HALLER, KARL LUDWIG. - Historian and jurist, born in Bern on 16 August 1768; died in Solothurn on 21 May 1854. Professor of law at the University of Bern, after a trip to Italy in 1818 he converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, incurring persecution that led 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 réforme protestante dans la Suisse occidentale* (1837); the most important work, *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). In this work, as an interpreter of the German reaction to the French Revolution, he opposed the public and institutional state of the Enlightenment with a feudal-patrimonial state, arguing that sovereignty comes from God and that the only criterion for the legitimacy of the state is found in the means of power at its disposal. This latter concept would later find its realization in Bismarck’s politics.