HALLER, KARL LUDWIG. - Historian and jurist, b. in Bern on 1 Aug. 1768; d. in Solothurn on 21 May 1854. Professor of law at the University of Bern, after a journey to Italy in 1818 he converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, thereby attracting persecutions that compelled him to emigrate to France.
He wrote: Lettre de H. à sa famille pour lui déclarer son retour à l'Eglise catholique, apostolique et romaine (Paris 1821); Histoire de la révolution religieuse, ou de la réforme protestante dans la Suisse occidentale (1837); and, most importantly, Restauration de la science politique ou théorie de l'état social naturel, opposée à la fiction d'un état civil factice (6 vols., Winterthur 1816-25; 2nd ed. ibid. 1820-34). Here, as an interpreter of the German reaction to the French Revolution, he contrasted the public-law and institutional State of the Enlightenment thinkers with a feudal-patrimonial State, maintaining that sovereignty comes from God and that the sole criterion of the legitimacy of the State lies in the means of power at its disposal. This latter concept was subsequently realized in the policy of Bismarck.