Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection

This article deals with the German Ministry of Justice . For the Austrian Ministry of Justice, see Federal Ministry of Justice .

Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection - BMJV -
State level	Federation
position	supreme federal authority
founding	January 1, 1877 as Reich Justice Office
Headquarters	Berlin
Authority management	Christine Lambrecht ( SPD )
Servants	923 (October 2020)
Budget volume	EUR 957.46 million (2021)
Web presence	www.bmjv.de

Christine Lambrecht (SPD), Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection

The Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection ( BMJV for short ) is a supreme federal authority in the Federal Republic of Germany . It has its headquarters or first office in Berlin and its second office in the federal city of Bonn . The Federal Ministry, which began its work on September 20, 1949, emerged from the Reich Ministry of Justice (until May 23, 1945). With the appointment of the Merkel III cabinet , the Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ) was expanded to include consumer protection by virtue of an organizational decree of December 17, 2013 and includedRenamed Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV). In the media, the BMJV is often referred to briefly as the Federal Ministry of Justice or the Ministry of Consumers , depending on the focus of the reporting .

The official seat was the Rosenburg in Bonn- Kessenich from 1949 to 1973 , since 1999 the official seat of the Federal Ministry has been in Berlin.

history

Classic resort

The Ministry of Justice, together with the interior , foreign , finance and defense ministries is one of the so-called classic departments . This name comes from the fact that there were only these business areas in the first German Reich government .

At the same time, according to Article 96 (2) of the Basic Law, it is one of the three ministerial offices prescribed by the Basic Law ( finance , justice and defense ), the so-called mandatory departments.

Dealing with the National Socialist past

In January 2012, Federal Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger set up an independent commission of historians and lawyers headed by Manfred Görtemaker and Christoph Safferling to research and present the National Socialist past. A preliminary report was published in 2013, the results of four years of research including all files were published on October 10, 2016. The preliminary report already made the following findings:

• Manfred Görtemaker referred to the statistics of the convictions, they show that from 1945 to 1986 there were only 6,479 convictions out of 90,921 investigations.
• Ulrich Herbert stated that lawyers had been more successful in "past political self-defense" than other professional groups, but this led to the question of what drove lawyers to protect multiple murderers from persecution, whether there was no alternative to the return of the old judicial elite to top positions and how it was possible to establish a liberal legal system with a judicial system from the Nazi era.
• With regard to personnel development, Joachim Rückert stated that in 1959 48% of the staff and in 1966 even 60% of the department heads were party members of the NSDAP.
• Bernd Rüthers pointed out the “extensive personal continuity of the functional elite”.
• Thomas Vormbaum comes to the conclusion that at the beginning of the 1950s the eagerness to prosecute Nazi crimes had slackened significantly. "Legal constructions" would have made the persecution more difficult or prevented.

The first inventory was confirmed in the final report and its official short version; the results on the impact of personal continuity on the case law and legislation of the Federal Republic up to the end of the 1960s were particularly explosive:

1. The prosecution of the Nazi perpetrators was made impossible: “It is a fact that the impunity laws passed in 1949 and 1953 resulted in practically all Nazi perpetrators being released by 1958. And it also later led to the fact that around 1968 with the so-called Introductory Act to the Administrative Offenses Act, practically all aid offenses were statute-barred retrospectively in 1961. "
2. Groups of victims continued to be discriminated against. Section 175 of the Criminal Code was valid in its tightened National Socialist version until 1969.
3. Many legal texts were not or not fully exempted from the influence of National Socialist ideology, such as the murder paragraph or youth arrest .

The exact research showed that up to 77% of the lawyers had a Nazi past, 94% of the lawyers examined in top positions had a distinction and 58% a doctorate. So it was about the elite of German lawyers.

From 1959 the federal government planned a secret martial law against the constitution, with 45 emergency ordinances in the drawer for the abolition of basic rights, the control of the broadcasters and with a new edition of the " protective custody ".

A department of the ministry was concerned with warning suspects in good time and looking after fugitive offenders abroad.

Federal Minister Heiko Maas drew the conclusion from the “shocking findings” that this part of the story had to become part of legal training.

Well-known employees of this time were Eduard Dreher , responsible for the subsequent statute of limitations for criminal offenses, Heinrich Ebersberg , Josef Schafheutle ,  Franz Massfeller , Max Merten , Walter Roemer , Hans Gawlik and Ernst Kanter .

Jurisdiction

Headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection in Mohrenstrasse in Berlin

Second seat of the BMJV in Bonn

The highest employer in the ministry is the Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection. Two civil servants and two parliamentary state secretaries are at the side of the respective incumbent .

