Nobility Repeal Act

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Basic data
Title: Nobility Repeal Act
Long title: Law of April 3, 1919 on the abolition of the nobility,
the secular orders of knights and ladies and certain titles and dignities.
Type: Federal Constitutional Law
Scope: Republic of Austria
Legal matter: Constitutional law
Reference: StGBl. No. 211/1919
Date of law: April 3, 1919 (StGBl. No. 211/1919)
Effective date: April 10, 1919
(= announcement date)
Last change: BGBl. I No. 2/2008 (1st BVRBG)
January 1st, 2008
Legal text: Nobility Repeal Act as amended in the RIS
Please note the note on the applicable legal version !
Basic data
Title: Nobility Repeal Act Enforcement Order
Long title: Execution instruction of the State Office for Home Affairs and Education and the State Office for Justice, in agreement with
the state offices involved from April 18, 1919, on the
abolition of the nobility and certain titles and dignities.
Type: regulation
Scope: Republic of Austria
Legal matter: Constitutional law
Reference: StGBl. No. 237/1919
Date of regulation: April 18, 1919
Effective date: April 20, 1919
(= announcement date)
Last change: Federal Law Gazette No. 50/1948
April 1, 1948
Please note the note on the applicable legal version !

After the end of the real union Austria-Hungary , the parliament of the newly formed state of German Austria , the Constituent National Assembly , resolved on April 3, 1919, to abolish the nobility by means of a Nobility Repeal Act . The law came into force on April 10, 1919. On the same day, the law on the removal from the land and the takeover of the property of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine came into force.

Nobility Repeal Act

With the law on the abolition of the nobility, the secular orders of knights and ladies and certain titles and dignities , the nobility, its external honorary privileges as well as those granted merely for distinction, were not connected with an official position, the profession or a scientific or artistic qualification standing titles and dignities, and the associated honorary privileges of Austrian citizens with effect from April 10, 1919, canceled. The decision was made in the presence of more than half of the members of the Constituent National Assembly and was unanimous. According to Article 149 (1) of the Federal Constitutional Law (B-VG), the Nobility Repeal Act is a constitutional law.

Execution instruction

On the basis of the enactment of the Nobility Repeal Act, the simple  statute, more precisely defining execution instruction issued by the State Office for Home Affairs and Education and the State Office for Justice , in agreement with the State Offices involved, on April 18, 1919, on the repeal of the nobility and certain titles and dignities ( StGBl 237/1919 ), today also known as the implementation of the Nobility Repeal Act .

According to Section 2 of the Enforcement Order, Section 1 of the Nobility Repeal Act, applicable to all Austrian citizens and all persons subject to Austrian international private law, repeals:

  1. the right to use the nobility mark "von"
  2. the right to use predicates, which, in addition to the nobility predicates in the narrower sense, which distinguish families, also include the word of honor noble and the predicates exalted , serene and sovereign ;
  3. the right to use traditional heraldic names and noble surnames;
  4. the right to use aristocratic class names, such as B. Knight , Baron , Count and Prince , then the title of Duke and other relevant domestic and foreign professional titles;
  5. the right to use family coats of arms, especially those wrongly called "civil", as well as the right to use certain foreign titles that are not always associated with a nobility preference, such as B. Conte, Conta Palatino, Marchese, Marchio Romanus, Comes Romanus, Baro Romanus etc., even if it belonged to non-noble families.

On the basis of § 4 Nobility Repeal Act, the following titles and dignities were declared to be repealed with § 3 of the enforcement order:

  • The dignity of the Privy Council ,
  • the title and privileges of a secret councilor,
  • the dignity of a chamberlain and a servant ,
  • the dignity of a palace lady ,
  • the form of address " Excellence ",
  • the title of imperial council ,
  • Furthermore, all titles that were associated with no longer existing court, feudal and state institutions, in particular the titles of the state offices and the state offices,
  • the other dignitaries and
  • the title formed from the combination of the prefixed words “Hof”, “Kammer” or “Hof- und Kammer” and not related to an official position.

