Bluntschli Johann Caspar
Bluntschli Johann Caspar [1]
a famous German jurist, was born March 9, 1808, at Zurich. His studies were prosecuted at Berlin, Bonn, and Paris, and after his return to his native city he was appointed, in 1833, professor of law in the newly founded university, and shortly afterwards became the legal adviser of the city of Zurich. Dissatisfied with the result of the political struggles which divided his native country, he accepted, in 1848, the chair of general public law in the University of Munich, which he occupied down to 1861, when he was appointed to the chair of public law in the University of Heidelberg. While at Heidelberg he published his work on international law (Das Moderne Vkerrecht als Rechtsbuch mit Erlduterungen), which had the singular honor of being translated into Chinese, and is now a text-book for Chinese students of international law at the Imperial College of Tungwen at Pekin. But aside from his career as a jurist, he founded, in connection with Dr. Baumgarten and other liberals, the so-called Protestant Union of Germany (q.v.), a union representing the left wing of Protestantism, and of which he was the permanent president. Three times he had presided at the general synod at Baden. It was shortly after he had vacated the chair on the third occasion of his so presiding, at the synod held at Carlsruhe on Oct. 21, 1881, and as he was on his way to the palace to have an audience. of the grand-duke of Baden, that he was suddenly seized with paralysis of the heart, and expired, in his seventyfourth year. Passing over his works on law, we mention, Der Sieg des Radikalismus fiber die Katholische Schweiz und die Kirche im Allgemeinen (Schaffhausen, 1850): — Die Nationale Bedeutung des Protestanten- Vereins fur Deutschland (Berlin, 1868 ): — Aufgaben des Christenthums. in der Gegenwart, lectures published in connection with Schenckel, Rothe and Holtzmann (Elberfeld, 1865). (B. P.)
