Georg Friedrich Puchta

Who was Georg Friedrich Puchta?

Georg Friedrich Puchta was a German jurist.

Born at Kadolzburg in Bavaria, he came of an old Bohemian Protestant family which had immigrated into Germany to avoid religious persecution. His father, Wolfgang Heinrich Puchta, a legal writer and district judge, imbued his son with legal conceptions and principles. From 1811 to 1816 young Puchta attended the gymnasium at Nuremberg, where he acquired a taste for Hegelianism. In 1816 he went to the university of Erlangen, where, in addition to being initiated by his father into legal practice, he fell under the influence of the writings of Savigny and Niebuhr. At this time the famous Christian Friedrich von Glück taught at the university of Erlangen. Puchta said about the faculty of Erlangen: "Jede Universität ist freilich mit einem Pfahl im Fleisch geplagt, aber die hiesige Fakultät hat, wenn Glück stirbt, nichts als Pfähle". Taking his doctor's degree at Erlangen, he established himself here in 1820 as Privatdozent.

In 1828 he was appointed ordinary professor of Roman law at Munich.