FGvW – good to know:  100 years of looking ahead

One hundred years is a long time. Long enough for telephones to become smartphones, filing cabinets to become cloud storage, and "Reply All" to become a recognized workplace hazard.

In 2026, FGvW celebrates its 100th anniversary. Looking back over a century, one thing becomes clear: history rarely stands still. Neither do businesses. Neither do law firms.

When FGvW laid its foundation in 1926 by Walter Bappert in Freiburg, Queen Elizabeth II and Marilyn Monroe were born, and television was still experimental.

Since then, the world has reinvented itself more than once. It rebuilt after war. It embraced the Wirtschaftswunder. It watched humans land on the moon, celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall, discovered the internet and is now learning what artificial intelligence can—and cannot—do.

FGvW and its offices in Freiburg, Cologne/Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Berlin, and Hamburg have evolved with every chapter.

Our oldest office is in Freiburg, and our roots remain firmly planted there, where history occasionally likes to leave its mark in unexpected places. Long before our lawyers moved in, the building that now houses our office became part of the famous Dreisameck house occupation. Our Freiburg office was occupied – just not by lawyers. Today, spirited debates still take place there, although they are usually about contracts rather than barricades.

Further up the river Rhine, our Cologne office also overlooks a history of over five decades now. In Cologne, one landmark has patiently watched over the city throughout almost its entire history. The Cathedral took more than six centuries to complete, making even the longest transaction seem refreshingly short. And every year, Carnival reminds us that a good sense of humour and sound judgement are not mutually exclusive. We even managed the seemingly impossible: crossing the Rhine from Cologne to Düsseldorf. Thankfully, clients are less interested in local rivalries than in good legal advice. Düsseldorf, a city where business meets fashion with remarkable ease, welcomed us with open arms.

Frankfurt has witnessed Germany's transformation into one of Europe's leading financial centres. It was clear that we needed an office in this city – and after more than a decade it has become our fastest growing office. Markets have become faster, regulations more sophisticated, and skyscrapers decidedly taller. Fortunately, not every deadline moves at the speed of high-frequency trading.

Few cities have reinvented themselves as often as Berlin. From division to reunification, from government seat to start-up hub, Berlin has spent decades proving that change is not the exception but the rule. It could only be in Berlin that we opened an office in 2020 in the middle of the Covid19 Pandemic. Social distancing and working restrictions did not prevent our Berlin colleagues from setting up an office from scratch within a few days. Lawyers, as it turns out, appreciate a city that never stands still.

Our most northern office is in Hamburg. This city has always understood that business begins where the world comes together. Ships have become container vessels, paper manifests have become digital data, but the importance of trade, logistics and looking beyond the horizon has remained remarkably constant.

Our own story has been one of reinvention, too. What began as Walter Bappert's practice in the Freiburg region became Bappert, Witz & Selbherr, then merged with Graf von Westphalen and grew into today's Friedrich Graf von Westphalen. The names changed. The ambition never did.

Along the way, fountain pens gave way to laptops, law libraries to online databases, and fax machines to encrypted video calls. We swapped carbon paper for cloud storage and dictation machines for AI tools that occasionally think they know the law better than we do. They don't. But we appreciate the enthusiasm.

What technology has never managed to replace is what our clients have always valued most: sound judgement, practical advice and trusted relationships. No algorithm has yet improved on a well-timed phone call, and no chatbot has mastered the art of reading a room.

Those qualities mattered in 1926. They matter in 2026. We suspect they will matter in 2126.

Here's to the next hundred years.