The long journey of ‘Privatautonomie’: The history of a concept coined and exported in times of persecution

Individual autonomy was rediscovered in modernity when it came to the persecution of dissenters in Germany after the Reformatio n. Since the 18th century the ‘Privatautonomie’ of the individual has been established in German private law. Later, in the 19th century, the term autonomy gained ground in the legal terminology of French private law, also thanks to the German emigrant Foelix. In the 20th century autonomy, not least thanks to German-speaking jurists who fled from the Nazis, became a legal term also used in the private law of the USA and Great Britain.