Edmund Spevack Livres

Although there is a virtual consensus among historians, political scientists, and legal scholars that the West German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) has been one of the great successes of recent European constitutional history, providing many decades of stability and the rule of law, a public myth, in effect ever since 1949, holds that it was a totally indigenous German achievement. Although attention has been paid to the overall role of the Allies in Germany between the end of World War II in 1945 and the ratification of the Basic Law in 1949, the present study is the first book-length attempt to describe and evaluate the specific political and ideological influences, direct and indirect, of the United States on the origins, development, and implementation of the Basic Law. It presents and analyzes American and German policies and personalities, parties and programs, and their interplay in the intriguing and subtle process of constitution-making.

This unique account of Charles Follen, a German nationalist and revolutionary, provides insight into various historical contexts of the early nineteenth century. Follen, trained as a lawyer in Germany, engaged in student nationalism and revolutionary Jacobinism, ultimately fleeing to Switzerland in 1819 after participating in the assassination of playwright August von Kotzebue. In Switzerland, he continued his revolutionary activities until they were discovered in 1824, prompting his move to America. For a decade, Follen taught at Harvard as the first professor of German literature in the U.S., significantly influencing the importation of German ideas to New England and contributing to literature, philosophy, and theology. His marriage to Eliza Lee Cabot connected him to Boston's elite social circles. After becoming a Unitarian minister in 1836, Follen merged his passion for social reform, particularly the antislavery movement, with his clerical duties, forming friendships with prominent figures like William Ellery Channing and William Lloyd Garrison. However, in the final two years of his life, he grappled with doubts about his ability to effect political change, culminating in a crisis of self-confidence before his untimely death at forty-three.