. 311.

FELIX LIEBERMANN:
A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Daniela Fruscione
Over the course of his life, Liebermann published more than 650
items, the complete bibliography of which runs just over sixty pages.1
He wrote on a wide variety of topics ranging from early medieval
literature to the plays of William Shakespeare and George Bernard
Shaw. What follows is a selected listing of those works leading up to
the publication of Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen and those which shed
the most light on the thinking that went into the production of those
volumes.
Books and Articles
Einleitung in den Dialogus de scaccario (Göttingen, 1875).
“Die Abfassungszeit der Leges Heinrici,” Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte 16
(1876), pp. 582–586.
Ungedruckte anglonormannische Geschichtquellen (Strassburg and London, 1879).
“Ein ungedrucktes Vorwort zu den Leges Heinrici Primi,” Zeitschrift der SavignyStiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, germanistische Abteilung 3 (1882), pp. 127–137.
“Zu den Gesetzen der Angelsachsen,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, germanistische Abteilung 5 (1884), pp. 198–226.
MGH SS. Scriptores in folio T. 27. [Ex rerum Anglicarum scriptoribus saec. XII. et
XIII.], ed. Reinhold Pauli und Felix Liebermann (Hanover, 1885).
“Gerefa,” Anglia IX (1886), pp. 251–266.
MGH SS. Scriptores in folio T. 28. [Ex rerum Anglicarum sciptoribus saec. XIII.], ed.
Felix Liebermann (Hanover, 1888).
“Neuere Literatur zur Geschichte Englands im Mittelalter,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für
Geschichtswissenschaft 1–8 (1889–1892).
Quadripartitus, ein englisches Rechtsbuch von 1114 (Halle, 1892).
“Ueber Ostenglische Geschichtsquellen des 12. 13. 14. Jahrhunderts,” Neues Archiv
der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtkunde zur Beförderung einer Gesammtausgabe der Quellenschriften deutscher Geschichten des Mittelalters 18 (1892), pp.
225–267.
Consiliatio Cnuti, eine Übertragung angelsächsischer Gesetze aus dem zwölften Jahrhundert (Halle, 1893).
“On the Instituta Cnuti Aliorumque Regum Anglorum,” Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society 7 (1893), pp. 77–107.

1
Harald Kleinschmidt, Felix Liebermann, 1851–1925: Bibliographie Seiner Schriften,
1875–1927 (Stuttgart, 1983).

10

daniela fruscione

“The text of Henry I’s Coronation Charter”, in: Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society 8 (1894), pp. 21–48.
Über die Leges Anglorum saeculo XIII ineunte Londoniis collectae (Halle, 1894).
Über Pseudo-Cnuts Constitutiones de Foresta (Halle, 1894).
“Zur Lex Angliorum,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, germanistische Abteilung 15 (1894), p. 174.
“Eine anglonormannische Übersetzung von Articuli Wilhelmi,” Zeitschrift für rom.
Philologie 19 (1895), pp. 77–84.
“Kesselfang bei den Westsachsen im siebten Jahrhundert,” Sitzungsberichte der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin II (1896), pp. 829–835.
Über die Leges Edwardi Confessoris (Halle, 1896).
“Die Englische Gilde im achten Jahrhundert,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren
Sprachen und Literaturen 96 (1896), pp. 333–340.
“Notes on the Textus Roffensis,” Archaeologia Cantiana 23 (1898), pp. 101–112.
“Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte,
germanistische Abteilung 19 (1898), 174–178.
“Ein Ordal des lebendigen Begrabens,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, germanistische Abteilung 19 (1898), p. 140.
“Die angelsächsische Verordnung über die Dunsaete,” Archiv für das Studium der
neueren Sprachen und Literature 102 (1899), 267–296.
“Wulfstan und Knut,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literatur 103
(1899), pp. 47–54.
“Matrosenstellung aus Landgütern der Kirche London, um 1000,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 104 (1900), pp. 17–24.
“Bemerkungen über die Handschriften zu Cnuts Gesetzen,” Archiv für die neueren
Sprachen 110 (1903), pp. 422–425.
Über das englische Rechtsbuch Leges Henrici (Halle, 1901).
“Leis Wilhelme,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 106
(1901), pp. 113–138.
“Annales of Lewes Priory,” English Historical Review 17 (1902), pp. 83–89.
“Die Abfassungszeit von ‘Rectitudines singularum personarum’ und ags. ‘aferian,’”
Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 109 (1902), pp.
73–82.
“De accusatoribus aus Pseudo–Isidor,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Kirchenrecht 11 (1902),
pp. 1–5.
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Band I: Text und Übersetzung (Halle, 1903).
“Drei nordhumbrische Urkunden um 1100,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren
Sprachen und Literature 111 (1903), pp. 275–284.
“Ags. rihthamscyld: echtes Hoftor,” Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und
Literaturen 115 (1905), pp. 389–391.
“Kentish hionne: Hirnhaut,” Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 115 (1905), pp. 177–8.
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Band IIa: Wörterbuch (Halle, 1906).
“Einleitung zum Statut der Londoner Friedensgilde unter Aethelstan,” Mélanges Fitting vol. 2 (Montpellier, 1908), pp. 77–103.
“Die Eideshufen bei den Angelsachsen,” Historische Aufsätze. Karl Zeumer zum
sechzigsten Geburtstag als Festgabe dargebracht (Weimar, 1910), pp. 1–8.
“Die Friedlosigkeit bei den Angelsachsen,” Festschrift Heinrich Brunner zum siebzigsten Geburtstag dargebracht (Weimar, 1910), pp. 17–37.
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Band IIb: Rechts- und Sachglossar (Halle, 1912).
“King Alfred and Mosaic Law,” Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England
6 (1912), pp. 21–31.
“Über die Gesetze Ines von Wessex,” Mélanges d’ histoire offerts à Charles Bémont
(Paris, 1913), pp. 21–42.

felix liebermann: a selected bibliography

11

The national assembly in the Anglo-Saxon period (London and Halle, 1913).
“A contemporary manuscript of the ‘Leges Anglorum Londiniis Collectae,’” English
Historical Review 28 (1913), pp. 732–745.
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, Band III: Einleitung (Halle, 1916).
“Ordalien heißen und kalten Wassers vermengt,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für
Rechtsgeschichte, germanistische Abteilung 41 (1920), p. 382.
“Zum Stabbrechen des Richters,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte,
germanistische Abteilung 41 (1920), p. 382.
“Zu Wihtraeds Gesetz,” Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen
146 (1923), p. 242.
“Ist Lambardes Text der Gesetze Æthelstan neuzeitliche Fälschung?” Beiblatt zu Anglia.
Mitteilungen über englische Sprache und Literatur und über englischen Unterricht 35
(1924), pp. 214–218.
“Vorstufen zur staatlichen Einheit Britanniens bis 1066,” Englische Studien 60 (1926),
pp. 94–118.
“Zur Teilung des Justizertrags zwischen Herrscher und Gerichtshalter,” Zeitschrift
der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, germanistische Abteilung 46 (1926), pp.
365–366.
Reviews
J.M. Rigg, Select Pleas, Starrs, and Other Records from the Rolls of the Exchequer of the
Jews, A.D. 1220–1284, in: English Historical Review 17 (1902), 551–555.
William Stubbs, Lectures on Early English History (London 1906), in: Historische
Zeitschrift 97 (1906), pp. 647–654.
Else Gütschow, Innocenz III. und England (München und Berlin 1904), in: Historische
Zeitschrift 98 (1907), pp. 183–185.
Frederic William Maitland, Two lectures and a bibliography (Oxford 1908), in: Historische Zeitschrift 101 (1908), pp. 419–421.
George Burton Adams, The Origin of the English Constitution (London 1912), in: Historische Zeitschrift 112 (1914), 407–412.
J. Horace Round, The King’s serjeants and officers of state with their coronation services
(London 1911), in: Historische Zeitschrift 114 (1915), 184–187.
Adolphus Ballard, The English borough in the twelfth century (Cambridge 1914), in:
Historische Zeitschrift 115 (1916), pp. 181–186.
James Fosdick Baldwin, The King’s Council in England during the Middle Ages (Oxford
1913), in: Historische Zeitschrift 116 (1916), pp. 139–146.
Albany F. Major, Early wars of Essex (Cambridge 1913), in: Historische Zeitschrift 117
(1917), pp. 500–502.
Charles Wendell David, Robert Curthose duke of Normandy (Cambridge Mass. 1920),
in: Historische Zeitschrift 123 (1921), pp. 515–518.
Oxford studies in social and legal history, ed. by Sir Paul Vinogradoff (Oxford 1921),
in: Historische Zeitschrift 130 (1924), pp. 582–590.

