Danger to the community
In legal language, actions and situations that pose a threat not only to specific individuals but to the general public are referred to as dangerous to the public.
An act is dangerous to the public if the perpetrator is not able to control it safely in the individual case and it is likely to endanger the life and limb of several people.
Examples are:
- the use of explosives
- uncontrolled shots from a gun
- Fire near a crowd
- Throwing objects from motorway bridges
- Poisoning of water, e.g. B. in water pipes
Criminal law
In criminal law in Germany in §§ 306-323c constitute Criminal Code laid down procedures homicidal offenses (eg. Arson , dangerous intervention in the road ).
In Germany, resources that are dangerous to the public are a qualifying feature of murder (Section 211 of the Criminal Code, Paragraph 2).
The Austrian criminal law expressly refers to the offense of public hazards .
Institutional placement because of public danger
The custody laws of the German federal states regulate the institutional accommodation of publicly dangerous persons, i. H. those who endanger public safety and order. The procedure is determined by §§ 271 ff. FamFG .
History
According to Klaus Dörner, public danger is one of the reasons for internment, which was already practiced as a state concept mainly in Germany through absolutism .
Reason of state
After the catastrophe of the Thirty Years' War it was in the interests of the feudal state to pursue both population and economic goals well into the 18th century. This took place in the form of the Peuplierungspolitik and mercantilism . The objects of exclusion were the poor, beggars, vagabonds, anti-social, immoral, prostitutes, lustful people, orphans, lunatics, the chronically ill and other existence contrary to reason. In Germany, in contrast to the western countries, the eliminating institutions were varied due to the national differences. There were, for example, breeding, correction, custody, supply, work, orphanages, foundlings, foreigners, fools and madhouses. In France, the Hôpital général followed this policy as a similar instrument. In Germany, instruction in the houses mentioned was mainly carried out by the civil servants. An administration proceeding according to sensible principles had to feel provoked in particular by the seemingly uninfluenceable irrationality of the insane and had to be convinced of their exemplary public danger. With the concept of public danger and the associated occasion of compulsory internment in one of the workhouses , u. a. the social prerequisites are laid by politics in order to advance the increasingly accelerating development towards industrialization more quickly. Attempts were made to use every worker by initially trying to include the named group of people compulsorily in industrial productivity. To involve partially bound family members in the social production process. This period lasted over half a century in Germany from around 1780–1840.
Change in family structures
Thus, one of the prerequisites for accelerated industrial development was the transformation of the family structures that had been common up to that point. Within this group, responsibility was traditionally at least partially assumed for the socially weaker population, now perceived as socially stressful. In order to build a self-sufficient economy it was necessary to transform subjects into married couples, workers and taxpayers as far as possible and if necessary by force . This change was also expressed in a state z. T. forced women and child labor . A similar instrument that disorganized family structures was the compulsory service . An expression of the political abstinence enforced in this way or an attitude related only to the respective ruler's interests was e.g. B. also the educated middle class . It followed the Frederician principle: "Everything for the people, nothing through the people."
Confessional situation
The establishment of the aforementioned public institutions also emerged as a necessary consequence of a policy of secularization . Monasteries, monasteries and other ecclesiastical possessions had previously secured a large part of the poor and beggars. On the other hand, the enlightened churches no longer considered it necessary to declare the insane as witches or demonically possessed, either for theological reasons or to demonstrate their worldly power. With the development of Protestantism in Germany, even after the Peace of Augsburg, the freedom to choose a denomination had by no means prevailed ( Cuius regio, eius religio ).
Cooperatives
According to Dörner, the disintegration of cooperative structures, which had proven themselves as pillars in professional associations, guilds and neighborhoods since the Middle Ages, is to be seen as a consequence of mercantilist rationalization policy. Through the Reichsgesetz of 1731 passed by the Reichstag for the reform of the handicraft industry, the guilds were deprived of almost all independent actions, orders and rights in favor of the state. The tradition of workhouses and the associated forced labor has been preserved linguistically, in that it was often related to cloth manufacture and, above all, to the times of need of the spinning mills in Silesia (1761–1763) during the Seven Years' War .
Linguistic relics
The colloquial term " spinning " goes back to the forced labor practiced in the workhouses since the 17th century. In the 19th century the misery of the Silesian weavers a. a. through Heinrich Heine's poem The Silesian Weavers became proverbial for the social question .
The linguistic legacy of absolutism as the age of reason is also reflected in the concept of mental illnesses , which were viewed as expressions of irrational behavior and thus justified compulsory intervention by the state. Schelling referred to the infection of the body by the sick or lost spirit as the highest corruption. In the final analysis, Schelling's ideas that supported the state because they were uniformed in the sense of the philosophy of identity prevailed above all against Hegel . This does not take into account the fact that there can be a difference between common sense and the state of mind . The linguistic usage of mental illness has been preserved in Germany, especially in jurisprudence, to this day.
Political self-confidence
On the one hand, the state's concept of public danger prevented the development of political self-confidence not only in the internees specifically affected by this, but rather in the general population as a result of the widespread fear of absolutist exclusion. - Such a self-confidence could develop much earlier in England and France than in Germany. In Germany there was hardly a literary public until well into the second half of the 18th century. Here - unlike in England and France - the compulsory character of public life and its institutions became apparent, as here the public “to a certain extent represented an institution itself, whose inmates from the state and the church also through rewards, but above all through compulsion to rationalize and work ethic ". This was shown u. a. also in the state church organization of German Protestantism, see Chap. Confessional situation . Unlike in England, it also hindered the political independence of civil society in Germany. On the other hand, measures of protectionism and dirigism by the authorities were also a consequence of Germany's delayed economic development vis-à-vis its western neighbors. It was a consequence of national and economic fragmentation, the delayed rationalization of large estates by the nobility and the non-free trade constitution. When bourgeois society constituted itself vis-à-vis the state, a new self-confidence was shaped by the capitalist production conditions; on the other hand, bourgeois ideas penetrated the private world, which had hitherto been strictly separated from the public . According to Hannah Arendt, this can be seen as the beginning of modern mass society and as a condition for the rise of behaviorism . The new society is determined by the fact that deviations and fluctuations in behavior, which previously could be accepted in the context of private activities and especially modes of production, were no longer acceptable. It is important to level them out or, in extreme cases, to destroy them completely as a characteristic of common pests ( Action T4 ).
Differentiation of the insane
The development of psychiatry came less from a theory of mental illness than from a utilitarian paradigm . The differentiation of the insane took place in Germany rather as the last link in the reform of the prisons, which is connected with the name of the pastor Heinrich Balthasar Wagnitz . Since the institutions of coercion proved to be inefficient everywhere or remained without any apparent success in terms of the services they provided financially, the reason arose to adapt the previous concept of public danger better to the circumstances. To increase work efficiency, a distinction was made between curable and incurable, workable and non-workable insane. The latter were increasingly left to medical care and left to the private sector. In accordance with the teachings of classical economics , attempts were made to introduce more liberal working conditions. An attempt was made to get beyond the prison atmosphere. In France, similar attempts were more related to the political upheavals since 1789. Everywhere the poor lunatics were freed from their chains. A new type of institution was created. Among many others, the York Retreat was founded by William Tuke (1796), the Salpêtrière in Paris by Philippe Pinel (1793), a hospital by Vincenzo Chiarugi in Tuscany (1788), the Fool's Tower in Vienna as part of an imperial reform (1784); a "first mental health institution in Germany" in Bayreuth by Johann Gottfried Langermann by way of the Prussian insane reform after the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss , which made the number of excluded and the associated administrative need for action clear (1805).
See also
Individual evidence
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↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Klaus Dörner : Citizens and Irre . On the social history and sociology of science in psychiatry. [1969] Fischer Taschenbuch, Bücher des Wissens, Frankfurt / M 1975, ISBN 3-436-02101-6 ;
(a) pp. 192, 196, 199, 243 f. on “Public Danger” and “Securing the Public”;
(b) pp. 190–195 on Stw. “Political Objectives in the 18th Century”;
(c) p. 190 f. Re. “Change in family structures”;
(d) pp. 191, 196 on stw. “Denominational situation”;
(e) p. 191 on tax "Cooperatives";
(f) S. 194 on Stw. "Linguistic relics - forced labor in› Spinnereien '' ", pp. 262 f., 270 on Stw." Conceptual history of ›Mental illness‹ in the age of reason ";
(g) p. 193 to chap. “Political self-confidence” Literal quote;
(h) p. 196 on head. “Protestantism”;
(i) p. 195 f. to Stw. "Belated economic development";
(j) p. 190 on Stw. "Destruction of Unreason", p. 194 on quotation from Hannah Arendt;
(k) p. 196 f., 242 ff. on stw. “Differentiation of the mad”. - ↑ Werner Sombart : The modern capitalism . 2nd edition, Munich 1916/17, Vol. I; P. 815 on “Cloth manufacture”.
- ^ Günther Drosdowski: Etymology . Dictionary of origin of the German language; The history of German words and foreign words from their origins to the present. 2nd edition, Dudenverlag, Volume 7, Mannheim 1997, ISBN 3-411-20907-0 ; P. 693 on Wb.-Lemma "Spinnen".
- ^ Helmuth Plessner : The belated nation . Stuttgart 1962; P. 41
- ^ Hans Mottek : Economic history of Germany . Vol. II, Berlin 1964; P. 76
- ^ Hannah Arendt : Vita activa or from active life . Edition cited by Dörner: Stuttgart 1960 and newer edition: 3rd edition, R. Piper, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-492-00517-9 ; Dörner quote p. 47, context of the quote: pp. 38–49 to chap. 2, The space of the public and the space of the private, § 6 The emergence of society.
- ↑ Erwin H. Ackerknecht : Brief history of psychiatry . 3rd edition, Enke, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-432-80043-6 ; P. 35 f.