Surreptitious cohabitation outside of marriage

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Original version in the Reichsgesetzblatt 1871

Surreptitious cohabitation outside of marriage was a criminal offense of the German Criminal Code until 1969 and in § 179 StGB a. F. regulated. The last version of the paragraph read as follows:

(1) Anyone who induces a woman to allow cohabitation by pretending to be a marriage ceremony or by arousing or using another error in which she considered cohabitation to be a married couple is punished with imprisonment for up to five years.

(2) If mitigating circumstances exist, a prison sentence of no less than six months shall apply.

(3) Persecution only occurs upon request.

In the original version, which was already part of the Criminal Code of the North German Confederation of 1870, instead of a “woman” there was also talk of a “woman”. This was changed in the Federal Republic of 1953. The relevant criminal offense was abolished in the GDR in 1968 with the introduction of the penal code . In the Federal Republic of Germany it was deleted with the Great Penal Reform in 1969.

Fall of 1966

One of the best-known cases of the application of this provision was the conviction of a 24-year-old German army corporal in Trier in 1966 to a prison sentence of eight months. Due to the extraordinary facts, the case is considered a curiosity in German judicial history:

On New Year's Eve, the perpetrator walked up to the house of a married couple while drunk because he suspected that his former girlfriend was having sexual intercourse with the man there. When he saw a window with a burning light, he got in, but instead only found his 34-year-old wife alone, who was already asleep and had left the bedside lamp on for her husband, whom she was expecting soon. The perpetrator switched off the light, closed the door with the key stuck inside and went to the bed. The woman woke up, saw the outline of a man and asked him to lie down in bed with her. The perpetrator complied with this request and the two had sexual intercourse. Then the woman sent the perpetrator away, whereupon he left the bedroom.

The woman alleged in court that it was only after intercourse that she realized that the man was not her husband. Although the perpetrator, at 1.80 m, was significantly taller and also slimmer than the 1.65 m tall husband, the husband was also a thigh amputee and the defendant said he went to bed fully dressed, the jury of the Trier District Court believed the woman completely and sentenced the perpetrator as requested. The appeal before the Trier Regional Court and the appeal before the Koblenz Higher Regional Court were both unsuccessful.

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Exploitation of an error about the person of the sleeper. In: WissMitt.com. December 14, 2014, accessed February 13, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b Error: Light and Voices . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1966, pp. 78-79 ( online ).