Gerhard Ries, LMU

The invention of a way to communicate not only by spoken words is one of the most important achievements of humanity. It is clearly not by chance that human civilization and culture have started to develop in an accelerated way only from those times on, when human thought could be laid down in writing. This enabled later generations to benefit from former ideas in a much better way than could be achieved by mere oral tradition.

Writing has emerged in history in different places at different times and in quite different ways. In comparison with the abundant number of languages, however, writing systems are few. Some of them have emerged early and vanished again – as cuneiform writing and Egyptian hieroglyphics - , others are relatively young and have survived until modern times as e.g. Korean characters and the Cyrillic alphabet. The Latin and Hebrew alphabets are, despite of their early origin, still in use. The oldest writing system that is still being used is the one of the Chinese characters.

The lectures have the aim to introduce the students into the origin and development of the main writing systems of our times (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese and Japanese) and of the earliest writing systems that for a very long time have been out of use, as the sumero-accadian cuneiform characters and the Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The results of such investigations should make the students aware of the exorbitant role that writing played in the development of mankind and make them know the origin of the letters that they are using everyday.

Biography
Graduated at the LMU Faculty of Law where he is now Professor of Law. Expert in Legal History of the Ancient World, in Private Law, Bulgarian Economic Law and Comparative Law. Before teaching at LMU he taught at the universities of Heidelberg and Freiburg (1979), Regensburg (1979-81), Hannover (1981/82), Munich (1982-94) and Erlangen (1994-97). Was visiting Professor at the University of Kyoto/Japan (1983-85), at the Meiji University of Tokyo (1998) and at the Seikei University/Tokyo (2000). Had lecturing commitments in various other Japanese universities and was Senior Teaching Fellow at the Centre for the Advanced Study of European and Comparative Law, University of Oxford (1999). Has been Resident Legal Advisor to the Council of Ministers of Bulgaria, managing the Legal consultance Program as part of the Technical Assistance loan of the Word Bank, appointed by Harvard University (Sofia, 1992-1994); Legal Consultant to the Ministry of Justice of Bulgaria, drafting a land registration law and amendments to the substantive law on immovable property, including mortgage law (1994-98), sponsored by the Ministry of Finance of the Federal Republic of Germany. Published articles on German-Japanese comparative law, on the law of privatization in Bulgaria. Edited a collection of Bulgarian laws concerning the economic sector.