7 September 1965
7 September 1965
Work begins on the International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, a major project initiated by Konrad Zweigert, who had been appointed director at the Institute in 1963, together with later Institute director Ulrich Drobnig. The project reflects the Institute’s enhanced academic engagement with all regions of the world, including what were then referred to as developing countries. Hundreds of legal scholars from around the world contribute. Although compiling the encyclopedia was the immediate object, the project animates a global network that has been expanding ever since.
In 1963, Konrad Zweigert succeeds Hans Dölle as director. Zweigert has been an Institute fixture since 1937, his only absence having been a four-year stint as a Federal Constitutional Court justice from 1951 to 1956. Under his leadership, the scope of comparative studies at the Institute widens, and the Institute begins studying European Community law and the legal traditions and systems of the Warsaw Pact countries. During the Cold War, the Institute and especially its law library become a significant crossroads where jurists from East and West can meet face to face.
It was Zweigert, Gerhard Kegel once said, who put the Institute on the map internationally. As president of the Comité International de Droit Comparé, Zweigert announces the creation of the International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law.
Hundreds of legal scholars from around the globe draft articles for this encyclopaedia, which aims to provide a comparative characterization and analysis of every private law regime on earth. Although it is never finished as originally conceived, the seventeen volumes ultimately published are, collectively, the most in-depth and comprehensive comparative law study ever accomplished on an international level.
Zweigert, known for his openness to new approaches and interested in societal issues beyond the traditional scope of comparative law, likes to refer to the Institute as a Gelehrtenrepublik (a “republic of scholars”). In October 1975, the Institute convenes a research group with a sociological focus that brings legal scholars together with social scientists. The group carries out various large-scale studies on behalf of the German federal government, then under chancellor Willy Brandt. One such study examines income deficits in what were called “incomplete families” (single-parent households). The legal scholars on the project study the applicable law in Western as well as Eastern European jurisdictions, while the group’s sociologists analyse the economic predicament of single parents. This research group migrates to the University of Bremen in 1982.