Law regulating the legal relationships of persons falling under Article 131 of the Basic Law

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Basic data
Title: Law regulating the legal relationships of persons falling under Article 131 of the Basic Law
Short title: 131 law (not official)
Abbreviation: G 131 (not official)
Type: Federal law
Scope: Federal Republic of Germany           
Legal matter: Civil service law
References : 2036-1
Original version from: May 11, 1951
( Federal Law Gazette I p. 307 )
Effective on: April 1, 1951
New announcement from: October 13, 1965
( Federal Law Gazette I, p. 1685 )
Last change by: Art. 6 G of December 27, 1993
( Federal Law Gazette I p. 2378, 2409 )
Effective date of the
last change:
January 1, 1994
(Art. 11 G of December 27, 1993)
Expiry: October 1, 1994
(Art. 3 G of September 20, 1994,
Federal Law Gazette I pp. 2442, 2452 )
GESTA : B68
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The law regulating the legal relationships of persons falling under Article 131 of the Basic Law was a federal law for the execution of the regulatory mandate in Article 131 of the Basic Law from 1951. It regulated the legal relationships of civil servants in the Federal Republic of Germany , which was founded in 1949 , which was before May 8th In 1945 they were appointed civil servants and then left without being re-used or cared for since then .

131er was colloquially called the group of people benefited by the law. According to § 1 to 4 of the law, the "displaced members of the public service and dissolved offices" included a. Civil servants , university lecturers and judges from the expulsion areas , civil servants in no longer existing administrations and professional soldiers as well as all persons who were initially not employed or not employed in accordance with their previous position due to their work in the German Reich 1933 to 1945 according to the law for the liberation from National Socialism and militarism and no longer received appropriate care.

This also included employees and workers as well as their survivors .

The federal government, states and municipalities as well as the Federal Railroad and the Federal Post Office were obliged to fill at least 20% of their posts with 131s .

Constitutional regulation

Art. 131 GG reads:

The legal relationships of persons, including refugees and displaced persons, who were in the public service on May 8, 1945, who left for reasons other than civil service or collective bargaining law and have not yet been used or not used in accordance with their previous position, are to be regulated by federal law. The same applies to persons, including refugees and displaced persons, who were entitled to pension on May 8, 1945 and who no longer receive any or no such care for reasons other than civil servant or collective bargaining law. Unless otherwise regulated by state law, legal claims cannot be asserted until the federal law comes into force.

Legal historical background

In the Parliamentary Council and in the Bundestag , no clarity could initially be achieved about the continued existence of the civil servant relationships established under National Socialism. In accordance with the ideological re-establishment of the “political” civil servant relationship in the German Civil Service Act of 1937, National Socialist legal doctrine had emphasized the civil servant's ties to the party and consequently the decisive influence of the NSDAP in civil service law. After the capitulation of Nazi Germany and the prohibition of the NSDAP, which was finally dissolved and declared illegal under Section XI No. 38 of the Control Council Proclamation No. 2 of September 20, 1945 and in the Control Council Act No. 2 of October 10, 1945 , the civil servant relationships of the National Socialist state were deprived of their legal basis.

The Control Council Act No. 34 of August 20, 1946, which was enacted on the basis of the Control Council Proclamation No. 2, had dissolved all German armed forces on land, at sea and in the air, with all their branches, staffs and institutions and declared them illegal. All legal provisions on the legal and economic position of members of the armed forces or former members of the armed forces have been repealed.

The regulation of the claims of about 430,000 to 450,000 people who, according to a first count in January 1950, fell under Article 131 of the Basic Law, including the former professional soldiers as the largest group, followed by civil servants from the former German eastern regions, the GDR and others States and civil servants from the western zones who were dismissed after denazification was the most pressing civil service issue in the 1950s. Anyone who could not assert claims under the Federal Pension Act did not have a material livelihood. Although the federal states provided voluntary services, due to their unequal financial strength and the unequal distribution of refugees, they were hardly in a position to find an appropriate solution.

In the opinion of the Federal Constitutional Court of 1953 , the direct and indirect civil servant relationships with the German Reich expired on May 8, 1945. The civil servant relationships established or restructured in the National Socialist state were by their very nature unsuitable for outlasting the National Socialist form of government. In contrast to this stood the view of the Federal Court of Justice , namely its President Hermann Weinkauff , according to which the change in the form of government could not affect the civil servant relationship existing vis-à-vis the state and that civil servant relationships could be assumed to continue beyond May 8, 1945.

Art. 131 GG demanded a federal law regulation in favor of those civil servants who have resigned since May 8, 1945 "for reasons other than civil servant or collective bargaining law" and who have not yet been employed or have not been employed in accordance with their previous position, have no longer received or received any corresponding provision Had found a livelihood in a private-sector employment relationship.