SECTION ONE

FELIX LIEBERMANN

LIEBERMANN’S INTELLECTUAL MILIEU
Daniela Fruscione
In a letter written on 12 December, 1899, to Francis Jenkinson, a fellow of Trinity College, Frederic Maitland refers to Felix Liebermann’s
“lynx-eye” for lost manuscripts and philological problems.1 At this
point in his career Liebermann, who had only begun to publish the
first installments of the Gesetze’s first volume, was already well-known
among German and English historians of the Middle Ages for publications about various early sources and technical matters regarding
Anglo-Saxon law.2 Maitland’s remark refers particularly to the ability
of the German historian to observe and remember various features of
manuscripts. About Liebermann’s skill as a reader and publisher of old
sources there is no doubt. The question this chapter addresses is: was
this skill natural or was it induced by his intellectual background? This
is not an idle query. The milieu—that is to say the times and places in
which Liebermann first studied and then worked—were intellectually
very stimulating, and could not fail to deeply influence the receptive
spirit. In short: no subject is more suitable a volume on Liebermann
than the question of his intellectual background.
Liebermann’s first encounter with England was not an academic one.
After his schooling, his father sent him to England.3 In Manchester,
where he was supposed to run part of the family cotton business, he
took a liking to English history. It was probably not very difficult to
persuade his father, a wealthy and cultivated Jewish burgher of Berlin,
to let him study history. He moved to Göttingen, a town which, owing
to its special academic tradition, was to have a very great significance
for his intellectual path. During the eighteenth century, history had
became an important part of the study of public law in Göttingen.4

1
Cecil Herbert Stuart Fifoot, ed., The Letters of Frederic Maitland (Cambridge,
1965), p. 256.
2
For instance: Über die Leges Anglorum saeculo XIII ineunte Londoniis collectae
(Halle, 1894) and Über die Leges Edwardi Confessoris (Halle 1896).
3
Marina Sandig, Die Liebermanns (Leipzig, 2005), pp. 302–314.
4
G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1952, 2.
ed.), pp. 39–59.

16

daniela fruscione

The reason was to be found in the peculiar conditions of political
particularism within the German Empire: historical scholarship had
been used in the many legal disputes between the various estates of
the Empire.5
The historical study of jurisprudence continued to be identified with
Göttingen during the nineteenth century. Gustav Hugo, who became
Professor at Göttingen in 1788, was the first to recognise that the law
of a people could only be understood through the history of the people
itself.6 Following Hugo, Karl Friedrich Eichhorn studied law, history
and political science at Göttingen.7 He started a new era, devoting
himself to the finding of collections of laws and documents. With the
publication of his Deutsche Staats-und Rechtsgeschichte (1808) he rose
to the rank of one of the founders of the historical school (Historische
Schule), tracing the connection between the legal ideas and institutions
of different ages and revealing the continuity of their evolution.8
Forty years after Eichhorn, Georg Waitz, whom G. P. Gooch refers
to as “the” German constitutionalist,9 accepted a professorship in Göttingen. Waitz was described as the German Muratori10 by his teacher,
Leopold von Ranke, himself the greatest German historian of the
nineteenth century.11 From the very beginning of his career Waitz
had defined his method and idea of history: in one of his Doktorthesen he writes: “Nemo historicus nisi iuris cognitione imbutus.”12 Waitz
5
Notker Hammerstein, Jus und Historie: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des historischen Denkens an deutschen Universitäten im späten 17. und im 18. Jahrhundert
(Göttingen, 1972), p. 377.
6
Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 39–40; Hermann Kontorowicz, “Savigny and
the historical school of law”, The Law Quarterly Review 53 (1937): 326–343.
7
Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 40–43.
8
On the “Historische Rechtsschule”: Franz Wieacker, Wandlungen im Bilde der
historischen Rechsschule. Vortrag gehalten vor der Juristischen Studiengesellschaft in
Karlsruhe am 19. Januar 1967 (Karlsruhe 1967); Friedrich Karl von Savigny, Grundgedanken der historischen Rechtsschule. 1814–1840 (Frankfurt, 1944); Kontorowicz,
“Savigny”, pp. 326–343.
9
Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 110–114.
10
Ludovico Antonio Muratori (October 21, 1672–January 23, 1750) was an Italian
historian, notable as a leading scholar of his age and for his discovery of the Muratorian fragment, the earliest known list of New Testament books. He also studied the
sources for a history of Italy, and a fruit of his untiring researches was the large work
Rerum italicarum Scriptores ab anno æræ christianæ 500 ad annum 1500 (Writers on
Italy, 500–1500).
11
Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 72–97.
12
“None should call himself an historian if he is not proficient in law.” On Waitz
see Adalbert Erler, “Waitz, Georg”, in Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte
5 (1998), coll. 1103–1104.

liebermann’s intellectual milieu

17

would become an important influence not only on Liebermann, but
also other contemporary legal historians.
Unlike his teacher Ranke, Waitz was not a narrative historian; he
studied law and history in Berlin and Kiel, concentrating on German
medieval history. His massive Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte is a study
of the political and constitutional history of the Germanic peoples
from Tacitus to the twelfth century.13 Waitz was representative of a
new type of professional German historian: prolific in discovering new
sources and in interpreting them, an able organiser, a good teacher
and politically active.14 In the introduction to his work on Das alte
Recht der salischen Franken, before going into very technical editorial
matters regarding the transmission of the texts of the Lex Salica and
the construction of a stemma, he expresses his political conviction:
“You know that I was born in Schleswig but I always was conscious
that Germany is my fatherland.”15
As a delegate from Schleswig-Holstein, Waitz participated in the
deliberations of the Frankfurt parliament in 1848–9, which met in St.
Paul’s Church to draw up a national German constitution.16 Like many
other German intellectuals of his time, for example Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann17 with whom he published the bibliography of German history,18 Waitz, in order to provide a focus for national identity,
devoted himself to National History. This history was not as linear as
Waitz and the other historians tried to depict, but more an assortment
of broken pieces which they tried to reassemble.19

13
Georg Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, 8 vols (Kiel and Berlin, 1844–
1878).
14
David Knowles, Great Historical Enterprises (London, 1963).
15
“Sie wissen dass ich in Schleswig geboren bin aber nie ein anderes Bewusstsein
gehabt habe als dass Deutschland mein Vaterland ist,” Georg Waitz, Das alte Recht
der Salischen Franken (Kiel 1846), p. viii.
16
Brian E. Vick, Defining Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and
National Identity (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002); Guido Wölky Roscher, Waitz,
Bluntschli und Treitschke als Politikwissenschaftler. Spätblüte und Untergang eines
klassischen Universitätsfaches in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Dissertation,
Universität Bochum, 2006).
17
Joseph D. Celotti, The Political Thought and Action of Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, 1970); Gooch, History and Historians,
pp. 122–123.
18
Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann, Quellenkunde der Deutschen Geschichte (Göttingen, 1838).
19
Benedikt Stuchtey/Peter Wende, “Introduction: Towards a Comparative History
of Anglo–German Historiographical Traditions and Transfers”, in British and German

18

daniela fruscione

The brothers Grimm also particpated in the Göttingen circle of
liberal constitutionalists which included Waitz and Dahlmann.20 We
must turn to the speech given by Jakob Grimm in September 1846
in front of representatives of three groups of scholars of law, history,
and language who met in Frankfurt am Main in order to feel the pulse
of Germany in the years to come. Grimm, who chaired the assembly,
subsumed the disciplines of law, history, and language under the concept of the “inexact sciences”, whose value lay in the fact that unlike
the “exact sciences”—for instance mathematics—they dealt with subjects that affect human beings more directly.21 Thus he writes that,
through the study of these disciplines, “We stand much more firmly
on the earth of the fatherland and embrace all feelings from home
much more sincerely.”22 At the head of these sciences he placed German Philology, which explores the mighty feeling for language that
has always given man “his first initiation and equipped him for every
eventuality.”23
About German legal research, Grimm writes that it has the task of
exposing the roots of indigenous law, which have been obscured by
Roman law.24 Thus Grimm strengthened the position against Roman
legal scholars, who, as he said, “live in a magnificent building, even
if it is in the foreign style,”25 and posited that the duty of German

