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

387