On New Year's Eve, 1817, he was transformed by a conversion experience into a
born-again Christian. In the
German Table Society, an exclusive society restricted to ethnic German Christians from birth, he met the brothers
Leopold,
Ernst Ludwig and
Otto von Gerlach as well as
Ernst Senfft von Pilsach and conversed with the
Crown Prince, who would later, as king, elevate him to nobility. In 1819 he attained his
habilitation in Berlin and became a tenured professor there in 1823. In 1824 he cofounded the
Berlin Missionary Society with Leopold von Gerlach,
August Neander and others in Berlin. From 1827 to 1828 he also served briefly as
rector of his alma mater. He specialized in the history of civil legal procedure and made many pioneering contributions demonstrating a deep grasp of his subject and an independence from received doctrine, and showing the value of the historical viewpoint. He had an ongoing concern to reconcile his religious convictions with the rest of his life. He stayed away from politics and was repelled by the persecution of the so-called demagogues. From 1849 to 1855 he served as a deputy in Prussia's first and second houses of parliament, apart from a few brief interruptions. Notwithstanding its small size, his faction was significant through its political integrity and intellectual prominence. From 1858 (advent of the regency of
Wilhelm I) to 1862 (advent of
Bismarck's ministry) von Bethmann-Hollweg served as the Prussian minister of education, culture and medicine. After his retirement he wrote the book for which he became chiefly known,
Der Civilprozeß des Gemeinen Rechts in geschichtlicher Entwicklung (Civil Procedure in Common Law, A Historical Overview).
Legacy As a writer on jurisprudence he had a deep influence in the reforms of the German laws following the enactment of the
German Civil Code in 1896. ==Personal life==