Historiography 1750– 1950. Traditions, Perceptions, and Transfers, Benedikt Stuchtey/
Peter Wende, eds. (Oxford, 2000), pp. 1–24.
20
Die Grimms—Kultur und Politik, ed. Bernd Heidenreich/Ewald Grothe (Frankfurt am Main, 2008); Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 49–59.
21
Jakob Grimm, “Reden bei der frankfurter Germanisten-Versammlung,” in Auswahl aus den kleineren Schriften von Jakob Grimm (Berlin, 1871), pp. 331–347, here
344: “Das Menschliche in Sprache, Dichtung, Recht und Geschichte steht uns näher zu
Herzen als Thiere, Pflanzen und Elemente; mit dem selben Waffen siegt das Nationale
über das Fremde.”
22
Grimm, “Reden bei der frankfurter Germanisten-Versammlung,” p. 342: “Wir
stehen viel fester auf dem Boden des Vaterlandes und schließen uns inniger an alle
heimlischen Gefühle.”
23
Jakob Grimm, “Reden bei der frankfurter Germanisten-Versammlung,” p. 332:
“Dies mächtige Sprachgefühl hat den Menschen von jeher ihre erste Weihe gegeben
und sie zu jeder Eigenthümlichkeit ausgerüstet.”
24
Barbara Dölemayer, “Die Beiträge der Brüder Grimm zur Rechtgeschichte und
Rechtswissenschaften,” in Die Grimms—Kultur und Politik, ed. Bernd Heidenreich/
Ewald Grothe (Frankfurt am Main 2008), pp. 163–188; Ruth Schmidt—Wiegand,
Goldmine oder Steinbruch? Die Rechtsaltertümer Jakob Grimms im Urteil unserer Zeit.
Marburger Universitätsreden 15 (Marburg, 1991).
25
Jakob Grimm, “Reden bei der frankfurter Germanisten-Versammlung,” p. 338:
“Diese wohnen in einem prächtigen, wenn auch im Stil des Auslands aufgemauerten
gebäude, das aber hin und wieder zu zerbröcheln anfängt und Wetterschäden hat.”

liebermann’s intellectual milieu

19

historical research in the narrow sense was “to develop politics out of
history.”26 In his speech in Frankfurt, Grimm was not only recapitulating the development of Germanic studies so far, but also indicating the
direction which future developments were to take.27 He stressed the
distancing of German history from traditional universal history and
the separation of nationality from scholarly universality.28 The shift
towards German history took place first in the study of German legal
history, but the real breakthrough happened in the study of German
language and literature, dealing with the primary contents of the new
German national consciousness.29
The issue now is to place the Gesetze der Angelsachsen into the context of its time. How did a legal history of early medieval England
agree with the idea of German national history and with the fact that
the evolution of modern historical science, above all in Germany, was
so closely linked with the rise of nationalism?
One first—very general—answer to the question of why German
historians were interested in English legal history is given in the introduction to a collection of studies about British and German historiography by Benedikt Stuchtey and Peter Wende: they claim that the
European res publica litterarum, dating from the Renaissance and
reinvigorated during the Enlightenment, was still functioning even in
those fields which provided the soil for the plants which were to bear
the fruits of nationalism.30

26
Jakob Grimm, “Reden bei der frankfurter Germanisten-Versammlung,” p. 338:
“Diese, wie mich dünkt, unter heutigen Germanisten waltende Richtung ist sowohl
eine historisch gelehrte als politisch practische, sie schließen sich an diejenigen unter
den neuen Historikern, welche aus der Geschichte die Politik aufzuerbauen für höchste Noth halten.”
27
Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, “Die Brüder Grimm als Mitbegründer der Germanistik,”
in Die Grimms—Kultur und Politik, ed. Bernd Heidenreich/Ewald Grothe (Frankfurt
am Main, 2008), pp. 138–162.
28
Ulrich Muhlack, “Universal History and National History”, in British and German Historiography 1750– 1950. Traditions, Perceptions, and Transfers, ed. Benedikt
Stuchtey/Peter Wende (Oxford. 2000), pp. 25–48.
29
Jochen A. Bär, “Nation und Sprache in der Sicht romantischer Schriftsteller
und Sprachtheoretiker,” in Nation und Sprache. Die Diskussion ihres Verhältnisses in
Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Andreas Gardt (Berlin/New York, 2000) pp. 198–228;
W. W. Chambers, “Language and nationality in German preromantic and romantic thought,” Modern Language Review 51 (1946): 382–392; Klaus von See, Deutsche
Germanen-Ideologie (Frankfurt am Main, 1970).
30
Stuchtey/Wende, “Introduction: Towards a Comparative History of Anglo–German Historiographical Traditions and Transfers,” p. 3.

20

daniela fruscione

For Liebermann and his circle, however, this answer is not satisfying. Among Liebermann’s British colleagues, a more helpful analysis
may be found in the work of Bishop William Stubbs,31 whose Constitutional History was considered by James Campbell an Anglo-German enterprise.32 In “On the Present State and Prospect of Historical
Study,” Stubbs grounds his argument in the claim that “the history of
Germany is bound up with our national and natural identity.”33 In Germany among the historians in Liebermann’s milieu34 a better answer
to this question is provided by Heinrich Brunner, a legal historian and
one of the Gesetze’s dedicatees. Although Brunner’s work focused on
Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, he also wrote two important works on English history. In the introduction to The Sources of the Law of England35
he writes not only that: “The Institutions of the Anglo-Saxons occupy
in the History of English law the same position as is held by the leges
in the legal history of the other German races,”36 but also that: “Anglo
Saxon Law is of prime importance as a source of law in its relation to
the Germanic system generally, from its being expressed in the original language of the Anglo-Saxon peoples.”37
In his Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte (1887), Brunner goes on to consider
the Anglo-Saxons as one of the German peoples (deutsche Stämme),
and their legislation as German law (deutsches Recht).38 Another historian, Karl von Amira, similarly referred to Old English as “deutsche

31

Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 316–323.
James Campbell, “Stubbs, Maitland and Constitutional History,” in British and
German Historiography, pp. 99–122, shows how here the influence of German historicism was particularly effective. Stubb’s “Constitutional History of England” owed
a debt to the German Historische Rechtsschule and its source criticism adopted the
criteria developed by continental historians.
33
William Stubbs, “On the Present State and Prospect of Historical Study,” in Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History and Kindred Subjects:
Delivered at Oxford, under Statutory Obligation in the Year 1867–1884 (Oxford 1886),
pp. 49–70, here 60.
34
One was Reinhold Pauli, a narrative historian who taught with Waitz in Göttingen. He wrote not only about Alfred the Great—The life of Alfred the Great (London,
1852)—but also on other topics concerning English history: Aufsätze zur englischen
Geschichte (Leipzig, 1869).
35
Heinrich Brunner, The Sources of the Law of England (translated by W. Hastie,
Edinburgh, 1888).
36
Brunner, Sources, p. 1.
37
Brunner, Sources, p. 2.
38
Heinrich Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte 1 (Leipzig, 1906, 2. Aufl.), pp. 2–3.
32

liebermann’s intellectual milieu

21

Sprache”39 and to Anglo-Saxon law as “deutsches Recht”.40 This use of
the word deutsch goes back to Jakob Grimm.41 For him this was the
proper denomination of the unity subsuming the variety of the Germanic dialects. Moreover, from an etymological point of view, this old
word does not point to any particular people and could thus be used
with a general meaning.42 The focus on early medieval German history
and culture allowed the inclusion not only of the English sources for
the reconstruction of the past, but also of the sources of all the other
Germanic peoples based on a common Germanic past.43 So we should
not be surprised to find in the bibliography of the constitutionalist
Georg Waitz a study on Wulfila, the bishop of the Goths whose theological and philological enterprise could not remain unquoted at this
cultural moment.44 At this time the knowledge of the early Germanic
languages was becoming less and less of a deterrent, since many universities offered courses in Germanic philology.45 In this field one of
the leading lights was Karl Lachmann, who was the joint founder of
the scientific study of early German literature and language.46 His aim
was the reconstruction of the text as the author had written it, on
the authority of the best manuscript. But the true inaugurator of

