Turbulente Lebensläufe: Multivalente Bewerbungsstrategien für den preußischen Staatsdienst nach 1815

This article analyses curricula vitae (CVs) submitted in the context of applications in the Prussian civil service in the Rhineland after 1815. The rhetoric of the CVs was multivalent. First, candidates presented their claims to a post via a narrative of their fate during the long period of Napoleonic rule. Secondly, applicants stylised their willingness to make sacrifices during the ‘wars of liberation’ as a sacred dedication to the ‘fatherland’. Thirdly and finally, there were applicants who had not taken part in the ‘wars of liberation' and tried to make up for this lack of patriotic engagement through substitute services.

Litigious Bukovina: Eugen Ehrlich’s ›Living Law‹ and the Use of Civil Justice in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

In this paper, Eugen Ehrlich’s notion of living law is presented as a concept of multi-normativity. The culturally pluralist character of his home province, Bukovina, led Ehrlich – rightly considered a pioneer not only of the sociology of law, but also of legal pluralism and qualitative social research – to empirically explore the legal customs of its different ethnic groups as actually practised. As Ehrlich stressed the role of private societal legal transactions, his place of activity became a metaphor for a law beyond the state. However, the textbook narrative that Austrian state law has been ›dead‹ in the easternmost crown land of the Habsburg Empire does not stand up to closer scrutiny. In fact, as shown by an analysis of the monarchy’s legal statistics (that are hitherto practically unused for historical or sociological studies) and contemporary media accounts, the Bukovina witnessed an extraordinarily high litigation rate. Apart from precarious economic conditions, this was most likely an unintended consequence of civil procedural reforms. Given the Bukovina’s figurative meaning in current socio-legal discourses on law and globalisation, a proper understanding of this demand for state justice, as well as its coexistence with multiple societal normativities, is not only of historical interest.

Multinormativity Emerges From Multilevel Governance. Uses of the Council of Trent in Examinations for Ecclesiastical Benefices in 19th-Century Brazil

I analyse how the Council of Trent was employed in cases of examinations for ecclesiastical benefices in 19th-century Brazil, relying on sources from the Council of State and the Congregation of the Council. Considering the Church within a scenario of multinormativity and multilevel governance, I argue that the interactions for the resolution of ordinary problems conveyed – and even catalysed – different interpretations of legal norms, depending on the agents interacting and the normative conventions adopted. In the case of Imperial Brazil, I suggest the uses of Trent shifted from a convention of amalgam to a convention of separation, with significant nuances.

Politikfelder als multinormative Ordnungen. Multiple Multinormativitäten im preußischen Chausseewesen am Beispiel der Volmethalstraße, ca. 1816–1850er-Jahre

In modern societies, policymaking occurs in highly differentiated social spheres that can be described as policy areas (Politikfelder). This paper argues that policy areas can not only be understood as normative orders that frame policy processes structurally and semantically but also as multinormative orders given that policymaking is prejudiced by formal law, informal practices, policy regimes, etc. A case study of the Prussian Chaussee policy shows that there are multiple constellations of multinormativity within the same policy area that qualitatively differ from each other depending on the specific condition of their formation. Particularly, social complexity and overlapping time regimes are identified as causes of multinormative tensions. Finally, policy areas develop quite a range of social practices to cope with the resulting conflicts (e.g., compromise, recourse to law, rule by authority, etc.).

Normative Konfliktlagen: Eheschließungen mit AusländerInnen in Deutschland als administrative und interkulturelle Herausforderung (ca. 1900–1930)

The article deals with the role of the registry office and registrars in the legal implementation of binational or intercultural marriages in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, from the turn of the 20th century until the 1930s. As the article shows, these marriage applications posed a manifold challenge for the actors involved; on the one hand, in dealing with “strangeness” and, on the other, in the administrative-bureaucratic synchronization of legal and social norms. Above all, the question of gender relations, demographic fears, and eurocentrist as well as racist ideas were ultimately decisive for the perception and handling of such couple constellations and had a massive influence on the scope of action for both the fiancées and the registrars.

Public Administration and the Challenge to Introduce Egalitarian Legal Order: The Jewish policy of the Duchy of Warsaw (1807–1815)

The article discusses inconsistency existing in the Jewish policy of the Duchy of Warsaw, resulting from divergent normativities. Examined are the ways these normativities were handled, transformed, and conceptualised. The analysis refers to the concept of multinormativity and highlights the dynamics standing behind Jewish policy, as well as various influences on the way legal order was interpreted. Considered is the presence of legal assumptions derived from the normativities inherent in Old Polish traditions, being the main obstacle to the implementation of Napoleonic egalitarian norms. The article argues that equality claims and first attempts at their implementation existed alongside traditional ideas, social habits, and practices.

»Wandel durch Annäherung«: Multinormativität und informelle Politik in der europäischen Integration zwischen den 1960er und 1990er-Jahren

The article scrutinises the institutional culture of European integration, with a particular focus on the decision-making procedures of the European Community in the period from the 1960s to the 1990s. ‘Soft Law’ played a key role in the normative and administrative development and differentiation of the Community, because it crystallised legal, political, cultural, and administrative norms. More specifically, the article demonstrates how the procedural norm of consensus became gradually challenged (and weakened) by the rise of majority voting in the Community. The article thus illustrates how the process of Europeanisation (‘Annäherung’) can contribute to normative change (‘Wandel’).

Gestalten statt verwalten? These zu Janusköpfigkeit als Kern des verwalterischen Habitus in NS-Zeit und Gegenwart.

The last fifteen years have seen a burgeoning of historical studies focused on (public) administration, notably during the period of National Socialism. And yet, this research has merely played a marginal role both in sociology and in the current training regime for public servants despite the critical role played by bureaucratic processes under the Naziregime and in the Shoah. Historical studies raise genuinely sociological questions about collective dispositions, however. The author’s hypothesis is that bureaucracy has the basic capacity or even inclination toward ambiguity and contradictory attitudes, and yet that this very Janus-head quality constitutes the bureaucratic trait per se.