A survey of von Stein’s life and work
Lorenz von Stein was born on 15 November 1815 in Eckernforde, a small town in the present-day German Land of Schleswig-Holstein. He was the illegitimate son of von Wasner, an officer in the Danish army, and the wife of a sergeant by the name of Stein.1 His father assumed responsibility for his education, and sent him to a school founded by the Danish king for soldiers’ sons.
As a result of his exceptional talent, Lorenz von Stein was introduced to the King of Denmark who awarded him a scholarship. He won further scholarships and thus he was subsequently able to register as a law and philosophy student at the University of Kiel. He also spent some time at the University of Jena, where he devoted much thought to J.G. Fichte’s views on philosophy and economics, as well as his quest for a rational legal and political system. He then returned to Kiel, where he took his final examination in law in 1839.While serving a period of articled clerkship in Copenhagen, he worked on a dissertation about the history of Danish civil procedure (von Stein, 1841) and in 1840 he was made a doctor of law in Kiel. The King of Denmark thereupon awarded him a travelling scholarship which enabled him to finance a stay in Berlin before going on to Paris. In Berlin, he moved in neo-Hegelian circles and made an intensive study of the political philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel, whose work Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (‘The Philosophy of Right’) had been published in 1821 and had exerted a profound influence on the prevailing theory of public law. In Paris, he studied the doctrines expounded by the socialists and communists and had discussions with Louis Blanc, among other people. The sojourn in France left its mark in two books - one about socialism and communism in France (von Stein,
1842) and the other about local government law in that country (von Stein,
1843).
After his return to Kiel, he applied for a post as a senior lecturer and obtained the desired position in 1845. His main lectures dealt with the history of law and theories of the state.In the meantime, Schleswig-Holstein had become the bone of contention in a dispute between Denmark and the German Lander. In the Middle Ages, Schleswig was a Danish fief, while Holstein was German. In 1460, a union was effected under Christian I, who reigned at the same time as a Danish king in Schleswig and as a German duke in Holstein, and who had vowed upon his election to leave the two regions ‘eternally undivided’. This kind of thing was possible as long as there were feudal states, but when nation-states began to evolve disputes were virtually inevitable. Although von Stein had received generous financial aid from the Danish king, he made common cause with other jurists in Kiel who in a juridical report argued on the strength of historical documents that Schleswig-Holstein ought to be considered part of Germany. When, in 1852, owing to the pressure exerted by other European powers, and in spite of the Prussian successes in the first war for Schleswig- Holstein, this region was annexed to Denmark,[2] [3] von Stein was dismissed on account of his contribution to the above-mentioned report. There followed three years of privation in which von Stein worked as a freelance journalist. In this period, he applied to various universities in the hope of obtaining a professorship. In 1855, he was appointed to a chair of political economy at the University of Vienna. He rose to fame while he lectured there for the next 35 years, until his death on 23 September 1890. He published coursebooks which were held in high repute; they dealt with subjects ranging from statistics to political economy, the science of administration and public finance. In 1868, a hereditary knighthood was conferred on him. In 1878, he became a member of the Viennese Academy of Sciences.