39
Karl von Amira, Germanisches Recht 1 (4. Aufl. bearbeitet von Karl August Eckhardt, Berlin, 1960), p. 73: “Wegen ihres Reizes ungetrübter Ursprünglichkeit zu den
allerkostbersten Stücken Gesetzinkunabeln gehören die angelsächsischen. Schon gleich die frühesten sind in deutscher Sprache (altenglisch) verfaßt.”
40
Karl von Amira, Über Zweck und Mittel der germanischen Rechtsgeschichte. Akademische Antrittsrede (15. Dezember 1875) (Munich, 1876), p. 20.
41
On this: Andres Heusler, Kleine Schriften 2 (Berlin, 1969), pp. 598–607, wrote,
p. 598: “Es gab kein gutes Beispiel, daß Jakob Grimm, der es ja besser wußte, seine germanische Grammatik‚ ‘Deutsche Grammatik’, seine germanischen Rechtsaltertümer
‘Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer’ nannte.”
42
Heinrich Beck, “‘Deutsch’ in den Anfängen der Germanistik,” in Deutsche
Sprachgeschichte. Grundlagen, Methoden, Perspektiven. Festschrift für Johannes Erben
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Werner Besch (Frankfurt/Bern/New York/Paris, 1990), pp.
443–453.
43
Thomas A. Shippey, “Germanen, Deutsche und Teutonen in der englischsprachigen Geistesgeschichte,” in Germanisch—deutsch, RGA—E Band 34 (Berlin/New York,
2004), pp. 325–341.
44
Georg Waitz, Über das Leben und die Lehre des Ulfila (Hannover, 1840).
45
Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 51–59; Johannes Janota (ed.), Eine Wissenschaft etabliert sich. 1810–1870. Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Germanistik III. Deutsche
Texte 53 (Tübingen, 1980); Ulrich Wyss, Die wilde Philolologie. Jakob Grimm und der
Historismus (Munich, 1979).
46
Hans Helmut Christmann (ed.), Sprachwissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts. Wege
der Forschung 474. (Darmstadt, 1977); Schmidt-Wiegand, “Die Brüder Grimm”, pp.
149–151.

22

daniela fruscione

grammatical knowledge of Old Germanic languages was the aforementioned Jakob Grimm, as laid out in his Deutsche Grammatik.47 In the
Introduction to Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer he writes that learning of
the dialects of our language should not be a barrier but a stimulation.48
Moreover, he says something that sounds like a call for Liebermann’s
Gesetze: he apologises to the reader because he has not used enough
English material. He had not enough sources at his disposal (“ich
kann nur das zu meiner entschuldigung sagen, daß sie mir noch
nicht alle zugänglich und zu handen gewesen sind”).49 Liebermann
responded generously indeed to this desideratum expressed by the
academic world.
Many scholars, from Ernst Heymann through Hanna Vollrath, to
Lisi Oliver, have defined the Gesetze as monumental,50 referring of
course to the huge number of manuscripts Liebermann used for his
edition—180 compared with the 23 used by Thorpe—but also to the
fullness of his Glossar, which—as Wormald has pointed out—is nearly
a concordance.51 Moreover, the name of Liebermann can be associated
with this adjective for another reason as well. Liebermann was a Monumenta-boy. After his university time in Göttingen, he had moved to
Berlin to work for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica,52 the German collection of sources related to the history of Germany which has
been described as one of the “Great Historical Enterprises” by David
Knowles.53 Conceived in 1819 by Baron Karl von Stein, a statesman
with a particular interest in history, the Monumenta was given life by

47
Jakob Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik 1–4 (1819–1837). On it Schmidt-Wiegand,
“Die Brüder Grimm,” pp. 156–157.
48
Jakob Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer 1 (Darmstadt 1989, 4. Verm. Aufl.
Leipzig, 1899), p. xiii: “die erlernung unserer sprachdialecte [sollte] keine hindernis
sein, sondern anreizung.” About Jakob Grimm and his Rechtsalterthümer: Adalbert
Erler, Grimm, Jakob, in HRG 1 (1971), coll. 1806–1808.
49
“In order to justify myself I can only say that they were not accessible to me,”
Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. viii.
50
Ernst Heymann, “Felix Liebermann”, ZRG GA XLVI (1926), pp. xxiii–xxxix,
here p. xxxiii; Hanna Vollrath, “Gesetzgebung und Schriftlichkeit. Das Beispiel der
angelsächsischen Gesetze”, Historisches Jahrbuch 99 (1979), pp. 28–54, here 28; Oliver,
Beginnings of English Law, p. 155.
51
Wormald, Making of English Law, p. 23.
52
Harry Bresslau, Geschichte der Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Hannover,
1921); Hermann Krause, “Monumenta Germaniae Historica,” Handwörterbuch der
deutschen Rechtsgeschichte 3 (1984): 650–655.
53
David Knowles, Great Historical Enterprises (London/Edinburgh 1963), pp.
65–97.

liebermann’s intellectual milieu

23

the enthusiasm of the historian Pertz and flourished above all under
Georg Waitz, who left Göttingen in 1875 to go to Berlin and, as chief
editor of the Monumenta, produced around one volume a year.54
The Monumenta was the materialisation of a political and philosophical idea.55 It was a milestone in the evolution of modern historical science in Germany and has been closely linked with the rise of
nationalism.56 The Monumenta was the result of the work of scholars
who believed that every period of history of a nation can only be interpreted as a continuation and development of its earlier times.57
As the motto on the title-page, Sanctus amor patriae dat animum,58
discloses, in the mind of its creator nothing would better serve the
political cause of German Nationhood than the full knowledge of the
medieval Empire. That the Monumenta as a nationalistic idea was
politically disturbing is shown by the fact that the project could secure
little or no financial help from the Austrian or Danish governments.59
As indicated in the recent book by Horst Fuhrmann,60 president
of the Monumenta until 1994, for the scholars who worked on this
long-lasting institution, it has, above all, been a hard school concentrating on various technical skills. First and foremost is the idea and
ideal of the critical text.61 The Monumentists have discovered many
manuscripts buried in the libraries of Europe; furthermore they have
refined the tools for critically examining the sources and for assessing historical validity among competing regional traditions. To quote
Benedikt Stuchtey and Peter Wende: “In striving to accomplish the
great national task German historians contributed to the universal task

54
Georg Waitz, “Über die Zukunft der Monumenta Germaniae Historica,” Historische Zeitschrift 30 (1873): 1–13.
55
Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 60–71.
56
Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 60–71.
57
Mathias Reimann, Historische Schule und Common Law. Die deutsche Rechtswissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts im amerikanischen Rechtsdenken (Berlin, 1993).
58
“The holy love for the fatherland gives courage.”
59
Horst Fuhrmann, “Sind eben alles Menschen gewesen”. Gelehrtenleben im 19. Und
20. Jahrhundert, dargestellt am Beispiel der Monumenta Germaniae Historica und ihrer
Mitarbeiter (Munich, 1996).
60
Fuhrmann, “Sind eben alles Menschen gewesen”.
61
Alfred Gawlik, ed., Zur Geschichte und Arbeit der Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Ausstellung anläßlich des 41. Deutschen Historikertages München 17.–20.
September 1996 (Munich, 1996); Arnold Esch/Rudolf Schieffer, Quelleneditionen und
kein Ende? Zwei Vorträge (Oldenburg, 1999).

24

daniela fruscione

of establishing history as a science and as an academic discipline.”62
The combination of developed techniques and philosophical and political implications which characterised German historical scholarship
in the second half of the nineteenth century attracted the interest of
the intellectual world from the very beginning.63 Thus Lord Acton in
his article “German Schools of History”64 separated the scientic nature
of German historiography, which he admired, from the nationalism
espoused by German historians after 1848, which he criticised.65
In closing the circle of discussion, three main factors characterised the intellectual climate of Liebermann’s milieu: the development
of various techniques used in the critical investigation of sources, a
political component, and a philosophical strand. More than any other
factor, it was the development of the philological studies in the critical
investigation of sources that directly exercised an influence on Liebermann’s work and caused the Gesetze der Angelsachsen to be “massive,
durable and indispensable,” in Campbell’s words.66 In sharing the new
techniques which characterised German historical scholarship, Liebermann was obviously a child of his time, but one who was able to
develop independent ideas, as, for instance, his original editorial solution testifies. No medieval sources have yet undergone the treatment
that Liebermann applied to the early English laws. His examination
of manuscripts was “very nearly exhaustive;”67 he accomplished his
“Herculean”68 task using 180 codices whereas Thorpe had used 23 for
his critical edition.69 Moreover, Liebermann renounced the method of
Thorpe and Schmid, who constructed an eclectic text imagining they
were restoring the archetypes upon which the extant manuscripts are
based; for most of the laws he presented the texts of several manu-

62
Stuchtey/Wende, “Introduction: Towards a Comparative History of Anglo–German Historiographical Traditions and Transfers,” p. 10.
63
Reimann, Historische Schule und Common Law, p. 103, defines: “Die deutsche
Forschung als Maß aller Dinge.”
64
EHR, 1886.
65
Gooch, History and Historians, pp. 354–367.
66
Campbell, “Stubbs, Maitland and Constitutional History,” p. 120.
67
Harold D. Hazeltine, “The laws of the Anglo-Saxons,” Law Quarterly Review
XXIX (1913): 387–398, here 393.
68
H. W. C. Davies, “The Anglo-Saxon Laws,” EHR CXI (1913): 417–430, here 417.
69
Schmid did not consult any manuscript at all for his edition.

