The Development of Bonus ec Diligens Pater Familias in the 20th Century German Family Law

Abstract

The process of women’s emancipation in European legal culture can be divided into three major periods according to their defining issues and objectives. The findings of the following study refer to the period from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, which is usually identified in the literature as the second wave, and then as the third wave from the 1990s onwards. The turning point between these two stages is the thirty years after 1950, when the social, personal and family legal status of women changed significantly in Europe. The demands of the third wave, the ’modern emancipation movement’, which are still ongoing today, are of a different nature and are primarily sociological rather than legal nature. Although the topic of feminism is popular and has been dealt with in many ways in the Hungarian social science literature too, this study is nevertheless suppletory as I present the German marriage and family law reforms by means of the historical legal analysis, which will be supplemented in later studies by a comparison of Austrian and Hungarian law for the same period.