Sebastian Eller

Sebastian Eller

Sebastian Eller studied Law with a focus on contemporary legal history and legal theory. Since 2022, he has been a research assistant and PhD candidate at the Chair of Private Law, Contemporary Legal History and History of Economic Law (Prof. Dr. Jan Thiessen) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Research Interests:

  • Contemporary legal history
  • Doctrinal civil law and its theory
  • Role of private law in processes of social transformation, especially in the context of late and post-socialism

Current Research Project:

Working Title: Tracing Socialist Civil Law. Knowledge of Normativity between German Unification and European Integration

The research project traces East German civil law - before, during and after its demise. First, discussions within civil law scholarship since the 1970s are examined, which attempt to formulate reform ideas within the existing official terminological corset. In a second step, it is reconstructed how elements of GDR civil law were negotiated in the course of legal harmonization around 1990. In a third step, a supposed rediscovery of these discussions in reform projects of unified Germany is revealed. Using the example of GDR civil law, it is thus possible to ask how knowledge of normativity survived the immediate upheaval of 1989/90 and what consequences of transformation can be seen in legal discourses well before and after 1990.