liebermann’s intellectual milieu

25

scripts, arranged in parallel columns, giving in the footnotes divergent
readings from other manuscripts.70
As far as the political aspect is concerned, we do not know much
about Liebermann’s political ideas and whether and to what extent
he was involved with German nationalism. What we certainly know
is that he wrote a very inappropriate dedication of Volume III of his
Gesetze, which lost him most of his English friends. Written during the
First World War, the dedication reaches the peak of its nationalistic
tone with the sentiment that this war “. . . will soon be understandable
as essentially caused by the historical necessity of conflict between the
heedless claims of a World-empire, familiar with power, to continue
to dominate navigation and world trade, and the justified determination of a unified German people to contend peacefully and circumspectly but with freedom and strength for the goods of this earth,
and to expand itself to the measure of its inborn lifeforce.”71 Frederic
Maitland, to whose memory he dedicated his work, would have probably been stunned to read the “disastrously misconceived”—to borrow
the words of Patrick Wormald—dedication by his German collegue,
whom he respected.72 Thus Liebermann’s case mirrored the AngloGerman relations in the domain of history: relations had found a common ground in the study of English medieval history between the 19th
and the 20th century, but then failed in the field of contemporary history, with esclating political rivalry until the First World War.73
As for Liebermann’s conception of history as it emerges in his Gesetze, it is not easy to say whether his tendency to accumulate information without offering a theory as to the development of institutions is
connected with an incapability to explain legal matters in an historical context, or whether his approach has an ideological explanation,
linked to his adherence to the construction by Jakob Grimm of a static

70

On the limits of Liebermann’s edition, see: Wormald, Making of English Law,
pp. 22–23 and 260–262. See also Jürg Rainer Schwyter, “L1 Interference in the Editing Process: Felix Liebermann, the Gesetze and the German Language,” Chapter 5 in
this volume.
71
Translated by Wormald, Making of English Law, p. 20, footnote 96.
72
Maitland, “Laws of the Anglo-Saxons,” pp. 139–157.
73
As Benedikt Stuchtey and Peter Wende write (“Introduction: Towards a Comparative History of Anglo–German Historiographical Traditions and Transfers”,
p. 22), in October 1914 nearly all the Germany’s university professors signed a joint
declaration justifying Germany’s military engagement, and in July 1915, 1,347 German intellectuals, including many historians, expressly encouraged the German government in its radical war aims.

26

daniela fruscione

Germanic past which could form a worthy counterpart to the Roman
legislative system. A critical point of view on Liebermann’s perception of law was expressed by Patrick Wormald, who, analysing Liebermann’s Sachglossar as a mirror of Grimm’s conceptions, came to
the conclusion that “there is extraordinarily little sense of legal change
throughout the long Anglo-Saxon period.”74 In Wormald’s opinion,
this has prevented Anglophone historians from picking up the loose
ends left by Liebermann; much more was written about Anglo-Saxon
law before the publication of Liebermann’s Gesetze than afterwards. As
a result, Anglo Saxon law “has become a statuesque monument to an
absorbingly interesting but irretrievably lost past.”75
It is difficult for me to contradict a scholar I admire so greatly as
Patrick Wormald, but I do not agree with him: the limited interest in
research into Anglo-Saxon legal studies after the wars cannot, or cannot only, be attributed to the static picture of Liebermann’s Gesetze.
If legal scholars in Anglophone countries largely stopped researching
the time period before 1066, this was far more the responsibility of the
great and influential Maitland, who saw Old English law as obsolete.
The supposed discontinuity between Anglo-Saxon law and Common
law is, however, not the main reason why the legislation from Æthelbehrt to Cnut was neglected in Liebermann’s country in the second
half of the 20th century. As a reaction against the conception of the
“historische Rechtsschule,” whose authors stressed the value of the Old
English codes to the history of “germanisches Recht,” this oblivion
also had a strong ideological background.
Above all, however, in the Anglophone countries, this situation
is currently experiencing a reversal. The work of the participants in
the conference on Liebermann testify to a renewed interest in AngloSaxon legislation and to a certain vitality in the area of Anglo-Saxon
legal studies. We should be extremely grateful for Liebermann’s nonsynthetic and encyclopedic skills and for his editorial achievement,
which, though liable to amelioration, has paved the way for further
historical and structural research.

74
75

Wormald, Making of English Law, p. 21.
Wormald, Making of English Law, p. xi.

THE LIEBERMANN LIBRARY IN TOKYO
Hideyuki Arimitsu*
As a student of medieval history at the University of Tokyo concentrating on scholarly research published in the nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-centuries, I was fortunate to find in our library the collection
entitled “Liebermann Bunko”—that is, the personal library of the
great Anglo-Saxon legal historian Felix Liebermann. This collection
contains Liebermann’s research materials, articles written by him, and
even annotations in a copy of his great masterpiece, Die Gesetze der
Angelsachsen. The fact that this collection resides in the Library of the
University of Tokyo (hereafter the LUT) is not well-known outside
Japan. In the following pages, I will thus present some features of the
Liebermann Library. The discussion will address 1) How his library
came to Japan; 2) The history and methodology of its classification;
3) The contents of the library and, especially, the characteristics of
annotations displayed in Liebermann’s personal copy of Die Gesetze
der Angelsachsen.
How Liebermann’s personal library came to Japan
In 1925, Felix Liebermann lost his life in a car accident. This occurred
not long after Germany had been defeated in the First World War
in 1918. In 1924, the Dawes Plan for German reparations had been
put into operation. In the fourth year of this schedule of reparation—
1927—the LUT used this funding to purchase Liebermann’s personal
library. At this time, the LUT was in a state of disarray, having suffered
a collapse in the earthquake of 1923. Soon after that catastrophe, a
committee for the restoration of the LUT was organized, including

* I would like to express my gratitude to the librarians of the Library of the University of Tokyo, especially Ms Junko Hanaoka and Mr Kouichi Ueda, the Emeritus
Professor Takeshi Kido of Tokyo University, Professor David Rollason of Durham
University and the participants of the Liebermann Conference, and last but not least,
the editors of this book, for their kind help and advice.

28

hideyuki arimitsu

outstanding scholars of law and economics.1 They had already both
purchased and been given many books in Western countries.2 These
are the circumstances under which the Liebermann Library was bought
and came to Japan. The LUT has a catalogue compiled in 1937 of
books bought in the fourth year of the Dawes Plan (1927),3 which
lists Liebermann’s personal library.4 Ms Hanaoka, a librarian of the
LUT, informs me that the library itself has no further records concerning the process of this purchase.5 Further research may fill in more of
the history: for example, how the Liebermann family came to put the
library up for sale, or details of the transaction with the committee of
the LUT. I am hoping to find relevant documents in the archives of
the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Finance in Japan.
History and Methodology of Classification of
Liebermann’s Library
Next I would like to address the size of the Liebermann Library and
the characteristics concerning its classification. The 1937 catalogue
counts 3,780 books and 1,762 pamphlets.6 The latter are mainly offprints of articles published in academic journals. The newer online

1
Ms Hanaoka informs me that this group included, among others, Zennosuke
Nakagawa and Sakae Wagatsuma, famous legal scholars, and Kozo Uno and Itsuro
Sakisaka, influential economists.
2
For example, the libraries of Hugo Preuss and Friedrich Neubecker.
3
[A300:A-2-Japan:U. Nat. 19]. I use square brackets throughout for call numbers
of the LUT. Genzaburo Yoshino, who later became a distinguished editor and writer,
notes that many books donated or bought for restoration remained unclassified when
he was a librarian of the LUT in the late 1920s and the early 1930s. Considering
that the first catalogue of Liebermann’s Library was made in 1937, ten years after its
acquisition, some time was required to organize these collections. (Information supplied by Ms Hanaoka).
4
Another catalogue states that Liebermann’s library was bought in the third, not in
the fourth year of the Dawes Plan (information from Ms Hanaoka). Anyway, we can
set the date of purchase at 1926 or 1927.
5
Personal communication by e-mail from Ms Hanaoka, who kindly checked many
records on the history of Tokyo Imperial University to provide background for this
paragraph.
6
This 1937 catalogue was made to estimate how much Liebermann’s library was
worth. The total purchase price for Liebermann’s library was 45,000 DM, about 22,500
Japanese Yen at that time. The librarian who made the 1937 catalogue calculated every
book as worth 6 Yen and every pamphlet as 0.2 Yen. As a result, the real “value” of
Liebermann’s library was estimated slightly higher than the cost price.

