Suchergebnisse

Abstract

"Freier Mann im freien Staat". The Protection of Legal Personality in Switzerland. The Swiss Civil Code (1912) guarantees a comprehensive protection of legal personality. In this respect there exists a fundamental difference to the civil code of Germany (1900). The difference can be traced back to the 19th century when in Switzerland legal personality was not merely understood as an abstract legal entity, but rather as an expression of citizenship. The protection of legal personality therefore included the protection of personal freedom. This freedom was not only understood to protect a person's capacity to act in his legal sphere, but also to protect his political rights and for this reason democracy.
Resulting from this understanding it became self-evident that the protection of legal personality had to be comprehensive. This concept pervades Eugen Huber's writings and especially his legislative contributions to the creation of the Swiss Civil Code. Thereby he constructed a model which was particularly referred to by prominent public law scholars later in times of political crisis (the 1940s).

'This article examines the early years of Transocean, a news agency owned and run by the German government, and its use of wireless telegraphy from 1914 to 1922. This investigation of the infancy of wireless technology demonstrates that technology plays a constitutive role in defining news. The German government used the new possibilities innate in the medium of wireless to carve out their own sphere of operation in the seas and on continents where German telegraph news had never played a major role, in particular East Asia. Wireless telegraphy enabled the German government to circumvent the British communications blockade in World War I. Afterwards, Transocean's wireless transmissions to East Asia and ships en route caused an uproar in Britain disproportionate to its circulation. It was the Germans' innovative use of wireless telegraphy that other nations, particularly the British, found most disturbing, rather than the content of the reports themselves.' (author's abstract)