Faculty of Law Legal Archaeology

The legal-archaeological collection of the Swiss jurist and legal historian Hans Fehr (1874–1961) comprises 645 images depicting legal concepts or legal processes from Antiquity to the 1950s

All images contain Fehr’s handwritten descriptions and notes. Fehr was one of the pioneers of legal iconography, which emerged from legal history and incorporates art history as well as legal archaeology. From 1917 to 1924, Fehr held the Chair of German Legal History in Heidelberg, and from 1918 he was director of the Germanic Department of the then newly founded Institute for Historical Jurisprudence.

Otto Gönnenwein (1896–1963), a student of Fehr, acquired the collection in the 1950s for Heidelberg’s Institute for Historical Jurisprudence. Since 2023, the collection has been fully digitized and made available online.