Pursuant to Section 4 of the Executive Order, the titles granted to public employees do not include the official titles granted to public employees, in particular the higher-ranking titles awarded to state employees, as well as the titles of V. and VI. Class of rank ( court advisor , government councilor; cf. analogous professional titles according to professional groups ), for professors at universities and middle schools or for civil servants at the chambers of commerce and industry and the like.

Administrative offense

Violations under this Act are administrative violations. According to the explanations of § 5 of the enforcement instructions, the use of nobility and titles and dignities in public communication, i.e. in communication with authorities and public bodies, as well as in communications and statements directed at the public, is punishable. The use of official correspondence, purely social intercourse and the use of marks that contain a reference to the former nobility or to abolished titles or dignities are also threatened with administrative penalties, provided that they represent a permanent or challenging disregard of the provisions of the law .

The use of objects that have already been given the nobility, a revoked title or such a dignity is not to be regarded as a criminal use of such designations.

In contrast to Germany , the former nobility designations did not become part of the name. This applies to all citizens of the Republic of Austria and also applies to foreign titles. In the case of multiple citizenships, the (stronger) home law is to be used for assessment.

The legislature at the time decided to have the authorities impose fines of up to 20,000 kroner or arrest (today: imprisonment ) for up to six months for violations of this law . Federal Law 50/1948 changed the enforcement order with regard to the amount of the penalty and set a sum of 4,000 schillings . This fine has never been adjusted in value since 1948 in the decades that followed and is now equivalent to around 290 euros. The respective district administrative authority ( district authority or magistrate ) is responsible for sanctioning the use of nobility titles as well as of revoked titles and dignities .

Social practice

According to the enforcement instructions, driving in social intercourse is prohibited if it is a permanent or challenging disregard of the law. However, this does not affect the address or salutation of another person. For example, Thomas Schäfer-Elmayer writes : “According to the law, there are no longer any noble titles. In everyday dealings, however, one often hears denominations of nobility ”. For example, the protocol-based guideline of the Styrian state government states : “Addressing a counterpart personally or in writing is not leading in this sense and is therefore not punishable. It is up to the individual to deal with it; all the more restraint on the part of representatives of the public-political system ”. A German adviser writes: "When introducing Austrian nobles who are actually not allowed to use their title in public, one should also take into account the" republican sentiments "of other people present".

The historian Roman Sandgruber wrote about the social consequences for those affected : “The loss of the aristocratic privileges was painful, but probably more for the postal aristocracy , from whom the most important things were robbed, than for the high aristocracy , from whom the signs of nobility, castles and forests and the aristocratic image built up over centuries could not be taken away. "

Since, according to the wording of the law, only the persons concerned themselves are prohibited from using a title of nobility, but not mentioning nobility designations by third parties, the titles that have actually been abolished can still be found in obituaries or on gravestones.

scope

The Nobility Repeal Act has legal effect on all Austrian citizens and on all persons with an Austrian personal status under international private law (IPGR).

Exception Burgenland

Although the needle repeal Act applies to the entire country, it was in 1922 in Burgenland not enumerated on the occasion of its connection to Austria under the constitutional laws that were set in Burgenland in force, as well as the confiscation of the family funds (foundations) of the Habsburg concerned II. Part of the Habsburg law . Legislation and the Constitutional Court nevertheless assumed that the nobility is constitutionally abolished in all of Austria or have not dealt with this “inaccuracy” for political reasons for a long time. The definitive constitutional clarification did not come into effect until January 1, 2008. With this date it was made clear by the constitution that the Nobility Repeal Act also applies in Burgenland.

1934 to 1938

In the Austro-Fascist corporate state , under Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, the Nobility Repeal Act (without mentioning it expressis verbis ), like the Habsburg Act in Section 56 (4) Constitutional Transitional Act 1934 of June 19, 1934, was downgraded to the rank of a simple federal act. Since 1945 at the latest, the Nobility Repeal Act has once again had constitutional status.

