[843] That the betrothal is a contract relative to the _mund_ is stoutly maintained by DAHN, _Das Weib in altgerm. Recht und Leben_, 4 ff., who absolutely rejects wife-purchase, declaring such an idea to be "abominable and impossible" ("abscheulich und unmöglich"). This theory is also held by KRAUT, _Vormundschaft_ I, 171; SCHROEDER, _Güterrecht_, I, 27 ff., 38, 79; yet SCHROEDER, _Rechtsgeschichte_, 68, 291 ff., regards the German marriage as in form a purchase of the bride. RIVE, _Vormundschaft_, I, 258 ff., _passim_, denies that the betrothal has any relation to the _mund_, and rejects entirely the view that the sale-marriage ever existed among the Germans. HABICHT, _Altdeutsche Verlobung_, 8 ff., 12, admits that originally the _mund_ was a "property right" and the wife a "thing," though in the earliest written sources she appears as _Rechtssubject_. SOHM, _Eheschliessung_, 22, regards the _Witthum_ as the price of the _mund_; but in his _Trauung und Verlobung_, 15, 16, he drops this view and declares the betrothal to be a contract to "give the bride in marriage," or, more directly, a "Kauf der Jungfrau." FRIEDBERG, _Eheschliessung_, 17, 18, appears to hold that it was the _mund_ which was conveyed; but elsewhere he seems to favor the opposite view for the early period. See his _Verlobung und Trauung_, 7 ff.; _Lehrbuch_, 339; and _Zur Geschichte_, 362 ff. Pollock and Maitland, _Hist. of Eng. Law_, II, 362, declare that "whatever guesses we may make about a remoter age, the 'bride-sale,' of which Tacitus had heard, was evidently no sale of a chattel. It was very different from the sale of a slave girl; it was a sale of the _mund_, the protectorship over the woman." GIDE, _Étude sur la cond. privée de la femme_, 196-215, 335 ff.; and HENRY ADAMS, _Historical Essays_, 31, are decidedly of the same opinion. BUCKSTAFF, in _Annals of Am. Acad._, IV, 234, doubts whether the German woman was ever looked upon as a chattel; and OPET, "Die erbrechtliche Stellung der Weiber in der Zeit des Volksrechts," in GIERKE'S _Untersuchungen_, XXV, takes a very favorable view of woman's right of inheritance.