Jozef Redlich and the Glorious Revolution of LiberalismThe Digital in Dispute: A History of the Dutch Public Debate on Digitalisation

 

The dissertation research focuses on the difference between the perception of liberalism in Central and Western Europe (actually in the Anglo-Saxon world) and the formation of the rule of law in the second half of the 19th century. After 1848, liberalism became the dominant political direction in Europe, yet the unified German Empire and Austria-Hungary did not adopt the British model of the democratic people's state and developed their form of the administrative state, based on the Central European tradition of the authoritarian state. The main defender of the Prussian model was Rudolf von Gneist, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Berlin. He believed that citizens were not born but had to be educated by the state. Influenced by Hegel, he believed in the absolute power of the state. His opponent was Josef Redlich, a representative of the Fabian Society in Vienna and professor of constitutional law at the University of Vienna, who had studied at Oxford under Albert Venn Dicey. Influenced by the Oxford School of Law, he did not believe in the universalist status of the state and was convinced that the state was merely a grouping of citizens. This dissertation research focuses on the analysis of these two legal theorists and a comparison of the Prussian and Anglo-Saxon state models. As a result, the research aims to find out why the Anglo-Saxon model could not be established in Central Europe and what influence Hegel's philosophy had on the teaching of German law schools and ultimately on the formation of administration and the state in Central Europe.