ABSTRACT
Professor Monateri defined our model of comparative law as Western-centred. This perspective led to Spengler’s work positing the downfall of the West, in which the period of Roman law beginning in 160 A.D. was characterised as Arabic. The Roman jurists of that time, Papinian, Ulpian and Paulus, were considered Aramaic. This Orientalisation, rejected by the Romanists, was espoused by the Nazi ideologues. In time, the Eastern origin of Judaism led in Germany to the identification of the attributes Oriental and Jewish.
Among the German Romanists, Koschaker repeatedly tried to demonstrate that the deterioration signified by the concept of Orientalisation did not imply Judaisation. Although many specialists in the area happened to be of Jewish extraction, it did not follow that the discipline itself should be tainted with the same stigma. Thereby Koschaker gave credence to the Nazi idea of Judaisation as pollution. Even after the war, in 1947, he persisted with his rebuttals of the Jewification thesis.
