SOHM, RUDOLF. - Protestant jurist, b. 29 Oct. 1841 in Rostock, d. 16 May 1917 in Leipzig.
As an extraordinary professor at the University of Göttingen in 1870, he was called to Freiburg im Breisgau to the chair of canon law. In 1872 he moved to Strasbourg, and in 1887 to Leipzig. He devoted his first works to legal history, studying its sources carefully and realizing the impossibility of separating the history of Germanic law from Roman and canon law. He published a work on the institutions of Roman law, which was very successful (Institutionen, Geschichte und System des römischen Privatrechts, 1887; 17th ed. edited by Mittels and Wenger, 1923). His various works on canon law or otherwise concerning the Catholic Church (Das Verhältnis von Staat und Kirche, 1873; Kirchengeschichte im Grundriss, 1888; Kirchenrecht, part 1, 1892; Wesen und Ursprung des Katholizismus, 1909; Das altkatholische Kirchenrecht und das Dekret Gratianus, 1918), tend to point out in the juridical order of the Church a deviation from the divine institution, an abandonment of spirituality for earthly things, an evident reflection of his Protestant faith. From 1891 to 1896 S. was a member of the study commission for the German Civil Code, presided over by P. Spahn.
Bibliography
Silvio Furlani