320 



GERMANY. 



control of their property were rejected, but another 

 Socialist amendment was adopted, fixing twenty-one 

 as the limit of age beyond which parental consent 

 is not necessary for marriage. Articles allowing 

 legal compensation for damage done to crops by 

 hares were stricken out. Civil marriage was made 

 compulsory. The Cat-holies succeeded in eliminat- 

 ing from the code a clause making incurable men- 

 tal disease a legal cause for divorce. This party, 

 one of whose members, Baron von Buol-Berenburg, 

 was the president of the Reichstag, sacrificed re- 

 ligious scruples in order to bring a great national 

 work to completion. The Radicals accepted the 

 code as a uniform system for the whole of Ger- 

 many in spite of what they considered serious de- 

 fects. The Anti-Semites criticised it because it was 

 based more on Roman than on Germanic law. 

 The Socialists combated it to the end, denouncing 

 it as a lump of class legislation designed to facilitate 

 the exploitation of the proletariat. A mass meet- 

 ing of women from all parts of Germany was con- 

 vened in Berlin to protest against the clauses relat- 

 ing to marriage and the family. The new code 

 will not go into effect until Jan. 1, 1900. The 

 code, which contains 2,359 sections, deals with pri- 

 vate law only, excluding not only all subjects that 

 are clearly within the domain of public law, but 

 such as are determined to a great extent from the 

 point of public policy, although they regulate pri- 

 vate rights. Aside from such subjects, it does not 

 embrace the whole of private law, for mercantile 

 law has been codified separately, and the results 

 are being revised by a new commission, with the 

 intention of bringing the rules of commercial law 

 into force at the same time as the civil code. The 

 Reichstag gave its final vote on July 1, when the 

 whole code was adopted by a majority of 174. 



Under the new code the principles of equity find 

 a wider application than the former codes allowed. 

 For example, a landlord can not now enforce exact 

 compliance with the lease when the tenant finds 

 the premises he has hired for a dwelling to be unfit 

 for habitation. Considerable advance, too, has been 

 made in regard to the right to evict and distrain 

 for rent, The article ordaining compulsory civil 

 marriage merely renders obligatory a practice that 

 has already come to be generally observed since 

 Prince Bismarck carried the law sanctioning the 

 civil form in the beginning of his conflict with the 

 RomaniCwriffl. It has not, however, supplanted the 

 religious ceremony, but is observed as a safeguard 

 against legal complications. As a compensation to 

 the Catholics for their acquiescence in this article, 

 divorce is rendered more difficult than it has been 

 hitherto in Prussia and other states where incom- 

 patibility of temper has been recognized as a suffi- 

 cient cause. Even a judicial separation is difficult 

 to obtain under the new code, and divorce from 

 the bonds of matrimony may be granted only in 

 cases of proved infidelity or incurable insanity. 



Court Reaction against Social Reform. 

 When the young Emperor inaugurated the policy 

 of conciliating the working classes by remedial leg- 

 islation, and heralded a period of social peace and 

 reform by calling the International Labor Confer- 

 ence of 1890, Prince Bismarck, unwilling to approve 

 the scheme of imperial socialism, resigned the Prus- 

 sian Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and Baron 

 von Berlepsch, who in addition to technical qualifi- 

 cations was thoroughly in sympathy with the Em- 

 peror's ideas, was appointed to the place. When in 

 spite of the Emperor's promises and good intentions 

 Social Democracy still spread among the working- 

 men, when these even grumbled because the Gov- 

 ernment failed to fulfill all its promises, the reform 

 movement came to an end with all except Baron 

 von Berlepsch, who, with the help of the commission 



of labor statistics that he had organized, continued 

 to draw up schemes for the amelioration of the con- 

 ditions of labor, such as the compulsory closing of 

 shops at 8 o'clock, a maximum working day for 

 bakers, the compulsory organization of trade guilds, 

 and the state regulation of chambers of commerce. 

 All these measures encountered so much opposition 

 that they had to be abandoned. The Emperor Wil- 

 helm left no doubt of his altered sentiments when, 

 in reference to Pastor Stocker. he sent a message. 

 and allowed it to be made public, saying that 

 " Christian Socialism is nonsense and leads to ar- 

 rogance and intolerance.'' His characterization of 

 political divines as " monstrosities " evoked from 

 the evangelical ministers who met in a social con- 

 gress a vote of praise and thanks to Dr. Stocker for 

 his political agitation. In June Baron von Ber- 

 lepsch resigned his place in the Prussian Cabinet, 

 and the King appointed Herr Brefeld in his stead. 

 The reactionary tendency in influential quarters 

 was reflected in Saxony in a new electoral law for 

 the Diet introducing the Prussian system of indi- 

 rect election, which requires voters to possess an 

 income of 2,800 marks, except in the lowest class, 

 which must therefore invariably be outvoted in the 

 final polls by the representatives of the small minor- 

 ities qualified to vote in the two higher classes. 

 The avowed object of the change is to keep the 

 Social Democrats out of the Saxon Diet, where they 

 now hold 14 of the 82 seats. 



Socialist Trial. The Berlin police, acting un- 

 der the orders of Herr von Ko'ller, then Prussian 

 Minister of the Interior, on Nov. 25, 1895, raided 

 the office of the Socialist newspaper " Vor warts " and 

 entered the houses of leading Socialists, where they 

 seized all kinds of documents. A few days later a 

 police order was issued dissolving the chief commit- 

 tees and associations connected with the central or- 

 ganization of the Social Democratic party in Ber- 

 lin, on the ground that they had transgressed the 

 Prussian law of 1850 regulating the right of associ- 

 ation and assembly by communicating with each 

 other by means of committees, correspondence, pe- 

 cuniary support, etc. The dissolution of the asso- 

 ciations was confirmed by the courts in December, 

 1895, and on May 15 the accused, numbering 47 

 persons, among them the Deputies Aucr, Bebel, 

 Singer, and Gerish, were called up for trial in Ber- 

 lin. They denied the police accusation that they 

 maintained a secret organization, and pointed out 

 that in the employment of agents for various legit- 

 imate purposes the Socialist party did not differ 

 from the other political parties in the country. 

 The result of the trial was a moral defeat for the 

 police. Of the accused, 32 were acquitted, and the 

 rest were fined from 30 to 75 marks, while the ordi- 

 nance of dissolution was confirmed only for the 

 chief committee and 4 of the 6 electoral associa- 

 tions of the capital. 



Berlin Industrial Exhibition. An exhibition 

 of German products and industries more extensive 

 and complete than the exhibition of 1879 was 

 opened at Berlin on May 1, 1896. The site was the 

 park at Treptow, embracing 271 acres and contain- 

 ing 2 or 3 large sheets of water that were employed 

 for various exhibits and spectacles, such as minia- 

 ture naval engagements. The exhibits were divided 

 into the following 23 groups: 1, Clothing: 2, tex- 

 tile wares ; 3, machinery ; 4, porcelain and glass ; 

 5, engineering and architecture ; 6, fishery : 7, 

 sport ; 8, electricity ; 9, woodwork ; 10, leather ; 

 11, fancy goods; 12, metal work; 13, scientific ap- 

 paratus ; 14, photography ; 15, paper ; 16, chemic- 

 als : 17, musical instruments ; 18, gas ; 19, health 

 and sanitation ; 20, education ; 21, gardening ; 22, 

 colonial ; 23. articles of food. Scientific, fishery, 

 sporting, and food exhibits were contained in a 



