Legal Asymmetries and Dependencies in German Civil Service Relations since theLate Middle Ages

Lecture by Thomas Pierson given on July 4th, 2022, as part of the BCDSS Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Series.

Public servants are not ordinary employees. Their relationship to the modern state is special. According to prevailing opinion, this special relation influences rights and duties in the public employment relationship. On an analytical level, it is interesting to see what answers the questions about legal asymmetries and interdependencies reveal about this problem, and conversely, whether the object of investigation can broaden and change the perspectives of the questions associated with the concept.
For this purpose, we will attempt a stroll through the history of civil service in the context of state-building, which will examine the particular problems of different epochs more closely. In the state system, questions arose as to whether the civil servant has a wage entitlement at all and, if so, how it is to be substantiated? Is the civil service relationship a relationship that can only be established voluntarily or is the citizen obliged to enter the civil service? Can he get out again - legally and factually (lock-in effects)? How do the results differ for the pre-modern period?
How are dependencies legally constructed in particular cases? The lecture will show that the narrative of a development from unfree labour to free wage labour can also be refuted in the European context, at least for the public service sector.

Видео Legal Asymmetries and Dependencies in German Civil Service Relations since theLate Middle Ages канала Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies