ZACHARIAE VON LINGENTHAL, KARL SALO MO (1769-1843), German jurist, was born on Sept. 14, 1769, at Meissen in Saxony, the son of a lawyer, and was educated there and at Leipzig university. He was professor of law at Wittenberg (1798), and at Heidelberg from 1807 till his death on March 27, 1843. In 1820 he was member for his university in the new parlia ment of Baden, and in 1825, after the revision of the constitution, for the district of Heidelberg. Throughout his parliamentary career he was a strong conservative, and it was the growth of liberalism that induced him to retire in 1829, and devote himself entirely to juridical work. The German universities still had their old jurisdiction in legal questions of international importance, and Zachariae had referred to him such points as the claim of Sir Augustus d'Este to the dukedom of Sussex, and the dispute about debts due to the elector of Hesse-Cassel, confiscated by Napoleon. He was ennobled in 1842.
His writings deal with almost every branch of jurisprudence, and relate to Roman, Canon, German, French and English law. The first book of much consequence which he published was Die Einheit des Staats and der kirche snit Rucksicht auf die Deutsche Reichsverfassung (1797 ) , a work on the relations of church and State, with special reference to the constitution of the empire. In 1805 appeared Versuch einer allgemeinen Hermeneutik des Rechts; and in 1806 Die Wissenschaft der Gesetzgebung, an attempt to find a new theoretical basis for society in place of the opportunist politics which had led to the French Revolution. This basis he seemed to discover in something resembling Bentham's utilitarianism. Zachariae's last work of importance was Vierzig
Bucher vom Staate (1839-42), to which his admirers point as his enduring monument. It has been compared to Montesquieu's L'Esprit des lois, and covers no small part of the field of Buckle's first volume of the History of Civilization.
For a list of Zachariae's works, see Allgem. Deutsche Biogr.