ABSTRACT
'Nineteenth century society may be characterised in many ways', wrote the Swedish economic historian Eli Heckscher in the brief publication Odelaggelsen av 1800–talets hushallning from 1948, 'but one of the most important is: a society steered by free price-setting.' It is important to draw attention to the considerable influence that perceptions of the law, and in particular civil law, had on the middle-class identity in general, and property owners in particular, in the nineteenth century. Material law, with its three central categories, contractual freedom, freedom of property, and right of inheritance, constituted the crucial decree behind the emergence of the market economy-based industrialised society, with its specific class structure. It was the property owners who exclusively decided everyday practice in letting and rent-setting. Individual property owners or their local associations in Berlin produced their own contract forms and distributed them via their own association offices.
