The article deals with the German Legal Historian Franz Wieacker’s (1908-1994) "Privatrechtsgeschichte der Neuzeit". The work has been highly influential for German legal disocurses since it first appeared in 1952, and remains to be one the most quoted sources in Jurisprudence. The book, however, is part of a particular trait in German Legal thinking that spans more than just the period since 1945. The article intends to illuminate this trait and aims at gaining a perspective from which critique is made possible.