Law to protect young people from trash and dirty writing

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Basic data
Title: Law to protect young people from trash and dirty writing
Short title: Dirt and Trash Act, Trash and Dirt Act (both not official)
Type: Imperial Law
Scope: German Empire
Legal matter: Administrative law
Issued on: December 18, 1926
( RGBl. I p. 505)
Entry into force on: January 7, 1927
Expiry: March 31, 1935
(§ 1 G of April 10, 1935,
RGBl. I p. 541)
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The law for the preservation of youth from trashy and dirty writings was a German law to protect children and youth against youth-endangering writings, the so-called pulp fiction . It existed from 1926 to 1935.

content

To enforce the law, a test center for garbage and dirty writing was set up in Berlin and Munich . This decided which works were on the "List of dirty and trash writings". State central authorities and state youth welfare offices were entitled to apply. The supervisory authority for trash and dirty writings set up at the Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig acted as the revision instance , to which the Reich, the Länder and the authors and publishers concerned could apply for non-inclusion or deletion.

The sale of the listed and thus indexed fonts to people under the age of 18 was prohibited, as was advertising for them. They were not allowed to be sold to people over the age of 18 at the front door or on public property. They were not allowed to be displayed in shops, but only sold “under the counter”. Violations of the law were punishable by fines or imprisonment for up to one year.

The law did not define the criteria according to which fonts should be classified as “dirty” or “trash”. It only stipulated that political, ideological or religious expressions of opinion as such did not allow such a classification. In practice it was mainly groschen books and erotic literature that were put on the list.

history

With the establishment of the Weimar Republic , the dispute , which was already ruling in the German Empire , escalated as to whether and to what extent the state had to decide which media - i.e. writings, pictures, films, plays - should be accessible to the population and especially to the youth. While the SPD , DDP and also the parties further to the left ( USPD , later KPD ) spoke out against state intervention, the center and the DNVP in particular , but also the national liberal DVP , demanded “protection from the worst kind of people's devastation”, like the Protestant pastor and DNVP member of the Reichstag Reinhard Mumm called revealing films.

Mumm, who had already enforced an exception to the ban on censorship for films in Article 118 of the Weimar Constitution and was also the driving force behind the Reichslichtspielgesetz of May 12, 1920, was consequently one of the most vehement advocates of the Dirt and Trash Act.

Succession arrangements

Period of National Socialism: "List of publications unsuitable for libraries and young people"

With the establishment of the so-called Reich Chamber in the era of National Socialism , the rulers possessed an effective institution that controls the published literature in Germany. The Dirt and Trash Act was therefore repealed on April 10, 1935. According to a decree of the Reichsschrifttumskammer of April 25, 1935, the indexing of publications harmful to young people was to be carried out using "List 2 of publications unsuitable for libraries and young people", which, however, first appeared in 1940 (List 1 contained the " Burned Books "). A second, modified version appeared in 1943. The titles contained in List 2, to which z. For example, series of booklets such as “ Rolf Torring's Adventure ” or “ Sun Koh - The Legacy of Atlantis ” counted, were not allowed to be displayed in public, not lent in libraries and not made accessible to young people under 18 years of age.

Federal Republic of Germany: "Law on the Distribution of Writings Harmful to Young Persons"

After the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany , politicians from the CDU , CSU and DP in particular called for the reintroduction of a law on dirt and trash. In Rhineland-Palatinate , the state law for the protection of young people from dirt and trash ( GVBl. I p. 505) was passed on October 12, 1949 . This lasted until the law on the dissemination of writings harmful to minors of June 9, 1953 ( Federal Law Gazette 1953 I p. 377 ) finally came into force under federal law, on the basis of which the federal inspection agency for writings harmful to minors was created. Since 2003, the matter has been regulated with other areas of youth protection in the newly drafted Youth Protection Act.

Measures against junk literature in the GDR

In the GDR, the term was used ideologically for the discussion of social systems and was defined with the following reading ( Lexicon A – Z in two volumes. Leipzig 1958): Trash literature : “Literature that is worthless in form and content (e.g. mendacious-sentimental Romance novels) and, especially for young people, morally dangerous (e.g. gangster stories). The S. is vigorously opposed in the countries of the peace camp and eliminated above all by valuable youth literature, while in the capitalist countries it is partly put into the service of rearmament. ”In the schools of the GDR, the class leaders were taught annually about the ban carried out by so-called "dirty and trash literature".

See also

Text output

literature

  • Kurt Tucholsky alias Ignaz Wrobel: Old Bäumerhand, the horror of democracy. Commentary on the introduction of the Dirt and Trash Act. In: The world stage . December 14, 1926, No. 50, p. 916 ( textlog.de ).
  • Albert Hellwig : Protection of minors against junk literature. Law to protect young people from trash and dirty writing of December 18, 1926 (= Stilke's Law Library. No. 56). G. Stilke, Berlin 1927, DNB 579950549 .
  • Ute Dettmar: The fight against “dirt and trash”. In: Joachim Neuhaus: The children's and youth literature in the time of the Weimar Republic. Part 2. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-631-60058-0 , pp. 565-586, urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2013093011288 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim-Felix Leonhard u. a. (Ed.): Media Studies. A manual for the development of media and forms of communication (= manuals for linguistics and communication studies. Volume 15). Vol. 1. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1999, ISBN 3-11-013961-8 , p. 508.
  2. ↑ Christian Adam : Reading under Hitler. Authors, bestsellers, readers in the Third Reich. Galliani, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86971-027-3 , p. 206, urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2014092711364 .