the liebermann library in tokyo

29

catalogue of the LUT provides more general access to specific research
materials. The following guidelines should help western researchers to
access specific works:
1. Entering the online Public Access Catalogue of the LUT, search
books listing Liebermann as author.
2. Within these search results, if you click on, for example, “Notes on
the Textus Roffensis,”7 you will see a detailed description of this
offprint in English, and in the “Comments” you will find 8 Japanese
characters meaning “Liebermann’s Library”.
3. Copying these Japanese characters and then entering them into the
keyword search will bring up the books and brochures in Liebermann’s library collection. Incorporating all these materials into the
online catalogue is a continuing and, as yet, incomplete process.
In May 2009, the list comprised 353 titles in English, 740 in German, 66 in French, 8 in Danish, 4 in Italian, 3 in Norwegian, 1 in
Dutch, 1 in Hungarian, 80 in Latin and 4 in Greek. The sum total
shown in this catalogue is 1,265,8 considerably fewer than the 5,500
items in the 1937 catalogue. Part of this discrepancy may be due to
the fact that, unlike the 1937 catalogue, the online catalogue lists
multiple-volume works under a single title. For example, as of May
2009, the online catalogue of English books lists #11, A Topographical
Dictionary of England, as a single entry, although the 1937 catalogue
individually registers the constituent four volumes. The numerical
gap between the catalogues is thus smaller than it seems at first.
4. The online catalogue thus has two advantages over the catalogue of
1937: the search process is facilitated, and it also lists the pamphlets
contained in Liebermann’s library, which in the 1937 catalogue are
simply grouped as “Pamphlets 1762v”. However, the 1937 catalogue
has advantages over the online catalogue, which will be addressed
later.
I will now turn to classification. Basically, the books and the pamphlets of the Liebermann Library seem to have been classified first by
Liebermann himself. If we open his books, we usually find his name,

7

An offprint from Archaeologia Cantiana vol. 23 (1898) [L120:210].
353+740+66+8+4+3+1+1+80+4=1260; I have been unable to locate the remaining 5.
8

30

hideyuki arimitsu

sometimes written by hand, and sometimes in the stamp with his
address in Berlin. We also find notes on classification, like “Jus Angl.
118” for Domesday Studies by J. H. Round.9

Figure 1

The classification written by Felix Liebermann in his own copy of
Domesday Studies.

These seem to be Liebermann’s own classifications, written in his own
hand.
The list below presents classifications entered into books and pamphlets written in Modern English. I have included my interpretations
of these abbreviations in the round brackets, followed by a representative example whose LUT catalogue number is provided in the
footnotes.
– Al(?). Engl. Lit. (English Literature);
The Writings of Henry Fielding (London and Edinburgh, 1877)10
– Ant. Brit. (Antiquities of Britain);
William Hudson and John Cottingham Tingey ed., Revised Catalogue of the Records of the City of Norwich (Norwich, 1898)11
– Brit. Celt. (Celtic Britain);
Gan Evan Griffiths ed., Welsh and English Dictionary (Abertawny,
1847)12
– Font. Agl. (Sources of English History);
James Raine, York, 2nd ed. (London and New York, 1893)13
– Font. Agsax. (Sources of Anglo-Saxon History);

9
10
11
12
13

[N100:1349].
[E200:7115].
[J600:353].
[D250:716].
[G610:1527].

the liebermann library in tokyo

–

–

–

–

–

–
–

–

–

31

S. Napier, An Old English Vision of Leofric, Earl of Mercia (Hertford, 1908)14
Font. Agnorm. (Sources of Anglo-Norman History)
Edward Meyrick Goulburn and Henry Symonds, The Life, Letters
and Sermons of Bishop Herbert de Losinga, 2 vols, (Oxford and
London, 1878)15
Geogr. Brit. (Geography of Britain)
Beeton’s British Gazetter: A Topographical and Historical Guide to
the United Kingdom (London, n.d.)16
Graeca (Greece);
Paul Vinogradoff, ‘Aristotle on Legal Redress’, Columbia Law
Review, vol. 8 (November 1908)17
Hist. Anglosax. (Anglo-Saxon History);
Frank Merry Stenton, The Early History of the Abbey of Abingdon
(Reading, 1913)18
Hist. Angl. Med. (English Medieval History);
Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in the History of Mediaeval Sci19
ence (Cambridge, Mass., 1924)
Hist. Angl. Rec. (English Modern History);
Eugene Oswald, Reminiscences of a Busy Life (London, 1911)20
Hist. Bat. (History of Batavia, i.e. the Netherlands);
John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 3 vols
(Leipzig, 1858)21
Hist. Eccl. (Ecclesiastical History);
James Craigie Robertson, History of the Christian Church, 3rd ed.,
vol. 2 (London, 1868)22
Hist. Eccl. Angl. (English Ecclesiastical History);
Daniel Rocke, The Church of Our Fathers, As Seen in St. Osmund’s
Rite for the Cathedral of Salisbury, G. W. Hart and W. H. Frere
ed. 4 vols (London, 1905)23

14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23

[D250:652].
[C400:2122].
[J600:346].
[L100:233].
[C400:2120].
[T000:604].
[H400:1575].
[G750:162].
[C400:2199]. The LUT owns only the second volume of this two-volume work.
[C400:2131].

32

hideyuki arimitsu

– Hist. Lit. Angl. (History of English Literature (?));
Walter Rye, Records and Record Searching: A Guide to the Genealogist and Topographer (London, 1888)24
– Hist. Lit. Univ. (History of Universal Literature);
Henry George Bohn, A Hand-Book of Proverbs (London, 1879)25
– Hist. Univ. (Universal History);
Ludwig Riess, Notes of a Course of Lectures on Universal History,
vols 1 and 2 (Tokyo, 1892)26
– Jus Angl. (English Law);
William Sharp McKechnie, The New Democracy and Constitution
(London, 1912)27
– Lex. Angl. (Lexicon of English);
Webster’s Complete Dictionary of the English Language (London,
1877)28
– Ling. Angl. (English Linguistics);
Richard Chenevix Trench, English, Past and Present, 11th ed.
(London, 1881)29
– Lit. Univ. (Universal Literature (?));
Thomas Benfield Harbottle, Dictionary of Historical Allusions
(London, 1903)30
– Philos. Hist. (Philosophy of History);
George Walter Prothero, Why Should We Learn History? (Edinburgh, 1894)31
– Polit. (Politics);
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (London, 1872)32
– Scand. (Scandinavia);
Vilhelm Thomsen, The Relations Between Ancient Russia and
Scandinavia and the Origin of the Russian State (Oxford, 1877)33
– Theol. (Theology);
Reverend Frederick George Lee, A Glossary of Liturgical and
Ecclesiastical Terms (London, 1877)34
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34

[H700:155].
[E200:7051].
[G400:113]. The LUT owns only the first two volumes of this five-volume work.
[M100:866].
[D250:720].
[D250:747].
[G000:202].
[G000:175].
[M000:261].
[G690:310].
[C400:2142].

the liebermann library in tokyo

33

– ‘Tract’, e. g. ‘Tract. Agsax’ or ‘Tract Angl med.’ etc. (Tract on AngloSaxon History, or Tract on Medieval England, etc. Almost all of
them are offprints of academic journals.)
Frederick Pollock, ‘Anglo-Saxon Law’, an offprint of the article in
EHR, vol. 8 (April, 1893)35
These careful, detailed entries give us insight into Liebermann’s academic approach. However, even Liebermann occasionally nods: he
classified Part One of “The Origin of the English Constitution” by
George Burton Adams as “Tract Angl med VIII 133”, and Part Two
as “Tract jur Angl V52”.36
After Liebermann’s books and pamphlets came to the LUT, the then
librarian(s) re-classified them according to the system of the LUT, with
unfortunate consequences for the unity of the collection. Four stamps
were usually entered into the books and pamphlets in the Liebermann
Library when they were accepted in the LUT.

Figure 2
Figure 3
Stamps on the opening pages for the books and the pamphlets constituting
the Liebermann Library.