1938 to 1945

During the National Socialist dictatorship of 1938–1945 nothing changed in terms of the name with the components of the name of the Austrian (now) Reich Germans:

“The once lost title of nobility did not come back to life through the acquisition of German citizenship in 1938 (Law Gazette for the Land of Austria, born in 1938, no. 236); a change of the civil name was not connected with this. "

- Legal sentence to VwGH 81/01/0036 of April 22, 1981

Initiative for amendment

In April 2015, the Greens, led by Daniela Musiol , submitted a motion for a resolution in the National Council to adapt the Nobility Repeal Act to today's circumstances, especially with regard to its criminal provisions. Higher fines were demanded for the prohibited use of nobility titles. The governing parties SPÖ and ÖVP promised support for the application, and NEOS requested a fundamental review of the intention of the law. However, the motion was not approved. A similar motion by the Green MP Sigrid Maurer in 2017 was postponed indefinitely in the responsible constitutional committee of the National Council.

In connection with Maurer's application, the journalist Hans Rauscher wrote ironically about the “courageous use against one of the most burning problems of our time” and described the initiative as “reviving a 100-year-old phobia of the nobility”.

Judicature

The law not only had an impact when it was introduced, but was dealt with several times in case law in the decades that followed. In 1952, the Supreme Court ruled that the Austrian wife of a German citizen with a title of nobility, who has retained Austrian citizenship, can use the nobility designation of the husband, which is part of the name of the husband, according to the Weimar Constitution. On the other hand, the Constitutional Court decided in 2003 that an Austrian woman who allows herself to be adopted by a noblewoman in Germany is not allowed to use nobility names. The question raised by the Higher Administrative Court to the European Court of Justice in a similar case , whether this would violate EU law, was decided by the latter in 2010 in favor of the Austrian legal opinion not to recognize the part of the name Fürstin von .

Stage name

To this day, various Austrian artists use the title of nobility in their names in public. To what extent the use of such artist names , the use of which is not legally regulated in Austria, contradicts the Nobility Repeal Act from the point of view of artistic freedom , has not yet been clarified by the authorities or by the courts. The Federal Ministry of Justice takes the view that, according to the specific circumstances of the individual case, it must be judged whether the use of a (non-fictitious) nobility title as an artist or alias is a criminal offense under the Nobility Repeal Act with regard to a permanent or challenging disregard of its provisions Law fulfilled.

Similar regulations in other successor states of the monarchy

In the monarchies of Hungary (with a short republican break), Romania , the state of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and Italy , there was clearly no need for new nobility regulations. In the Czechoslovak Republic , where a large number of noble families of the former Habsburg monarchy lived or owned estates, nobility and titles of nobility were abolished by the law of December 3, 1918. Name additions and words of honor indicating the nobility were prohibited. In Poland the nobility was abolished from 1921 to 1935.

Current application of the law

In 2019, Karl Habsburg-Lothringen received a penal order from the Municipal District Office in Vienna- Landstrasse , as Habsburg called his website karlvonhabsburg.at . He appealed against this sentence to the Vienna Regional Administrative Court . This confirmed the reason for the sentence. A penalty was waived, however, as the penalty is given as 20,000 crowns and has never been adjusted. Therefore, it is legally unclear whether one can simply convert the crown and thus impose fines. As Habsburg-Lothringen is of the opinion that the law "belongs to the rubbish dump of history", he announced, according to a report on March 20, 2019, that he would bring the case to the Administrative Court, although he did not have to pay a fine .

