The Sovereign German States and the Code Napoléon. What Spoke for its Adoption in the Rhine Confederation?

In the principality of Hesse-Nassau and the other states of the Rhine Confederation (1806–1814) the sovereign princes were eventually to comply with Napoleon's wishes and adopt the Code Napoléon (CN). The subject treated here is how this adoption came about.French law was more modern than contemporary German law. Napoleon wanted the CN to be adopted in all the states where French troops were stationed. The sovereigns of the states of the Rhine Confederation (1806–1814) asked their lawyers to assemble at the Congress of Giessen for the purpose of creating a common version of the CN for their respective states. This involved solving various problems.It was the liberals in South Germany, not the conservatives and the nationalists in Prussia, who accepted the CN as a modern, liberal and sophisticated body of law. But for the liberals, too, there was a critical point: the definition of who was subject to the law in the CN. This was no longer the individual owner of property, but the citizen of a sovereign state who was a member of his nation. This definition was unacceptable to Germans because, under the German conditions of the period, their membership of a nation and their citizenship of a sovereign state differed.People did not have their estates in just one of the little post-Empire states, but in several. (But only in one state were they given the status of being subject to the common law.) Herr von Almendingen, an important lawyer of the period, suggested a European nationality!