Hereditary Health Court

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The hereditary health courts ( EGG ) were introduced in the German Reich by the law for the prevention of hereditary offspring of July 14, 1933 from January 1, 1934. In outwardly legal proceedings, they decided on applications for the compulsory sterilization of mentally and physically disabled people, patients in psychiatric hospitals and nursing homes and alcoholics and were thus a tool for the implementation of National Socialist racial hygiene , which degraded people to the mere object of state power of disposal. By May 1945, around 350,000 people had been forcibly sterilized due to the decisions of the hereditary health courts.

After the annexation of Austria in 1939, hereditary health courts were also set up there.

Proceedings before the hereditary health courts

The hereditary health court took action at the request of the “person to be rendered sterile”, his caretaker or - with the approval of the Guardianship Court - his legal representative (§ 2). Civil servant doctors and, in the case of inmates of a hospital, remedial, nursing home or penal institution , the head of the institution were also entitled to submit an application - subordinate to the law, but primarily in practice (Section 3).

Organizationally, the hereditary health court was attached to a district court , often for the district of a regional court . It had to be made up of a district judge as chairman, a civil servant doctor and another doctor who was licensed for the German Reich and who had to be particularly familiar with "genetic health theory" (Section 6, Paragraph 1). For the jurisdiction of the court, the general place of jurisdiction of the “person to be rendered sterile” was decisive (Section 5). The public was not allowed to take part in the proceedings of the hereditary health courts (Section 7 (1)).

The principle of official investigation (Section 7 (2)) applied to the proceedings before the hereditary health courts . The court decided based on its free conviction with a majority of votes based on oral deliberations (Section 8).

The court of appeal for the decisions of the Hereditary Health Court was the Higher Hereditary Health Court to be formed at the higher regional courts . It made a final decision (Section 10, Paragraph 3) on the complaints of the applicant, the civil servant doctor or the “infertile person” (Section 9) and was filled with members of the Higher Regional Court and the Court of First Instance.

The hereditary health courts also decided from 1935 to 1939 on the refusal or withdrawal of the certificate of fitness for marriage under the Marriage Health Act .

The subjects of the “hereditary health procedures” were for example “nonsense”, “schizophrenia”, “hereditary epilepsy” and “manic-depressive insanity” as well as “severe alcoholism”, more rarely “hereditary deafness”, “severe deformities”, “hereditary blindness” and “chorea” Huntington's ".

Repeal of court orders (1998) and ostracism of the law (2007)

By § 1 of the law for the repeal of sterilization decisions of the former hereditary health courts of August 25, 1998 (Article 2 of the law for the repeal of National Socialist judgments in the criminal justice system and of sterilization decisions of the former hereditary health courts of August 25, 1998, Federal Law Gazette I p. 2501 ff.) all decisions of the hereditary health courts that had ordered sterility are repealed. In its session on May 24, 2007, the German Bundestag outlawed the law for the prevention of hereditary offspring of July 14, 1933.

See also

literature

Web links

Legal text in the Reichsgesetzblatt

Bundestag printed matter

  • Government draft of a law to repeal sterilization decisions of the former hereditary health courts, BT-Drs. 13/10708 of May 13, 1998 (PDF file; 89 kB)
  • Application of the Bundestag faction Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen to annul the Hereditary Health Act, BT-Drs. 16/1171 of April 5, 2006 (PDF file; 53 kB)
  • Answer of the federal government to a small question of the parliamentary group Die Linke on the annulment of the hereditary health law, BT-Drs. 16/2384 of August 10, 2006 (PDF file; 60 kB)
  • Motion of the Bundestag parliamentary groups of the CDU / CSU and SPD to ostracize the law for the prevention of hereditary offspring, BT-Drs. 16/3811 of December 13, 2006 (PDF file; 74 kB)
  • Report and recommendation for a resolution by the Legal Committee of the German Bundestag on motions for the declaration of invalidity of the Hereditary Health Act, BT-Drs. 16/5450 of May 23, 2007 (PDF file; 116 kB)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ RGBl. 1933 I p. 529 ; Entry into force: January 1, 1934
  2. ↑ Application by the Bundestag parliamentary groups of the CDU / CSU and SPD to outlaw the law on the prevention of genetically ill offspring ( BT-Drs. 16/3811 , PDF, 76 kB).
  3. ^ Government draft of a law to repeal sterilization decisions of the former hereditary health courts , BT-Drs. 13/10708 (PDF; 461 kB).
  4. ↑ Ordinance on the introduction of the law for the prevention of hereditary offspring and the law for the protection of the hereditary health of the German people in the Ostmark of November 14, 1939 ( RGBl. I pp. 2230–2232 , also GBlfdLÖ. No. 1438/1939); Entry into force: January 1, 1940
  5. ^ Prussia: Implementing Ordinance of January 29, 1934 ( GS p. 52 ); Bavaria: Executive Ordinance of December 21, 1933 ( GVBl. P. 522 )
  6. ^ First ordinance for the implementation of the Marriage Health Act of November 29, 1935 ( RGBl. I p. 1419 )
  7. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945 (= Würzburg medical historical research. Supplement 3). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-88479-932-0 (also: Dissertation Würzburg 1995), pp. 125–132 (on the hereditary health jurisdiction of Main Franconia from 1933 to 1940).
  8. ↑ BGBl. 1998 I p. 2501 ; Entry into force: September 1, 1998.
  9. ↑ Plenary minutes 16/100 of the German Bundestag of May 24, 2007, agenda item 27, p. 10285 (PDF; 2.5 MB); The Parliament, issue 22/23 2007 .