Eduard Maurits Meijers (10 January 1880,

Den Helder Den Helder () is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. Den Helder occupies the northernmost point of the North Holland peninsula. It is home to the country's main naval base. From here the Royal TESO ...

– 25 June 1954 in

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration w ...

) was a Dutch jurist of

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

background, who was the founding father of the current Dutch

civil code A civil code is a codification of private law relating to property, family, and obligations. A jurisdiction that has a civil code generally also has a code of civil procedure. In some jurisdictions with a civil code, a number of the core ar ...

, the Nieuw Burgerlijk Wetboek.

Biography

Family

He was the son of Isidor Meijers, a naval physician, and Julie Wolff. Eduard married Tonij Gottschalk on 12 August 1909. The couple would get four daughters.

Career

In 1897 Meijers entered the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

to study law. He finished his doctorate under Johannes Houwing in April 1903. His dissertation had an emphasis on philosophy, defending

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against

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rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...

and posing that in general well-being should be the final goal of every law institution. After his studies he ran a law practice in Amsterdam. In 1910 he accepted a chair in

private law Private law is that part of a civil law legal system which is part of the '' jus commune'' that involves relationships between individuals, such as the law of contracts and torts (as it is called in the common law), and the law of obligations ...

and

private international law Conflict of laws (also called private international law) is the set of rules or laws a jurisdiction applies to a case, transaction, or other occurrence that has connections to more than one jurisdiction. This body of law deals with three broad ...

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city o ...

. He was particularly interested in

legal history Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it has changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilisations and operates in the wider context of social history. Certain jurists and histo ...

and his publications were of great influence on the development of this field in the Netherlands. He became internationally recognized and received

honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad h ...

s from the universities of

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Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

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Leuven Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic c ...

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and

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. From 1918 to 1922 Meijers was

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of the law faculty in Leiden; in 1926 and 1927 he was rector of the university.

Second World War

The firing of Meijers and other Jewish scientists in 1940 by the German occupiers led Meijers' former graduate student Rudolph Cleveringa to give a widely acclaimed and consequential protest address on 26 November 1940. On 7 August 1942 Meijers, his wife and their youngest daughter were deported to the

Westerbork transit camp Camp Westerbork ( nl, Kamp Westerbork, german: Durchgangslager Westerbork, Drents: ''Börker Kamp; Kamp Westerbörk'' ), also known as Westerbork transit camp, was a Nazi transit camp in the province of Drenthe in the Northeastern Netherlands, d ...

, on to Camp Barneveld as part of Plan Frederiks, and back to Westerbork in September 1943. In September 1944 he was transported to the

Theresienstadt concentration camp Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination ca ...

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. He survived the camps and returned to Leiden on 25 June 1945.

A new Dutch civil code

On 25 April 1947 Meijers was asked by

Royal Order In Belgium, a Royal Decree (RD) or Royal Order () (Dutch), Arrêté Royal (French), or Königlicher Erlass (German) is a federal governmental decree exercising legislation, or powers the legislature has delegated to the King as secondary legisla ...

to design a new

for the Netherlands (the

Burgerlijk Wetboek The ''Burgerlijk Wetboek'' (or BW) is the Civil Code of the Netherlands. Early versions were largely based on the Napoleonic Code. The Dutch Civil Code was substantively reformed in 1992. The Code deals with the rights of natural persons (Book 1 ...

) to replace the current code, which had been in place since 1838. In 1954, Meijers handed over the design for the first four books, accompanied with an extensive explanation. After Meijers' death that same year, his work was continued by Jan Drion, Jannes Eggens, Frits de Jong and Geert de Grooth. The first book of the new civil code was codified in 1970, the second in 1976. The last four of the seven books were codified only in 1992, 45 years after Meijers had started the work. In 1920 Meijers became member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

, he was forced to resign in 1942. In 1945 he was readmitted as member.

References

Sources

E.M. Meijers and the Recodification of the Dutch Civil Code after World War II"

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Meijers, Eduard 1880 births 1954 deaths Dutch Jews 20th-century Dutch lawyers Dutch legal scholars Jewish scientists Leiden University faculty Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Westerbork transit camp survivors People from Den Helder Theresienstadt Ghetto survivors University of Amsterdam alumni