The term ‘Magdeburg Law’ does not refer to any specific codification, but rather to a highly variable conglomeration of norms and legal concepts, which, originating in Magdeburg, had a decisive influence on the medieval and early modern legal systems of Central and Eastern Europe. This term encompasses, firstly, the medieval Magdeburg municipal constitution and its recording in a series of texts from the 13th and 14th centuries; secondly, the legal advisory activities of the Magdeburg lay judges’ court; and thirdly, the legal and legislative orientation towards both of these in legal practice and legal records of the Middle Ages and the modern era. In the historical record, this reception is often inextricably linked to a similar adoption of Eike von Repgow’s *Sachsenspiegel* from the first half of the 13th century. Consequently, contemporary sources frequently refer not only to *ius Maideburgense* but also to *ius teutonicum* or *ius saxonicum*, whilst modern research regularly employs the term ‘Saxon-Magdeburg law’ to emphasise this close connection.

A charter issued by Archbishop Wichmann in 1188 provides evidence that a standardised judicial system must already have existed in Magdeburg by the end of the 12th century. However, no records of these regulations survive. It was not until around the middle of the 13th century that the so-called Magdeburg ‘Weichbildrecht’ emerged as a ‘private’ record of prevailing legal customs and, by the end of the century, had developed into its vulgate form, the so-called ‘Weichbildvulgata’, which frequently appears in the manuscript tradition alongside the ‘Weichbildchronik’, written between 1235 and 1250. This widely circulated vulgate version has been annotated since the mid-14th century, just like the *Sachsenspiegel*, and has been translated into Latin, Polish and Czech. From this time at the latest, Magdeburg Law was accepted as the central legal code of the ‘regions governed by Saxon law’. This loosely defined geographical area was steadily expanded throughout the Middle Ages by numerous charters granted to towns in Central and Eastern Europe, and it also influenced the codifications of ruling powers. In some places (e.g. in Ukraine and in Kyiv), this influence continued to be felt well into the early 19th century.

Saxon-Magdeburg law in Eastern and Central Europe.
Base map of the study area (Inge Bily, Konrad Großer, Patricia Mund). [Map supplement I
accompanying: Inge Bily, Wieland Carls, Katalin Gönczi: Saxon-Magdeburg Law in Poland.
A study of the history of the law and its language. Berlin, Boston 2011 (IVS SAXONICO-
MAIDEBVRGENSE IN ORIENTE 2). Map content: Saxon Academy of Sciences, Leipzig,
Cartography: Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig, www.ifl-leipzig.de]

In the event of contentious legal issues, the towns governed by Magdeburg law would regularly submit enquiries to the Magdeburg Schöppenstuhl or to a ‘daughter town’, which in turn assumed the function of a higher court (e.g. Kraków, Wrocław, Olomouc, Opava, etc.). The legal rulings of the Magdeburg Schöppenstuhl were probably destroyed by fire during the conquest of Magdeburg by the imperial commander Johann von Tilly (1559–1632) in 1631. The Institute for the Study of Magdeburg Municipal Law, founded in Magdeburg in 1940, therefore undertook, under the direction of Theodor Goerlitz (1885–1949), an attempt to collect these numerous surviving judgements from the recipients’ perspective; the project came to an end with the closure of the Institute in 1945. A second attempt in this direction was then made in the 1980s by Friedrich Ebel (1944–2005); however, of the nine volumes planned, only two were published.

Since the 19th century, Magdeburg Law – which spread as far as Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states – has been regarded, alongside Lübeck Law, as a prime example of ‘German law in the East’. Consequently, research into it has always been susceptible to ideological appropriation. In doing so, researchers generally ignored the fact that Magdeburg Law was also adopted in regions that had not been affected by the so-called ‘Eastern Settlement’ at all (e.g. Podolia, Volhynia and, later, Ukraine).

Whilst research into Magdeburg Law was conducted only very cautiously on both sides of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, it has gained new momentum in recent decades, now under the banner of a pan-European, shared legal tradition that links East and West. This has also left its mark on the public consciousness: in 1999, the city of Kyiv – where a monument has stood since 1808 commemorating the city’s adoption of Magdeburg Law in 1494/97 – celebrated the 500th anniversary of this event; in 2006, a corresponding 650th anniversary was celebrated in Lviv, Ukraine, and in 2008, the 600th anniversary was marked in Kaunas, Lithuania. In Kraków, an exhibition entitled ‘Kraków: a European city under Magdeburg Law’ (Kraków europejskie miasto prawa magdeburskiego, 1257–1791); a year earlier, Magdeburg had hosted the travelling exhibition *Sachsenspiegel and Magdeburg Law. ‘Foundations for Europe’ was launched, with stops in Halle, Brussels and Warsaw. These developments are accompanied academically by new publications with corresponding titles, which also place particular emphasis on the European dimensions. Many of these works are linked to the large-scale research project ‘Saxon-Magdeburg Law as a Cultural Link between the Legal Systems of Eastern and Central Europe’ at the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig.

• Friedrich Ebel (ed.): Magdeburg Law. 2 vols. in 3 parts. Cologne et al. 1983, 1989, 1995 (Mitteldeutsche Forschungen 89).
• Ernst Eichler, Heiner Lück (eds.): Legal and Linguistic Transfer in Central and Eastern Europe. The Sachsenspiegel and Magdeburg Law. Berlin 2008 (IVS saxonico-maidebvrgense in Oriente 1).
• Katalin Gönczi: ‘Cities under Magdeburg Law in Eastern Europe’. In: Susanne Ehrich, Jörg Oberste (eds.): *Urban Spaces in the Middle Ages*. Regensburg 2009 (Forum Mittelalter 5), pp. 181–193.
• Krakow: a European city under Magdeburg Law [Krakow as a European city under Magdeburg Law] 1257–1791 (exhibition catalogue). Krakow 2007.
• Rolf Lieberwirth: Saxon-Magdeburg Law as a Source of Eastern European Legal Systems. Berlin 1986 (Proceedings of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig. Philological-Historical Class 127/1).
• Heiner Lück, Matthias Puhle, Andreas Ranft (eds.): Foundations for a New Europe. Magdeburg and Lübeck Law in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. Cologne et al. 2009 (Sources and Research on the History of Saxony-Anhalt 6).
• Renate Schelling: Magdeburg lay judges’ verdicts and Magdeburg town boundaries in documentary and manuscript sources. In: Matthias Puhle (ed.): Hanse – Cities – Alliances. The Saxon Towns between the Elbe and the Weser around 1500, a collection of essays. Magdeburg 1996 (Magdeburg Museum Publications 4/1), pp. 118–128.
• Dietmar Willoweit, Winfried Schich (eds.): Studies on the History of Saxon-Magdeburg Law in Germany and Poland. Frankfurt am Main et al. 1980 (Rechtshistorische Reihe 10).

• www.magdeburger-recht.eu/ (Saxon Academy of Sciences, Leipzig)

Hiram Kümper: Magdeburg Law. In: Online Encyclopaedia on the Culture and History of Germans in Eastern Europe, 2012. URL: ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/p32868 (accessed 6 March 2012).