Abstracts 
Wolfgang Briicher und H. Peter Dorrenbacher 
TRANSBORDER RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SAARLAND AND LORRAINE - EXPRESSION OF A 
MIXED CULTURE? 
Lorraine and the Saarland have an unusual potential for transborder relations. Is that the 
breeding-ground for a mixed culture? After an analysis of transborder commuting, relocation 
and investments, but also of contacts in arts and education, the answer is negative, because the 
relations investigated have not so far been founded primarily on a mutual interest in the 
neighbour’s culture but on the difference of economic level between the two regions. On the 
one hand, this will be balanced by the influence of the European Union, but on the other, the 
disappearance of the Germanic dialect will cause a convergence of the language boundary with 
the national border. Consequently there will be an evolution to a more pronounced face-to-face 
of French and German culture, but also to closer contacts providing a new and, in view of 
increasing globalisation, attractive identity. 
Alfons Burge 
The Mixture of Legal Traditions as a Problem of the History of Law 
The internal point of view within a legal tradition tends to underestimate influences of foreign 
legal traditions. Often continuities and discontinuities are not seen; a caesura is assumed where 
there isn’t any and on the other hand sudden breaks in the development are overlooked. An 
historical and comparative approach is helpful in analysing the complexity of the situation and 
in better understanding contemporary law. 
The first example begins with the original concept of liability in the Code civil of 1804 gradually 
being superimposed by the idea of fault. Here German legal thinking contributed considerably 
to a more subtle understanding. The legal treatment of labour accidents shows how the original 
concept bordering on an objective responsibility, and therefore favourable to the employee, was 
not recognised any more in the course of time. Instead of seeing the objectivisation of liability 
as a continuum inherent in the legislation it was wrongly interpreted as an innovation running 
counter to the spirit of the codification. Upon closer scrutiny from an external point of view, 
however, the relationship between tradition and innovation turns out to be inverted. This new 
perspective will have consequences for the analysis of problems in industrial and social history. 
The second example, the granting of compensation for any moral or non-economic harm 
incurred through invasion of the right of personality [Personlichkeitsrecht] in Germany, derives 
from the widely held assumption that this is a reaction to the unconstitutional Nazi state. An 
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