On 1 October 1879 the German Imperial Court, the Reichsgericht, was formally opened in a ceremony in Leipzig. Decades of division among the German states, particularly in the years between the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and the creation of the German Reich in 1871, led to constant demands for national unification on political, economic, social and legal levels. Throughout those years proposals for Rechtseinheit, or legal unity, called for numerous substantive reforms as well as procedural or institutional reforms. Such proposals ultimately led to several important legal reforms, including the adoption of the Imperial Justice Laws of 1877. / This dissertation argues that the successful establishment of the Reichsgericht, as an integral component of the larger movement towards German legal unity, provides an important example of contemporary struggles between centralization and particularism and between liberal political ideals and political realities in the new German Reich. Between 1806 and 1879 several contemporaries recommended the creation of a national supreme court for the German states. The failure of the pre-1867 court proposals contrasted sharply with the successful proposals of the 1867 to 1879 period. Nevertheless, the negotiations and debates which took place between the various German states, between the federal government and the states, and in the legislative organs of the German state itself, were intense and contentious. The creation of the Reichsgericht reflected several important issues, including the comparative abilities of the various states, the federal bureaucracy and the federal legislature to influence the form and substance of national judicial legislation. / The documentary evidence for this dissertation has been gathered from several archival depositories, including relevant holdings in the Bundesarchiv sections in Potsdam and Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten and the Prussian state archives in Berlin-Dahlem, and from published government and contemporary sources. In addition, unpublished and published secondary sources have been utilized.

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For almost sixty years the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933 and the events that followed have been the subjects of historical inquiry. The criminal trial against those accused of starting the fire was held before the German Supreme Court, the Reichsgericht. / This thesis examines the conduct of the Reichsgericht during the Reichstagsbrandprozess of September to December 1933. It shows that the trial was conducted by an independent but conservative Supreme Court which managed the proceedings according to its own historical antecedents and precedents. The evidence is based on published government documents and other primary and secondary sources.

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