In 1814 the jurist Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut published an essay on the necessity of a general civil law for Germany. He called for one simple and understandable civil code for all German lands. In the same year Friedrich Carl von Savigny replied with Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft, on the vocation of our age for legislation and legal science. For Savigny, law grows organically, and legal scholarship should first take up the customary law of the people. Erst am Ende dieser Entwicklung sah Savigny eine Kodifikation als möglich an. (Only at the end of this development did Savigny consider a codification possible.) The German Civil Code was passed in 1896, after 23 years of work. It came into force on 1 January 1900.