for social laws to be enshrined in the draft went unheard. The new German Civil Code came into effect in 1900. Influence on the 1919 Weimar Constitution In 1905 Gierke published the second volume on German private law (Deutsches Privatrecht) offering a detailed critique of the unrestrained freedom that was guaranteed to the owners of private property in §903 of the German Civil Code. According to the law: "the owner of a thing can, so far as not contrary to law or the rights of third parties, deal with the thing at discretion and exclude others from every use or misuse of it." Gierke railed against §903, arguing that property ownership was subject to limitations because it confers powers bound by rights. He maintained that according to German legal principle, property ownership is pervaded by responsibilities. While Gierke's influence on legislation was limited, his lectures and publications became influential at German language universities. Gierke's views on the social obligations arising from property ownership were eventually enshrined in the 1919 Weimar Constitution, which stated in Article 153 that "Property ownership carries an obligation. Its use shall also serve the best interest of the community". The proposal for the constitution had been prepared by Hugo Preuss, a former student of Gierke. Gierke remained a committed nationalist throughout his life. He was deeply disappointed about Germany's military defeat in World War I and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In May 1919 at the age of seventy-eight Gierke rallied his academic colleagues to build a new Germany based on Germanic traditions: "We are a people, with thousands of years of history". Gierke recapitulated his vision for the new parliamentary republic as a state based on "national identity" and with "historical foundation". He declared that the state in Germany should remain an organically built community along Germanic traditions, where municipalities and local governments are autonomous and derive their legal existence from the association of citizens. He continued: "It should be a welfare state. Social but not socialist!". To this end, the German state should remain a cultured state subject to the rule of law. In what would become his last public lecture, Gierke set out the principles that were to infuse the constitutional law of the fledgling Weimar Republic. Influence on pluralism In Britain, interest in Gierke's views were generated when the British historian of law Frederic William Maitland published a partial translation