History of Legal Studies within the Max Planck Society after 1945

Completed Research Project

Since 2014, the Research Program history of the Max Planck Society (GMPG), based in Berlin, has been working with the aim of shedding comprehensive historical light on the history of the Max Planck Society after 1945. The project was led by Professor Dr. Jürgen Renn (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), Professor Dr. Carsten Reinhardt (Bielefeld University) and Professor Dr. Jürgen Kocka (WZB Social Science Research Center Berlin).

In cooperation with this project, the Max Planck Institute for the History and Theory of Law has now published its own volume on the development of legal scholarship within the MPG. Contributing authors are: Eberhard Eichenhofer, Felix Lange, Ulrich Magnus, Fabian Steinhauer, Jan Thiessen and Sascha Ziemann.

Today, it is impossible to imagine the Max Planck Society without the law related institutes. What was their role within the research organization of the MPG? The authors' contributions illuminate, each in a different way, the origins and development of these institutes in the context of their respective fields and significance for the scientific history of law. The volume was published 2022 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht and is available open-access: