In late Ottoman South-Eastern Europe, traditional Ottoman law, court systems and court personnel on the one hand, and ultra-modern French and German/Austrian law on the other, clashed. Thus, more than ever before, this region lay on the "tectonic boundary" of several legal continental shelves. This location makes South Eastern Europe a laboratory in which elements from different legal cultures coexist, mutually influence each other and merge with each other: A legal space characterised by plurality and hybridity, which due to these characteristics ultimately appears more modern than the - at least supposedly - homogeneous legal areas on the individual legal continental shelves.

Prof. Dr. Martin Löhnig ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Bürgerliches Recht, Deutsche und Europäische Rechtsgeschichte sowie Kirchenrecht an der Universität Regensburg.

In the clash between Ottoman law, court system and court personnel on the one hand and ultra-modern French and German/Austrian law on the other, an independent legal area has developed in South-Eastern Europe.