Friedrich Julius Stahl (; 16 January 1802 – 10 August 1861) was a German constitutional lawyer, political philosopher and politician.
Biography Born at Würzburg in the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg, of Jewish parentage, as Julius Jolson,Lenz, Max (1918). Geschichte der Königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin. 2. Band, 2. Hälfte: Auf dem Wege zur deutschen Einheit im neuen Reich. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses. p. 125. he was brought up strictly in the Jewish religion and was allowed to attend the Gymnasium. As a result of its influence, he at the age of 17 converted to Christianity and was baptized in the Lutheran Church at Erlangen on November 6, 1819.Masur, Gerhard (1930). Friedrich Julius Stahl, Geschichte seines Lebens. Aufstieg und Entfaltung 1802–1840. Berlin: Mittler. p. 20-37. To his new faith, he clung with earnest devotion and persistence until his death. Having studied law at Würzburg, Heidelberg and Erlangen, Stahl, he on taking the degree of doctor juris established himself as Privatdozent in Munich, was appointed in 1832 ordinary professor of law at Würzburg and received in 1840 the chair of ecclesiastical law and polity at Berlin.
There, he immediately made his mark as an ecclesiastical lawyer, and he was appointed a member of the first chamber of the general synod. Elected in 1850 a member of the short-lived Erfurt Parliament, he bitterly opposed the idea of German federation. Stahl early fell under the influence of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and, at the latter's insistence, began in 1827 his great work Die Philosophie des Rechts nach geschichtlicher Ansicht, a historical view of the philosophy of law. The second definitive edition of that work, published in 1845, was entitled Rechts- und Staatslehre auf der Grundlage christlicher Weltanschauung ("The Philosophy of Law and State on the Basis of the Christian Worldview"). It is sometimes claimed that in that work he bases all law and political science upon Christian revelation, but that is a serious misunderstanding of his position. As he put it in Book 1 of that work, "Christian revelation is indifferent to [the civil order]. This revelation provides regulations governing man’s behavior in relation to the existing order, but it does not give instructions about the formation of this order. No divine image of the civil order is given, because the way it is, is not of God".Rechts-und staatslehre auf der grundlage christlicher weltanschauung, Vol. 2, Book 1 ("Die philosopischen Grundlagen"), §. 49 He advocated a confessional Christian state and the establishment of the Christian Church.
That position was further elucidated in his Der christliche Staat und sein Verhältniss zum Deismus und Judenthum (The Christian State and Its Relation to Deism and Judaism; 1847). As Oberkirchenrath (synodal councillor), Stahl used all his influence to weaken the Prussian Union of Churches, the compromise between the Calvinist and the Lutheran doctrines that is the essence of the Evangelical Church in Prussia) and to strengthen the influence of the Lutheran Church (Die Lutherische Kirche und die Union, 1859). Stahl advocated the formation of an episcopal constitution of the Lutherans similar to that of the Roman Catholics or the Anglicans.Mattes, Mark C (2002). "The Thomistic Turn in Evangelical Catholic Ethics." The Lutheran Quarterly, vol. 16, p. 65-101; here: p. 67.
The Prussian minister von Bunsen attacked Stahl, but King Frederick William IV supported Stahl in his ecclesiastical policy, and the Prussian Union would probably have been dissolved if the regency of Prince William (afterwards William I, German Emperor) had not come in 1858. Stahl's influence fell under the new régime, and he remained remaining a member of the Prussian House of Lords ("Herrenhaus"), but he resigned his seat on the general synod.
While taking a cure, he unexpectedly died at Bad Brückenau.
Academic work
In 1827 Stahl habilitated in Munich on the older Roman right of action and received a private lecturer position there. In the winter semester of 1827/28 he began lectures on Roman law and the philosophy of law. For unknown reasons, his father Valentin had lost most of his fortune, and after the death of his parents (1829/1830), Stahl had to look after his seven younger siblings. He applied in vain for a paid lecturer position.
In order to counteract the liberal Bayerisches Volksblatt published in Würzburg by Gottfried Eisenmann, the Bavarian government founded the official magazine Der Thron- und Volksfreund in 1830 and appointed Stahl as its editor. Even at this time, his thinking and his journalistic and political activities were anti-rationalistic and anti-revolutionary and fully corresponded to King Ludwig I's monarchical principle . But the "Volksfreund" was no match for the "Volksblatt" and was discontinued after just a few months and only eight issues.Wilhelm Füßl: Professor in politics: Friedrich Julius Stahl. The monarchical principle and its implementation in parliamentary practice, Göttingen 1988
After several applications were rejected by Ludwig I, despite the support of Minister Eduard von Schenk, Stahl was finally appointed associate professor in Erlangen by decree of June 27, 1832. But before the beginning of the winter semester 1832/33 he was transferred to Würzburg and appointed full professor for legal philosophy, pandects and Bavarian state law, which he was not at all happy about: his subjects did not quite correspond to his wishes and he could not feel comfortable in the Catholic-dominated environment. Nonetheless, he twice turned down a call by the Hessian Minister Ludwig Hassenpflug to the University of Marburg because he felt committed to Bavaria. In 1834 Stahl returned to the University of Erlangen, where he taught canon law, constitutional law and philosophy of law, and in 1835 married Julie Kindler,Gerhard Masur: Friedrich Julius Stahl, Geschichte seines Lebens. Aufstieg und Entfaltung 1802–1840. Berlin 1930 daughter of a glove manufacturer from Erlangen; the marriage remained childless. Under the influence of Christian Krafft and Erlangen theology, Stahl finally developed into a typical representative of Lutheran orthodoxy, and in 1837 the University of Erlangen elected him as its deputy to the second chamber of the Bavarian state parliament, where he advocated better equipment for the universities, organized a faction-like group to represent Protestant interests and, in the budget debate, was willing to compromise with the government on the matter, but defended the constitutional rights of the state parliament in principle until the chamber majority and eventually joined Minister Wallerstein. As a result, King Ludwig I dismissed the minister and reprimanded Stahl by withdrawing his professorship for constitutional law and transferring him to civil procedural law, which was alien to him. Stahl therefore rejected re-election to the state parliament, used the calm thus gained to work out his work on the church constitution and was now - although his Erlangen colleagues appointed him pro-rector in 1839.
