Public officials
Officials in Germany denote on the one hand persons who are in a public service relationship (e.g. constitutional bodies and their members). On the other hand, the term stands for people to whom special criminal and liability regulations apply. The term came up in the time of National Socialism , when "office bearer" was supposed to overcome the narrower term official . At that time, the term office bearer was used for all functionaries of the NSDAP , its branches and affiliated associations. These included, among other things, the political leaders , who were initially referred to as “officials” in the early years of the party. The content of the term is defined differently in Germany today in the various areas of law.
It is not important whether the activity is full-time or voluntary . Also, trainees , people in the trial period or trainees can hold might officers status.
Officials carry out official acts . Officials of the executive and judicial branches hold public office .
Criminal law
Criminal law recognizes special offenses that can only be committed by public officials ("real official offenses "), and provides for harsher penalties for public officials ("false official offenses") for some general offenses.
The term “official term” has replaced and expanded the earlier term “criminal civil servant”. Anyone who is a public official in the sense of criminal law is referred to in Section 11 Paragraph 1 No. 2 lit. a to c StGB legally defined . According to this, a public official is someone who is under German law
- Officials or judges is
- is in any other official relationship under public law ( notaries , ministers and equivalent persons, parliamentary state secretaries , parliamentary presidents ) or
- is otherwise ordered to perform public administration tasks at an authority or another body or on their behalf, regardless of the organizational form chosen to perform the tasks (e.g. election workers , administrative clerks , municipal council )
This means that persons working for private law subjects can also be public officials , provided they are organizationally linked to an authority or corporation under public law . It is true that notaries as entrusted persons fall under the status of official, lawyers do not have the status of official, although they are “free organs of the administration of justice ” according to Section 1 of the Federal Lawyers ' Act. Officials are also the tax assistants ( § 217 , § 7 No. 3 AO ). Soldiers indeed are not official, but act as government officials . According to Section 48 of the WStG , they are therefore partially on an equal footing with public officials. Because of the separation of state and church , pastors and church officials do not belong to the office holders.
In some offenses , public officials are on an equal footing with those “ particularly obliged to perform the public service ” (cf. pledge ).
State liability law
In German state liability law, an official is referred to as "someone" who acts "in the exercise of a public office entrusted to him" ( Art. 34 sentence 1 GG) and can thereby cause claims from official liability . The constitution extends the constitutional concept of civil servant in Section 839 of the German Civil Code (BGB) to all who act sovereignly in a certain employment, contract, entrustment, lending or service relationship . One therefore also speaks of the "civil servant in the sense of liability law ".
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cornelia Schmitz-Berning: Vocabulary of National Socialism. Berlin 2000, p. 29.
