Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg · 1903
This is a single lecture essay, printed from a 1902 address. Its scope is historiographical and programmatic: Inama-Sternegg surveys German and Austrian administrative science and administrative law in the twelve years after Lorenz von Stein, then asks what their next form should be.
Wie ein Testament mutet der Artikel „Verwaltung, Verwaltungslehre, Polizei, Verwaltungsrecht“ an, den Stein 1890 für Stengels Wörterbuch des deutschen Verwaltungsrechtes geschrieben hat, wohl die letzte Arbeit seiner Feder.
English translation: The article "Administration, Science of Administration, Police, Administrative Law," which Stein wrote in 1890 for Stengel's Dictionary of German Administrative Law—probably the last work from his pen—reads like a testament.
The essay’s central thesis is that Stein’s legacy both succeeded and was narrowed. It succeeded because modern Verwaltungsrecht won autonomy and retained Stein’s idea that administration is the state acting upon social life. It was narrowed because jurists increasingly treated administrative law as a self-contained constructive discipline, detached from the political, economic, and historical forces that make administrative law necessary.
Die zweite Aufgabe aber gehört der Verwaltungslehre als einer politischen Disziplin; sie hat die treibenden Kräfte im Staats- und Gesellschaftsleben zu untersuchen, welche zu den geltenden Rechtssätzen der Verwaltung geführt haben und nach der Weiterbildung derselben ringen, um den Einklang zwischen dem Rechtszustand und dem Leben stets zu erhalten.
English translation: The second task, however, belongs to the science of administration as a political discipline; it has to investigate the driving forces in the life of state and society which have led to the prevailing legal rules of administration and which struggle for their further development, in order always to preserve the harmony between the state of law and life itself.
This sentence defines the core conceptual move: Verwaltungsrecht may analyze legal institutions, but Verwaltungslehre must explain their genesis, social function, and reform. Inama-Sternegg therefore accepts Stein’s division of labor without accepting the divorce of law from life.
Das nächste Ziel dieser Entwicklung war die Unabhängigkeit des positiven Staats- und Verwaltungsrechtes von den politischen Wissenschaften; lediglich aus sich selbst heraus sollte das geltende Recht erklärt, alle philosophischen, politischen und historischen Auslegungsbehelfe beiseite gelassen werden.
English translation: The immediate aim of this development was the independence of positive constitutional and administrative law from the political sciences; the prevailing law was to be explained solely from within itself, setting aside all philosophical, political, and historical aids to interpretation.
The survey traces this juristic turn from Gerber and Laband through Georg Meyer, Sarwey, and Otto Mayer. It brought precision and secured administrative law’s independence from constitutional law, yet also produced blind spots. In the special part, newer systems still depend on Stein’s categories: external affairs, military, finance, justice, internal administration, and the ordering of personal, economic, and social life. But they also mishandle police, expropriation, religious administration, and especially the emerging social state.
Im Verwaltungsrechte des letzten Dezenniums ist leider davon nichts zu verspüren; das soziale Hilfswesen, die soziale Rechtsordnung der arbeitenden Klassen, die soziale Kapitalbildung geben ihm keinen Stoff zu positiven Rechtslehren, so reichlich auch inzwischen die praktische Verwaltung mit den Rechtsgedanken der sozialen Verwaltung sich beschäftigen mußte.
English translation: In the administrative law of the past decade, unfortunately, nothing of this is to be perceived; social welfare, the social legal order of the working classes, social capital formation, provide it with no material for positive legal doctrines, however abundantly practical administration has meanwhile had to occupy itself with the legal ideas of social administration.
This is the sharpest criticism: practice has already become social-administrative, while doctrine scatters social law into fragments. The cause is not Stein but the inadequate staatswissenschaftliche formation of jurists. In the general part, Stein’s own system offers less guidance; Sarwey’s grounding in constitutional basic rights is promising, but remains too focused on limits to state power. Jellinek and Rehm point toward a broader legal theory, while Adolf Wagner’s political economy supplies materials for a renewed Verwaltungslehre.
Eine Verwaltungslehre im Sinne von Stein ist in dieser Zeit nicht mehr geschrieben worden: es wäre auch gegenüber der Lebensarbeit von Stein ein kühnes Unternehmen.
English translation: No science of administration in Stein's sense has been written during this period: in the face of Stein's life-work it would also be a bold undertaking.
The Austrian university reforms become the institutional symptom of the problem: administrative law is handed to jurists, while the broader political science of administration is displaced by Volkswirtschaftspolitik. The concluding program is therefore constructive: develop an allgemeines Verwaltungsrecht around cross-cutting legal institutions—property, freedom, worker protection, land, trade, and public interest—then reconnect juridical construction with comparison, legal philosophy, history, and policy.
Und so wird schließlich auch die Verwaltungslehre wieder ihre Auferstehung feiern, nicht als die schwer zu begrenzende Kunde vom Staate, sondern wohl diszipliniert durch die strenge Formulierung der Rechtsinstitute, aber zugleich ausgerüstet mit dem sicheren und umfassenden Überblicke über ihr Werden und die allgemeinen Voraussetzungen ihres Bestandes.
English translation: And thus, in the end, the science of administration too will celebrate its resurrection—not as the hardly definable lore of the state, but well disciplined by the strict formulation of legal institutions, and at the same time equipped with a sure and comprehensive overview of its becoming and of the general presuppositions of its existence.
Its relevance lies in this synthesis: administrative law must become technically exact without becoming socially blind. The future of Verwaltungslehre is not a return to vague state science, but a disciplined theory of legal institutions as forms of living social order.
Das Leben im Rechte wird damit erst vollkommen erkannt und damit auch das Recht des Lebens wissenschaftlich neu gewonnen.
English translation: Only thus is life within the law fully understood, and only thus is the law of life scientifically won anew.
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