Absence (state law)
In German constitutional law, absence means that, according to the laws of various countries, the mere continued absence from the home country for a certain period of time means that the right of subject is lost in it. In Germany, this used to apply only in individual states, such as Prussia , Saxony , Mecklenburg , Oldenburg , while in others it was still the formal dismissal from the "Subject Association", such as in Schleswig-Holstein , Kurhessen , Braunschweig , or at least permanent settlement outside of the State territory, so that the will not to return ( animus non revertendi ) could be concluded from it, had to be added, as in Hanover , Saxony, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha , Hesse-Homburg .
The German Reich Law on Acquisition and Loss of Federal and Citizenship of June 1, 1870 ( Law on Acquisition and Loss of Federal and Citizenship ) stipulated that citizenship in a federal state and thus federal citizenship simply by ten years absence from Home country and residence abroad, d. H. outside of the federal territory, is lost ( residence abroad without legitimation ), but this can be avoided by registering in the register of a federal consulate. Some changes and deletions resulted from the Federal Law of July 21, 1870 (Federal Law Gazette p. 498), the Reich Law of April 22, 1871 ( RGBl. P. 87), the Reich Law of December 20, 1875 (RGBl. P. 324 ) and the Introductory Act to the Civil Code of August 18, 1896 (RGBl. p. 604).
This regulation remained valid until the Nationality Act ( Reichs- und Staatsangerschaftsgesetz , StAG or RuStAG of July 22, 1913) came into force on January 1, 1914 (RGBl. 1913 p. 583 - Federal Law Gazette III, structure number 102-1, last amended by law of July 23, 1999, Federal Law Gazette I p. 1618 ) as well as for cases in which the nationality is derived from an ancestor who emigrated before 1913; in the latter case, a positive extract from the consular register is sufficient as proof that German citizenship has not been lost according to this provision. What is also remarkable about the RuStAG is that the term “nationality” is not precisely defined here.
The National Socialist “Ordinance on German Citizenship” of February 5, 1934, in which nationalities are abolished in the federal states, constitutes a turning point; this ordinance remained valid until 1945, but afterwards nationalities were practically not reintroduced.
literature
- Jürgen Habermas: Citizenship and National Identity . In: ders .: factuality and validity . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1992
- Heinz Kleger: Transnational Citizenship or: Can Citizenship Be Denationalized? (1994) 62. In: Archive for Legal and Social Philosophy 85
- W. Oppe: The Absence Procedure in the Reform of Criminal Procedure , ZRP 1972, 56 ff.
- Gerhard Riege: Citizenship and National Question: State and Law . 1964
- Paul-Ludwig Weinacht : Citizen. On the history and criticism of a political term , in: Der Staat 8 (1969), p. 41 ff.
Web links
- Nationality Act (StAG)
- Citizenship Law: The Most Important Legal Bond of the Germans (by Hannes Kaschkat)
- "... that the sin of blood is the original sin of a people." The Reichstag “Debate” on Reich and Citizenship Law on September 15, 1935 ( Memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (by Sebastian Edathy in “Archive of the Berlin Republic”)
- Protected Areas Act (Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon (1920), Volume III, p. 317 f.)
