However, it must be said that these guided laws were written by a society which had different views than society has today and they would have been written by men who most likely would have been from an upper class and it would be difficult to say if they would take into consideration the needs of the lower classes. It is also important that the French Revolution would have had an impact on the document produced.
We do have to ask ourselves the question did this benefit society at this time? Laws like ‘No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by the law’. Freedom of religion most likely benefitted society as individuals did not have to only follow one set of religion the state believed was acceptable. Therefore, I ask myself where do we draw the line? If an individual spoke out against the state, would the state go back to this law and not take action? Therefore, we cannot say this declaration would have benefited the whole of society, for example every citizen of France at this time would have had opinions of the state but not all citizens would have spoken out about them.
The second document, ‘Prussian State Laws’, is a written document most likely produced by the German State at this time in 1794. These laws had a huge impact of the serfs who lived and worked in the German State of Prussia. The document produced would not have had the serfs best interest in mind but this document would have benefited the Germans who had serfs working/serving them i.e. the law ‘They may not leave the estate to which they are bound without the consent of the estate owner.’ This shows the law had a positive effect for the estate owners most likely Germans at this time. The Germans at this time would have seen the Serfs as a ‘second class citizen’ similar to the views of the Jews after the Nuremberg Laws were enforced. The document has been translated from German and it shows the German word in brackets which is to emphasise that these words cannot be translated correctly into English.
However, it must be said this source does only show the extracts of the Prussian State Laws of 1794 and does not show all of the laws which were implemented this particular year. This lack of knowledge in the law might cause problems in understanding the period completely as there might be laws which were very important but are not mentioned here in this document.
It is quite ironic, that after the peasantry revolt of 1807, serfs who worked for estate owners could not claim any of the land for themselves. This shows that this document was very important and most likely the men who wrote this document wanted to protect the Germans of their estates so that no serfs could claim any of the land or property. Therefore, it is not surprising that Prussian landlords had a 6% increase in land. Now we have to ask ourselves why was this document written in the first place? Did the State know there would be a revolt only years after this document was first produced? This document just produces more questions which we will not be able to answer without more information.
To conclude, the documents ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’ and ‘Prussian State Laws’ can be seen as crucial to this period of both countries. We can see if the ‘Prussian State Laws’ did not exist then the serfs could have taken the land of the German at this time and it could be said there might have been a revolution. The ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’ made out that society was more relaxed than it actually was (freedom of religion) and some of the laws still exist today, therefore it is still a influential document. It could also be argued that it is still universally applicable.