In Germany's federal system, the administration of the judiciary, administration of justice and criminal prosecution is primarily a matter for the federal states. The central task of the federal government in the field of justice is to safeguard and further develop the rule of law. Legislative activity corresponds to this goal. It includes the preparation of new laws and the preparation and amendment or repeal of laws in the classic areas of law, namely civil law, criminal law, commercial and company law, copyright and industrial property rights, constitutional law and procedural law for the individual jurisdictions (except labor and social justice) as well as the service and professional law of judges, public prosecutors, lawyers and notaries. In addition, the Ministry is responsible for the tasks arising from the establishment of the unity of Germany in the area of ​​criminal, administrative and professional rehabilitation and the "outstanding property issues". The Ministry also checks the legal formality of all draft laws and ordinances prepared by other ministries in order to ensure that the legal regulations are compatible with the Basic Law. Since 2013, the Ministry has also been responsible for legal and economic consumer protection, which up to this point was subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection . The Ministry is the publisher of the Federal Law Gazette and Federal Gazette and prepares the election of the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court and the judges at the highest federal courts.

The Ministry's portfolio includes the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe with a 5th criminal senate in Leipzig, the Federal Prosecutor General at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe with the Leipzig office, the Federal Office of Justice with the Federal Central Register in Bonn, the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, the Federal Fiscal Court in Munich, and the Federal Patent Court in Munich and the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) in Munich with offices in Berlin and Jena.

The current Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection in the black and red federal government is the SPD politician Christine Lambrecht . On November 7, 2014, her predecessor, Heiko Maas, set up the nine-member council of experts for consumer issues as an advisory body.

See also : Legal Policy  and Consumer Protection

European Union and international aspects

The Federal Minister of Justice is part of the legislation of the European Union within the framework of the Council of Ministers for Justice and Home Affairs .

While in Germany there is a strict separation between danger prevention (preventive violence → Ministry of the Interior) and criminal prosecution (repressive violence → Ministry of Justice), in some countries there is no such separation. In the UK , law enforcement and security are carried out under the Secretary of State for the Home . In the United States , the attorney general is called the Attorney General . In the US system, there is no separation between law enforcement and security. Both the United States Department of Justice and the newly created Department of Homeland Security and various other ministries report to both law enforcement agencies and intelligence services.

Federal Minister since 1949

→ Main article : Incumbent since 1919

After Fritz Neumayer had left the cabinet, the then Federal Minister for Affairs of the Federal Council Hans-Joachim von Merkatz also took over the Ministry of Justice and briefly led two departments until the 1957 federal election .

No.	picture	Surname	Life dates	Political party	Beginning of the term of office	Term expires	Duration of the term of office in days	Cabinet (s)
Federal Minister of Justice
1		Thomas Dehler	1897-1967	FDP	September 20, 1949	October 20, 1953	1,491	Adenauer I.
2		Fritz Neumayer	1884-1973	FDP	October 20, 1953	October 16, 1956	1,092	Adenauer II
3		Hans-Joachim von Merkatz	1905-1982	DP	October 16, 1956	October 29, 1957	378	Adenauer II
4th		Fritz Schäffer	1888-1967	CSU	October 29, 1957	November 14, 1961	1,477	Adenauer III
5		Wolfgang Stammberger	1920-1982	FDP	November 14, 1961	November 19, 1962	370	Adenauer IV
6th		Ewald Bucher	1914-1991	FDP	December 14, 1962	March 27, 1965	834	Adenauer V Erhard I
7th		Karl Weber	1898-1985	CDU	April 1, 1965	October 26, 1965	208	Erhard I.
8th		Richard Jaeger	1913-1998	CSU	October 26, 1965	November 30, 1966	400	Erhard II
9		Gustav Heinemann	1899-1976	SPD	December 1, 1966	March 26, 1969	846	Kiesinger
10		Horst Ehmke	1927-2017	SPD	March 26, 1969	October 21, 1969	209	Kiesinger
11		Gerhard Jahn	1927-1998	SPD	October 22, 1969	May 7th 1974	1,658	Brandt I Brandt II
12th		Hans-Jochen Vogel	1926-2020	SPD	May 16, 1974	January 22, 1981	2,441	Schmidt I Schmidt II Schmidt III
13th		Jürgen Schmude	* 1936	SPD	January 22, 1981	October 1, 1982	617	Schmidt III
14th		Hans A. Engelhard	1934-2008	FDP	4th October 1982	January 18, 1991	3,028	Kohl I Kohl II Kohl III
15th		Klaus Kinkel	1936-2019	FDP (from 1991)	January 18, 1991	May 18, 1992	486	Cabbage IV
16		Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger	* 1951	FDP	May 18, 1992	January 17, 1996	1,339	Kohl IV Kohl V
17th		Edzard Schmidt-Jortzig	* 1941	FDP	January 17, 1996	October 26, 1998	1,013	Cabbage v
18th		Herta Däubler-Gmelin	* 1943	SPD	October 27, 1998	October 22, 2002	1,456	Schröder I
19th		Brigitte Zypries	* 1953	SPD	October 22, 2002	October 28, 2009	2,563	Schröder II Merkel I
20th		Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger	* 1951	FDP	October 28, 2009	17th December 2013	1,511 (total 2,850)	Merkel II
Federal Minister for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture
1		Renate Künast	* 1955	Green	January 12, 2001	October 4, 2005	1,726	Schröder I Schröder II
Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection
2		Horst Seehofer	* 1949	CSU	November 22, 2005	October 27, 2008	1,070	Merkel I
3		Ilse Aigner	* 1964	CSU	October 31, 2008	September 30th, 2013	1,795	Merkel I Merkel II
Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection
21/4		Heiko Maas	* 1966	SPD	17th December 2013	March 14, 2018	1548	Merkel III
22/5		Katarina Barley	* 1968	SPD	March 14, 2018	June 27, 2019	470	Merkel IV
23/6		Christine Lambrecht	* 1965	SPD	June 27, 2019	in office	693	Merkel IV