35

[L120:215].
Part One was published in AHR, vol. 13, no. 2, and Part Two in the same volume, no. 4.
36

34

hideyuki arimitsu

One stamp shows that the item was in the Library of the Tokyo Imperial University (the former name of the LUT); another stamp indicates
that it was bought using the special account of the Ministry of Finance
from the German reparations; a third gives the number from the 1937
catalogue,37 and the last (in Figure 3) designates the item as part of the
Liebermann Library. The online catalogue of the LUT seems to rely
only on this last stamp, although there are many titles without it that
were evidently components of the Liebermann Library. Lacking the
relevant stamp, they are not shown as such on the online catalogue—
some specific examples will be discussed below. I am now trying to
trace all the original materials of the Liebermann Library with the
intention of drawing up a complete catalogue (a process which will
undoubtedly take some time!)38
The Contents of the Liebermann Library
Next I will discuss the contents of the Liebermann Library, concentrating on books and offprints in Modern English. Of the 348 titles I
was able to check from the online catalogue in 2008, the majority, of
course, concerns British medieval history. These items afford us two
insights into Liebermann’s intellectual world: an understanding of his
academic circle of colleagues, and a sense of how Liebermann used
these materials in approaching his own research.
First, we can derive at least a partial list of Liebermann’s intellectual acquaintances from these items: sometimes they have the author’s
dedicatory message, and other times Liebermann himself notes that
they were sent by the authors. Below is a partial inventory of authors
who presented Liebermann with their work:
J. H. Round, Domesday Studies;39
Frederic William Maitland, “Canon Law in England”;40

37

No. 1283 (in Figure 2) is for Domesday Studies by Round.
I have noticed that between July 2008 and May 2009 the number of books
and pamphlets entered as parts of the Liebermann Library has slightly increased.
The librarians of the LUT seem to be continuing their endeavour to make the online
catalogue more complete.
39
See note 9 above.
40
An offprint of the article in EHR, vol. 11 (July 1896) [L260:19].
38

the liebermann library in tokyo

35

Charles Gross, “The Medieval Law of Intestacy”;41
Harold Dexter Hazeltine, Early History of Specific Performance of
Contract in English Law;42
William S. McKechnie, Magna Carta;43
George B. Adams, “The Origin of the English Constitution”;44
Paul Vinogradoff, “By-Laws of an Oxfordshire Manor”;45
Mary Bateson, “A London Municipal Collection of the Reign of
John”;46
Charles H. Haskins, “The Early Norman Jury”;47
Helen Maud Cam, “Cambridgeshire Sheriffs in the Thirteenth
Century”;48
Sir Frederick Pollock, Archaism in Modern Law’;49
T. F. Tout, Edward the First;50
Charles Oman, England before Norman Conquest;51
E. A. Freeman, William the Conqueror.52
We see here a galaxy of famous medievalists, and they sent Liebermann more books and offprints than I have given as examples. These
materials seem to have been studied at length by Liebermann himself,
for many notes, marks and lines are written in them.

41

An offprint of the article in Harvard Law Review, vol. 18, no. 2, 1904.
[L140:729].
42
(Stuttgart, 1909) [L160:78].
43
(Glasgow, 1905) [L130:224].
44
See note 36 above.
45
An offprint of the article in Quarterly Journal of Economics vol. 18 (1904), no.
4 [L120:248].
46
An offprint of the article in EHR, vol. 17 (1902) [L120:247].
47
An offprint of the article in AHR, vol. 8, no. 4 [L120:206].
48
An offprint of the article in Cambridge Antiquarian Society’s Communications,
vol. 25 (1924) [L120:202].
49
Archaism in Modern Law: Address to the Glasgow Juridical Society (1892).
[L100:232].
50
(London and New York, 1893). [G610:1442].
51
2nd ed. (London, 1910). [G610:1410].
52
(London and New York, 1888). [G610:1359].

36

hideyuki arimitsu

Figure 4 Notes or keywords written
by Liebermann in his own copy of
Domesday Studies.

Figure 5 Notes or keywords
written by Liebermann in his
own copy of William Stubbs’
Constitutional History.

Figure 6

Notes on the opening blank page written by Liebermann in his
own copy of The Growth of the Manor.

This is the second point I would like to stress: we may be able to use
these publications as keys to gain insight both globally into how Liebermann prepared his research, and specifically into how he reacted
to individual texts. This approach is more complicated than the reading of dedicatory messages: the Liebermann Library has been in the
LUT for a long time, and many scholars consulting the collection have
entered their own notes. For example, Japanese words annotate a copy

the liebermann library in tokyo

37

of The Growth of the Manor by Vinogradoff. We must thus be cautious
in this kind of observation; although many lines and notes seem to be
Liebermann’s own markings, careful analysis of the script is necessary for confirmation. For now, I will only adduce one example of the
type of information we can draw from studying Liebermann’s notes.
In the offprint of Haskins’ “European History and American Scholarship” published in AHR, vol. 28, no. 2 (1923),53 Liebermann has written many comments and underlined several passages. In one section
where Haskins talks about British soldiers who lost their lives “in a
cause of liberty,” a question mark “?” is written in the margin; I believe
this to be in Liebermann’s handwriting.

Figure 7 Part of the first page of the offprint “European History and American
Scholarship”, probably sent by the author Haskins to Liebermann.

Lastly I would like to add that Liebermann’s library contains many
interesting books which make him feel almost familiar to us: for
example, English Synonymous (sic), or the Difference between Words
Esteemed Synonymous in the English Language, Useful to All Who
Would Either Write and Speak with Propriety and Elegance,54 certainly
useful to a scholar writing in a non-native language! There are books
of or about English literature (such as Edward Marsh’s Rupert Brooke:
A Memoir;55 Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure;56 The Writings of Henry
Fielding;57 etc.). Liebermann also owned The Economic Consequences
of the Peace, published by John Maynard Keynes in 1919.58 Somewhat
surprisingly, but demonstrating the breadth of his interests, we also
find Physiology by Michael Foster (London, 1877).59

53
54
55
56
57
58
59

[G910:41].
(Leipzig, 1804). [D250:735].
Edward Marsh, Rupert Brooke: A Memoir (London, 1918). [E200:7119].
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1896). [E200:7017].
See note 10 above.
[G444:1293].
[V100:478].

38

hideyuki arimitsu

A final note of interest: the collection contains works written by
Ludwig Riess.60 He was a third-generation pupil of Leopold von Ranke,
and helped him by copying Ranke’s writings into a more readable
script. Riess later came to Japan and lectured on Western and world
histories in the Tokyo Imperial University in its early days. I find fascinating the connection between Riess, who was one of the founders
of modern historical research in Japan, and Liebermann, who did not
come to Japan but, through his library, also contributed greatly to the
Japanese academic world. This bond is further strengthened by the fact
that they were both Berliners who had Jewish origins.
Earlier, when I listed the names of some medievalists and their
works in the Liebermann Library, other titles with which Liebermann
must have been familiar probably sprang to mind: for example, Pollock and Maitland’s History of English Law, the latter’s Domesday Book
and Beyond, or Haskins’ Norman Institutions, etc. They are in the 1937
catalogue, but not in the online catalogue of the LUT as components of
the Liebermann Library. I do not know the exact reason for this. They
may have been lost, but it is also possible that the online catalogue
may itself be responsible for their non-appearance. Die Gesetze der
Angelsachsen—the main focus of this book—also does not appear in
the online catalogue as a part of the Liebermann Library. Nonetheless,
the copies owned by Liebermann do exist in the LUT.61 They somehow
lack the stamp of “Liebermann’s Library”, but they do have a stamp
showing they were bought using German reparations. They also have
a number stamp (519), which corresponds to the 1937 catalogue.
Die Gesetze consists of three volumes. Liebermann’s own copy of
Volume Two (Wörterbuch and Rechts- und Sachglossar) was separated
into three parts. Unfortunately, the middle one is now missing. The last
one, from page 527 onwards, is particularly interesting, as it has blank
pages interleaved with the printed pages; it seems that this copy was
specially made for Liebermann to write notes and corrections. Liebermann made a great many notes in this volume; I am in the process of
working through them. For now, I will provide one example. Volume
Three of Gesetze concludes with five pages of annotations under the
rubric “Berichtigungen”. Here Liebermann entered for Volume Two,
page 595: “Sp[alte] 1, Z[eile] 4 v[on] u[nten] setze: v[er]gl[eich] Stand-

60
61

See note 26 above.
[L520:23:1, L520:23:2.1, L520:23:2.2, L520:23:3.].

the liebermann library in tokyo

39

esgenossen 7a.10”.62 That page of Liebermann’s own copy of Volume
Two contains this same phrase in his handwriting beside the heading
“Nachbarn”. However, this annotation adds the bibliographical reference “Pol Mai II 641” (Pol Mai being an abbreviation for Pollock and
Maitland).

Figure 8

Part of page 595 of Liebermann’s own copy of Die Gesetze der
Angelsachsen.

Furthermore, Liebermann made notes in his personal copy not
included in the “Berichtigungen”—presumably they postdate publication. For example, in the entry—also on page 595—for “Muttersippe”,
he adds to the discussion of the responsibility for the Muttersippe
to provide one third of the wergild in the case of fine: “So auch in
Wales . . . Ebenso in Ostgotland”, with bibliographical references.

Figure 9

Notes written by Liebermann in his own copy of Die Gesetze der
Angelsachsen, in the blank page opposing page 595.

Below the field of this image, he also adds Konrad Maurer’s views on
this partition of wergild. Whether any or all of such additional notes
were published or used elsewhere is yet to be determined.

62

Liebermann, Gesetze, 3, pg. 355.

40

hideyuki arimitsu
Conclusion

In conclusion, the Liebermann Library remains a largely unmined
resource for information about Liebermann’s research and his research
techniques. This paper has introduced both the problems and the possibilities inherent in close study of these materials. The problems have
to do with classification resulting from the lack of cohesion between
the 1937 and the online catalogues. I am in the process of assembling
a complete listing of the library as purchased in 1927, as well as identifying the items still remaining in the library collections. The possibilities lie in two directions. First, Liebermann’s annotations on works
by other scholars contained in his collections will allow us to see how
this great legal scholar approached his research. Second, Liebermann’s
notes in his personal copy of Die Gesetze will augment the materials
included in the published version with insights that post-dated publication. As I continue these researches, I believe that my further study
on the Liebermann Library will have the potential to contribute to the
study of British historiography, and also of British legal history.

SECTION TWO

LANGUAGE AND DATING

L1 INTERFERENCE IN THE EDITING PROCESS:
FELIX LIEBERMANN, THE GESETZE AND
THE GERMAN LANGUAGE1
Jürg Rainer Schwyter
Since its publication a hundred years ago, various aspects of Liebermann’s edition of the Anglo-Saxon law-codes have been criticised,
ranging on the one hand from his handling of the textual transmission and his division of the codes into chapters to, on the other hand,
misspellings and the use of sometimes cryptic ad-hoc abbreviations.
This essay takes a different slant. Rather than produce a list of what,
from a present-day point of view, may be perceived as “inadequacies”, I will try to reach a more explanatory level. Looking at examples
of punctuation, capitalisation and emendation as well as at some of
Liebermann’s translations and linguistic explanations in the Gesetze,
the Wörterbuch and the Sachglossar, I claim that, due primarily to his
German-language background, particular meanings were created in
the edition—meanings that are not linguistically encoded in the Old
English original. This phenomenon is sometimes called the “language
trap”, and its effects can be traced in the handling of the Anglo-Saxon
law-codes from the Quadripartitus to the present day. Arguing for a
different approach, I advocate that modern editors should concentrate
primarily on the linguistic—rather than the pragmatic, inferred or perceived—meaning of their text(s), and above all that they become more
linguistically aware of the role that their native language (L1)—with all
its structures and conventions—plays in the editing process.

1
Editors’ note: This paper was presented at the Liebermann centenary conference held
in London in 2008. Subsequent medical problems prevented Dr Schwyter from turning
his oral presentation into a polished written version. The editors felt, nonetheless, that
Schwyter’s contribution was important to this collection. Although they have, to the best
of their ability, prepared the paper for publication, the reader must remember that this
essay does not necessarily represent what would have been Dr Schwyter’s own finished
work. Any errors or infelicities should thus be laid at the door of the editors.

44

jürg rainer schwyter
Introduction

The publication of Felix Liebermann’s monumental, 3-volume, 1800–
page Gesetze der Angelsachsen started in the form of instalments in
1898 and was completed 18 years later; individual volumes appeared
according to the following timetable:
– Vol. I Text und Übersetzung (1903)
– Vol. II Wörterbuch (1906) & Rechts- und Sachglossar (1912)
– Vol. III Einleitung zu jedem Stück; Erklärungen zu einzelnen Stellen
(1916)
Shortly after publication, wide-spread scholarly praise was forthcoming. In 1926, T. F. Tout labelled it “the definitive edition of our AngloSaxon laws,”2 to which H. D. Hazeltine added in 1938:
Liebermann’s Gesetze der Angelsachsen is now regarded by all scholars as
one of the greatest editorial achievements of recent times; and by some
critics it has been classed, not unfairly, as holding a place of equality
beside the monumental editorial works of Mommsen within the province of Roman legal sources.3

In addition to Liebermann’s editorial exactness and the completeness
of texts he consulted (though both of these aspects have been criticized
since—see below), one virtue, often-stressed at the time of publication,
was the novelty of his methods. What were they?
Writing in 1989 on Continental manuscript editing traditions,
Bernard Cerquiglini distinguished three broad periods:
In the earliest period, manuscript variation was simply accepted, the
major agenda being to publish the texts and make the data available. The
second period [. . .] favored collating the various manuscripts of a text
into a “perfect” critical edition whose language was, in a word, a phantom, a homogenized composite idiom with little basis in textual reality
[. . .]. The prevailing methodology of the third period [. . .] involved
selecting the best manuscript and editing it, relegating any conflicting
data provided by other manuscripts “atomistically” to critical notes.4

2

T. F. Tout, “Felix Liebermann (1851–1925),” History 10 (1926): 311.
H. D. Hazeltine, “Felix Liebermann 1851–1925,” Proceedings of the British Academy 34 (1938): 326.
4
Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris:
1989); summarized by Suzanne Fleischman, “Methodologies and Ideologies in Histor3

l1 interference in the editing process

ms G

ms A

Quadripartitus

Inst. Cnuti

Consil. Cnuti

45

German trans.

Figure 1 Liebermann Gesetze 1: 284–5; I Cnut §§4 bis 5a.

Looking at any page of Liebermann’s edition, one immediately sees
that what he did was in fact to develop further the methods of Cerquiglini’s third period.
Figure 1 demonstrates Liebermann’s technique of presenting parallel clauses from extant manuscripts, accompanied by a translation into
Modern German. It is obvious from the above figure that not only
did Liebermann not reconstruct an Urtext—although he did initially
try—but he wanted to make as many of the “leading manuscripts” (in
Frederic Maitland’s words)5 available to philologists as possible; Liebermann himself thus described his approach (in my translation):
In order to visualise all readings, the method to print one base text with
variants from other manuscripts, as practised by [my] predecessors and
initially attempted here as well, proved impossible. First, the thicket of
so many notes would have been impenetrable by any eye. [. . .] Secondly,
in some cases it remains doubtful which manuscript, among many, is the
oldest and whether its text is the most original one; not uncommonly, a
younger and often worse copyist still writes more archaically in specific

ical Linguistics: On Working with Older Languages,” in Textual Parameters in Older
Languages, Susan C. Herring, Pieter van Reenen and Lene Schøsler, eds. Amsterdam
Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science 195 (2000), p. 46.
5
Maitland, “Laws of the Anglo-Saxons,” p. 152.

46

jürg rainer schwyter
cases. [. . .] The philologist therefore had to see each text [. . .] printed
separately.6

Liebermann did not, however, simply print the individual texts as they
were presented in the manuscripts, but incorporated editorial signals
as to where and how the manuscripts differed. In the Gesetze, then,
we find a plethora of special symbols, abbreviations, often made up
as Liebermann went along and therefore difficult to decipher, as well
as different fonts—italics, bold, smaller size script, and so on, each with
their own particular meaning. (These may be picked out in Figure 1
by a reader with exceptionally good eyesight; they are easily apparent
in the much larger printed edition). This approach led Maitland to his
famous comment that Liebermann’s edition “looks like the full score
of an opera;” that, however, sometimes “the natural man sighs for the
simplicity of a pianoforte arrangement.”7
More serious criticisms have also been adduced, particularly with
respect to some aspects of Liebermann’s treatment of his manuscript
sources. Richard Dammery summarized them under the following
headings:8
1. Liebermann’s “handling of the textual transmission.” This includes
first and foremost his failure to recognise that some Old English
texts in William Lambarde’s Archaionomia (published in 1568)
are beyond doubt Elizabethan translations from the post-Conquest
Latin Quadripartitus into pseudo-Old-English.9 This failure led

6
Um nun sämtliche Lesarten zur Anschauung zu bringen, erwies sich als ungangbar die von den Vorgängern befolgte und auch hierfür anfänglich versuchte Methode
der Edition Eines [sic] Grundtextes mit Varianten aus anderen Handschriften. Erstens
nämlich hätte kein Auge solches Dickicht von Anmerkungen durchdringen können. [. . .]
Zweitens bleibt es in einigen Fällen zweifelhaft, welcher Codex unter mehreren