Albrecht was born in Elbing (Elbląg), East Prussia, and studied in Berlin, Göttingen, and Königsberg. He taught jurisprudence in Königsberg in 1829, relocating to Göttingen the following year. After his association with the Göttingen Seven in 1837, which resulted in his dismissal, he found work as a freelance lecturer in Leipzig. Here, in 1840, he became a professor of law.
In 1863 Albrecht was appointed to the Geheim Hofrat (approx. "Secret Advisory Council"), shortly before his retirement in 1868.
Albrecht remains a significant figure in jurisprudence for his conception of the state as a purely theoretical legal entity, a view he developed in an 1837 review of Romeo Maurenbrecher's "Grundsätze des heutigen Staatsrechts". This view stands in opposition to the old Germanic concept of the state as Verbandsperson, a collective person, a position defended by Otto von Gierke.
This article is based on a translation of an article from the German Wikipedia.
Anke Borsdorff: Wilhelm Eduard Albrecht, Lehrer und Verfechter des Rechts. Leben und Werk. Centaurus-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Pfaffenweiler 1993, ISBN 3-89085-735-3
Heinrich Best, Wilhelm Weege: Biographisches Handbuch der Abgeordneten der Frankfurter Nationalversammlung 1848/49. Düsseldorf: Droste-Verlag, 1998. (S. 81) ISBN 3-7700-0919-3