Parliamentary State Secretaries

• 1969–1974: Alfons Bayerl ( SPD )
• 1974–1982: Hans de With (SPD)
• 1982–1983: Hans Hugo Klein ( CDU )
• 1983–1987: Benno Erhard (CDU)
• 1987–1991: Friedrich-Adolf Jahn (CDU)
• 1991–1993: Reinhard Göhner (CDU)
• 1991–1998: Rainer Funke ( FDP )
• 1998–2002: Eckhart Pick (SPD)
• 2002–2009: Alfred Hartenbach (SPD)
• 2009-2013: Max Stadler (FDP)
• 2013–2018: Ulrich Kelber (SPD)
• since 2013: Christian Lange (SPD)
• since 2018: Rita Hagl-Kehl (SPD)

Official State Secretaries

• 1949–1963: Walter Strauss ( CDU )
• 1963–1966: Arthur Bülow
• 1967–1969: Horst Ehmke ( SPD )
• 1969–1971: Hermann Maassen
• 1971–1982: Günther Erkel (SPD)
• 1982–1991: Klaus Kinkel (independent)
• 1991–1995: Ingo Kober
• 1996–1998: Heinz Lanfermann ( FDP )
• 1998–2005: Hansjörg Geiger (independent)
• 2005–2009: Lutz Diwell (SPD)
• 2009–2014: Birgit Grundmann (FDP)
• 2014–2016: Stefanie Hubig (SPD)
• 2016–2019: Christiane Wirtz (SPD)
• 2013–2020: Gerd Billen ( Greens )
• since 2019: Margaretha Sudhof (SPD)
• since 2020: Christian Kastrop

Former ministries

Former ministries with similar tasks were:

• Reich Justice Office 1877-1919 (German Empire)
• Reich Ministry of Justice 1919–1945 (German Reich)
• Ministry of Justice of the German Democratic Republic (1949–1990)

literature

• Federal Ministry of Justice (Ed.): From the Reichsjustizamt to the Federal Ministry of Justice. Festschrift for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Reich Ministry of Justice . With a foreword by Hans-Jochen Vogel. Bundesanzeiger Verlag, Cologne 1977, DNB  770445101 (476 pages).
• Gerd J. Nettersheim, Doron Kiesel (eds.), The Federal Ministry of Justice and the Nazi Past - Assessments and Perspectives, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2021, ISBN 978-3-525-35218-2 (400 pages)

Web links

• Official website of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection
• The Federal Ministers of Justice from 1949 . Federal Archives

Individual evidence

1. ^ BMJV organization. Retrieved May 20, 2021 . 
2. ↑ Federal budget. Retrieved May 20, 2021 . 
3. ↑ List of Abbreviations. (PDF; 49 kB) Abbreviations for the constitutional organs, the highest federal authorities and the highest federal courts. In: bund.de. Federal Office of Administration (BVA), accessed on August 14, 2016 . 
4. ↑ uwk-bmj.de ( Memento from September 25, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
5. ^ Manfred Görtemaker, Christoph Safferling (ed.): The Rosenburg. The Federal Ministry of Justice and the Nazi past - an inventory.  Göttingen 2013 
6. ^ Manfred Görtemaker, Christoph Safferling: The Rosenburg files. The Federal Ministry of Justice and the Nazi era . CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-69768-5 .
7. ^ Kurt Schilde: Review of: Görtemaker, Manfred; Safferling, Christoph (Ed.): The Rosenburg. The Federal Ministry of Justice and the Nazi past - an inventory.  Göttingen 2013 . In: H-Soz-Kult, July 30, 2013, <www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/rezbuecher-20887>.
8. ↑ Manfred Görtemaker / Christoph Safferling: "The Rosenburg files - The Federal Ministry of Justice and the Nazi era" . , bmjv.de (PDF); accessed on October 10, 2016.
9. ↑ Final report “The Rosenburg File” - “The judiciary collectively relieved itself” . Deutschlandradio Kultur ; accessed on October 10, 2016.
10. ↑ Nazi history: BMJV presents Rosenburg files - page 2 . In: Legal Tribune Online . ( lto.de [accessed on October 10, 2016]).