International Law and Justice Working Papers - IILJ

in the triumph of civilization.” 53 Law emerged with civilization while politics existed already
among primitive peoples. Finally, Bulmerincq demonstrated that politics left its mark on
international legal practice, causing States to act in an egoistic and hypocritical manner. An
example was England whom Bulmerincq criticized for lecturing other nations about humanity
while when its own interests were at stake, it demonstrated a backward egoism unforeseen in his
century of “progrès et de lumières”. 54
5. The Politics of Bulmerincq’s International Legal Arguments
5.1. Asylum: Empowering the State over the Catholic Church and the Individual in the
Aftermath of the 1848 Revolution
An aspect of Bulmerincq’s identity was his religious embeddedness in Protestantism, more
precisely Lutheranism – that was predominant among the Baltic Germans. As we will see,
Bulmerincq’s Lutheran faith made him to take strong positions against what he perceived as
Catholic universalistic ambition.
The antagonism of the Church and the State had since Bulmerincq’s earliest works constituted a
central theme in his scholarly discourse. History of the institute of asylum in international law
offered ways to illustrate this in “Das Asylrecht in seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung
beurtheilt vom Standpunkte des Rechts und dessen völkerrechtliche Bedeutung für die
Auslieferung flüchtiger Verbrecher. Eine Abhandlung aus dem Gebiete der universellen
Rechtsgeschichte und des positiven Völkerrechts“. 55
53 P. 364.
54 P. 377. Critique of England at pp. 374-379.
55 Dorpat, 1853 (Reprinted in Wiesbaden, Martin Sändig, 1970).