The book tells about the most dramatic period of European history of the 20th century. Taking 1914 as a starting point, its author, the largest modern German legal historian Michael Stollais, paints a picture of the bright rise and equally rapid decline by 1945 of the science of public law in Germany. He convincingly shows how the National Socialists who came to power in 1933 devalued the gains of Weimar democracy, and raises the question of the responsibility of German scientists for this.