Legal sources

literature

  • Georg Frölichsthal : The Austrian nobility since 1918. Lecture before the German Nobility Law Committee on September 13, 1997. ( Full text online with additional literature on the website of the Heraldic-Genealogical Society “Adler” Vienna ).
  • Reinhard Binder-Krieglstein: Austrian nobility law 1868–1918 / 19. From the elaboration of the nobility law of the cisleithan half of the empire to the nobility surrender law of the republic with special consideration of the aristocratic naming law (= legal history series. Volume 216). Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-631-34833-9 (also dissertation, University of Vienna 1998).
  • Georg Frölichsthal: Nobility today. Legal framework and sociological observations. (See in particular: 2nd Nobility Repeal and 4th Legal Consequences of the Nobility Repeal Act in Austria. ) Lecture at the Braunauer Zeitgeschichte-Tage on September 29, 2012. ( full text online on the website of the Heraldic-Genealogical Society “Adler” Vienna ).
  • Heinrich Bittermann: noble names and judicature. In: Public Safety. Vienna, edition 1/2/2016, p. 79 f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 8th session of the Constituent National Assembly for German Austria on April 3, 1919, Stenographic Protocol, p. 192.
  2. ↑ Execution instruction of the State Office for Home Affairs and Education and the State Office for Justice, in agreement with the state offices involved from April 18, 1919, on the abolition of the nobility and certain titles and dignities. StF: StGBl. No. 237/1919, p. 573. ( ALEX - Historical legal and legal texts online alex.onb.ac.at as digitized version ); and as implementation of the Nobility Repeal Act in the current version in the Federal Legal Information System (RIS).
  3. ↑ Thomas Schäfer-Elmayer: Good behavior required . Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-552-04310-1 , p. 332.
  4. ^ Office of the Styrian Provincial Government (ed.): Breviary on the Styrian Protocol. Graz 2016, p. 37.
  5. ^ Gerhard Uhl, Elke Uhl-Vettler: Business etiquette in Europe. 3. Edition. Springer / Gabler Verlag, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-658-01029-4 , p. 134.
  6. ^ Roman Sandgruber: The great war as a great equalizer. In: Robert Kriechbaumer, Wolfgang Mueller, Erwin A. Schmidl (eds.): Politics and the military in the 19th and 20th centuries. Festschrift for Manfried Rauchsteiner . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2017, ISBN 978-3-205-20417-6 , pp. 73-88, here p. 85.
  7. ↑ Art. 2, Paragraph 1, Paragraph 5 of the Federal Constitutional Law of January 4, 2008, with which the Federal Constitutional Law is amended and a First Federal Constitutional Law Consolidation Law is enacted; came into force on January 1, 2008, Federal Law Gazette I No. 2/2008
  8. ↑ Federal Law Gazette No. 75/1934 (= p. 159)
  9. ↑ Legal sentence 1 on the decision of the Administrative Court, VwGH 81/01/0036 of April 22, 1981, VwSlg 10427 A / 1981.
  10. ↑ www.parlament.gv.at - Motion for a resolution 1065 / A (E) “Punishment of prohibited aristocratic leadership”
  11. ↑ diepresse.com - "Higher penalties for" nobles "required"
  12. ↑ diepresse.com - "Title of nobility: Also coalition for higher penalties"
  13. ^ "Nobles" still only have to pay a fine of 14 cents Die Presse , May 3, 2017.
  14. ^ The danger of nobility, Der Standard , May 4, 2017.
  15. ^ Decision of the Supreme Court of May 28, 1952
  16. ^ Decision of the ECJ of December 22, 2010
  17. ↑ Ilonka remains civil. No Austrian nobility title by adoption. In: The Standard. Vienna, December 23, 2010, p. 10. (online, December 22, 2010)
  18. ↑ Citizens' inquiries on the subject of “nobility titles as artist names” on the meinparlament.at platform
  19. ↑ The abolition of the nobility, the titles and orders in the Czech state. In: New Free Press. Vienna, No. 19497, December 4, 1918, p. 5.
  20. ↑ "karlvonhabsburg.at" violates the Nobility Repeal Act in the Salzburger Nachrichten of March 14, 2019, accessed on March 15, 2019.
  21. ↑ kurier.at - "Revision: Karl Habsburg wants to include noble names in homepage"
  22. ^ First publication Deutsches Adelsblatt. Volume 36, No. 11/1997, pp. 284–287.
  23. ↑ Published in the St. Johanns Club Nachrichten, No. 381, December 2012, pp. 25–28.