In 1840 Stahl was appointed professor of legal philosophy, constitutional law and canon law in Berlin. At the request of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, he was to fight "rationalist" Hegelianism at the university. During his inaugural lecture on November 26, Stahl announced this intention and caused a scandal.Max Lenz: Geschichte der Königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin. Halle 1918, 2. Band 2. Hälfte: Auf dem Wege zur deutschen Einheit im neuen Reich. S. 20. Treitschke calls the reception "vulgar".Heinrich von Treitschke: Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert. 1879–1894 In his diaries, Varnhagen van Ense describes the "shuffling and hissing of the students" as the "first opposition to the new government."Zitiert nach Christian Wiegand: Über Friedrich Julius Stahl (1801–1862). Recht, Staat, Kirche (Rechts- und staatswissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Görres-Gesellschaft. NF H. 35), Paderborn 1981 Stahl called out to the protesting students: "Gentlemen, I am here to teach, you to listen, you may judge at home, but do not disturb the order and tranquility here!" As early as 1841, Stahl was in the adjudication board of the law faculty, in which he prepared expert opinions on constitutional and canonical cases. As a professor, he gathered conservative students around him and, when he was dean and rector, influenced the appointments to chairs in conservative interests. In a report by the law faculty, he spoke out against the admission of Jews as lecturers. Stahl also formulated the rejection of the invitation to a meeting of university teachers in September of the revolutionary year 1848 because he was against recognition by the Frankfurt central government. From the winter semester of 1850/51 he held public lectures on the current parties in state and church, to which high officials and officers, and even ministers, also came.
Political activity Although Stahl's activity within the university was already politically significant, this was by no means enough for his political ambitions. After 1848 a petition by the associate professors and private lecturers at the University of Berlin demanded the dismissal of e.g. Stahls had also demanded, he left Berlin in a hurry,Lt. einem Brief Otto von Gerlachs vom 27. März 1848 aus Magdeburg an Hengstenberg brachte er sich kurzfristig in Sicherheit(Füßl, S. 122). Andererseits gibt es Hinweise darauf, dass er für Hessen-Darmstadt am Vorparlament in Frankfurt teilgenommen haben könnte(Bundesarchiv: Mitglieder des Vorparlaments und des Fünfzigerausschusses PDF-Datei; 79 kB, S. 15) but soon returned to promote the founding of a conservative newspaper and the organization of the later Conservative Party together with Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach. Stahl was one of the shareholders and employees of the "Neue Preußische Zeitung" founded in mid-1848. His article "The Banner of the Conservatives"Zweite Abhandlung in: Die Revolution und die constitutionelle Monarchie. printed in it on July 20, 1848 was an abridged version of his writing Das monarchisches Princip from 1845, but updated and specified: From Friedrich Wilhelm IV's proclamation of March 18, he led a further development of the Prussian constitutional reality by the king. Other articles by Stahl followed at short intervals, until in September he began to concentrate on building a party organization. His Draft for a Conservative Party, written in February and March 1849, in which he outlined the guidelines for future Conservative policy, became the basis for the Conservative program that was eventually printed.HAB Wolfenbüttel, Cod. Guelf. Stahl/Wilkens, 6, Nr. 7; zitiert nach Füßl, Wilhelm: Professor in der Politik: Friedrich Julius Stahl. Das monarchische Prinzip und seine Umsetzung in die parlamentarische Praxis. Göttingen 1988.
However, Stahl could not commit the entire Conservative Party to this program; so he became - again at the side of Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach - spokesman only for the extreme parliamentary right (sometimes referred to as the "Gerlach-Stahl Group"). Elected to the first chamber for the district of Oberbarnim in 1849, he nevertheless succeeded in winning over the "high conservatives" of the "Kreuzzeitung Party" to accept the program in principle, although they were striving to have it revised. Eventually, in 1854, Stahl became one of the members of the Prussian House of Lords appointed for life by the king, and thus the chief spokesman for the chivalric faction, to which he remained loyal to the end.