Page 392 - Latent Defect or Excessive Price?Exploring Early Modern Legal Approach to Remedying Defects in Goods Exchanged for Money - Bruijn

CODES OF CIVIL LAW
7.7 The Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch (1900)
In 1814, Anton Thibaut published a pamphlet Über die Notwendigkeit eines allgemeinen bürgerlichen Rechts in Deutschland. In it he called for a national German codification that should unite the patchwork of German states which increasingly obstructed the Empire's economic and political growth. Thibaut's plans, however, met with severe criticism by Savigny, so that the German aspirations to come to a national civil code were put on the back burner.
Being less politically precarious, the project for a commercial code for all regions which were part of the German Confederation did culminate in the promulgation of the Allgemeine Deutsche Handelsgesetzbuch (HGB) in 1861.289 Though the HGB concerns sales between professional merchants290, for which reason its extensive treatment does not fit well into the comparative investigation of this book, some of its provisions are worth mentioning. First, the HGB provides one remedy for all defects in the sold thing with one limitation period; the six-month aedilician period for returning the thing.291 Furthermore, the HGB explicitly rejects the remedy for lesion beyond moiety.292 According to Koch, a commentator to the ALR and HGB, the main reason for this abolition was that merchants are presumed to possess thorough knowledge about the value of what they trade.293
These two features of the HGB are a precursor to what was to become the law about defects in the thing sold in the future German civil code. Since Thibaut's pamphlet and despite Savigny's opposition, efforts to come to a civil code had always continued. The proclamation of the German Empire in 1871 provided a major impetus; a national civil code perfectly suited Bismarck's agenda for nation building. Consequently, in 1873 a first committee was formed to do the preparatory work. Nevertheless, it was not before 1887 that a first draft was published, which was, however, dismissed as antisocial and professorial. The Reichstag discussed a slightly modified second draft in 1895 and 1896. On 1 January 1900, this one entered into force as the Bürgerliche Gesetzbuch (BGB) for the young German empire.294
These following sections discuss the BGB's law concerning liability for breach of safeguarding duties in sales, in the first decades in which it was in force. Investigation of commentaries to the BGB's provisions and contemporary legal doctrine form the major input. It can be observed that the BGB, compared to the codes previously discussed, clearly chose its own path. In 2002 a major revision of the code's law of obligations was given effect. This Schuldrechtsreform and the implications it had for the law about
289 Wieacker, Privatrechtsgeschichte, p. 462.
290 Art. 4 jo. art. 272 HGB.
291 Art. 349 HGB: 'Der Mangel der vertragsmäßigen oder gesetzmäßigen Beschaffenheit der Waare kann
von dem Käufer nicht geltend gemacht werden, wenn derselbe erst nach Ablauf von sechs Monaten seit
der Ablieferung an den Käufer entdeckt worden ist'; Koch, Handelsgesetzbuch, p. 353, note 33.
292 Art. 286 HGB: 'Wegen übermäßiger Verletzung, insbesondere wegen Verletsung über die Hälfte, können
Handelsgeschäfte nicht angefochten werden'.
293 Koch, Handelsgesetzbuch, p. 298, note 41: 'Der Grund des Artikels, daß man bei Kaufleuten eine
gründliche Kenntniß des Werthes der verkauften Sache voraussetzen könne... '.
294 Wieacker, Privatrechtsgeschichte, pp. 468-472.
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