This mainly affected the displaced persons and the members of disbanded agencies. But even with the existing authorities in the western zones of occupation, many members of the public service who were removed from their office or workplace on the basis of orders from the military government for the purpose of political review were not re-employed in the public service. On the other hand, the officials of the NSDAP , its branches and affiliated associations were not recorded, if only because they were not classified as civil servants in the sense of state law even under National Socialist legislation, and the NSDAP was not a corporation under public law in the traditional sense, they weren't was subject to state supervision and its officials were not “public servants”. Finally, the persons who had lost their civil servant status before May 8, 1945 under the Law on the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service were not recorded either.

The purpose of Art. 131 GG was to take care of the large group of civil servants through uniformly applicable federal law who had lost their rights through the collapse of their rights or who had only become civil servants during the National Socialist era and therefore never had a civil servant relationship governed by the rule of law had.

In implementing this provision, the German Bundestag passed the law regulating the legal relationships of persons falling under Article 131 of the Basic Law in 1951. Regardless of their personal behavior, the legislature granted the civil servants largely new legal claims against the democratic state, insofar as they were not burdened by particularly intensive involvement in National Socialist acts of injustice. Reinhard Heydrich's widow, Lina Heydrich , did not receive any civil service benefits under the G 131 because of her husband's activity as head of the Gestapo and his leading involvement in the final solution to the Jewish question .

From 1948 to 1977 the federation of displaced civil servants existed in the German Civil Service Association (Verbaost).

Legal regulation

The German Bundestag passed the law regulating the legal relationships of persons falling under Article 131 of the Basic Law on April 10, 1951 with the consent of all parties in the Bundestag including the KPD and DRP without dissenting votes and with only two abstentions.

The so-called 131 law said that all public employees who had not been classified as main culprits ( war criminals ) or accused ( activists , militarists and beneficiaries ) in the denazification process could be reinstated. According to § 10, every civil servant who belonged to the group of people in Article 131 of the Basic Law and who was fit for service was allowed to continue to use the official title he was entitled to with the addition of reuse ( for example, or also for example ). Professional soldiers were allowed to use the rank they were entitled to with the addition of “ out of service” ( retired ) . Officers who were to be reused in the Bundeswehr were checked for their personal and personal suitability by a committee of personnel experts.

The law defined the eligible and non-eligible group of people and regulated the reintegration of the "displaced members of the public service and members of dissolved services" into other areas of public administration as well as their retirement benefits. All administrations were obliged to fill at least twenty percent of the positions from this group of people. Relatives or survivors of members of the Secret State Police (Gestapo) were explicitly excluded from the group of beneficiaries according to Section 3 No. 4. Section 67 of the 131 Act, however, stipulated that officials who had been transferred from another agency to the Gestapo, the Waffen SS or the eavesdropping service were supposed to have stayed in their original “clean” authority, which was the case Exclusion according to § 3 No. 4 counteracted.

The announcements of the new versions of the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Sixth Ordinance for the Implementation of the Law Regulating the Legal Relationships of Persons falling under Article 131 of the Basic Law of June 10, 1955 regulated the claims to classification and retirement pensions in detail.

Between 1951 and 1954, the federal states passed corresponding final denazification laws.

According to Art. 6 of the Unification Treaty of August 31, 1990, Art. 131 GG was not put into force in the accession area after reunification . According to Art. 8 in conjunction with Annex I to the Unification Treaty, this also applies to G 131.

The law regulating the legal relationships of persons falling under Article 131 of the Basic Law was repealed on October 1, 1994.

literature

  • Albrecht Scholz, Thomas Barth, Anna-Sophia Pappai, Axel Wacker: The fate of the teaching staff of the Medical Faculty in Breslau after the expulsion in 1945/46. In: Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen 24, 2005, pp. 497-533, here: pp. 517 ff. (The effects of Article 131 of the Basic Law) .
  • Michael Kirn : Constitutional Overthrow or Legal Continuity? The position of jurisprudence after 1945 in relation to the Third Reich, in particular the conflicts over the continuity of civil servants' rights and Article 131 of the Basic Law . Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-02736-1 (also Diss. Univ. Cologne 1972).
  • Anna Sprockhoff, Torben Fischer: 131 legislation . In: Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz (Hrsg.): Lexicon of "coping with the past" in Germany. Debate and Discourse History of National Socialism after 1945 . Bielefeld: Transcript, 2007 ISBN 978-3-89942-773-8 , p. 94ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Andreas Baum: The Allies' Line: The Wehrmacht was banned 60 years ago Deutschlandfunk , August 20, 2006
  2. Matthias Molt: From the Wehrmacht to the Bundeswehr: Personnel Continuity and Discontinuity in the Development of the German Armed Forces 1955–1966 Heidelberg, Univ.-Diss. 2007, p. 211.
  3. BVerfG, judgment of December 17, 1953 - 1 BvR 147/52
  4. Udo Wengst: Officials between reform and tradition . Droste Verlag , Düsseldorf 1988, pp. 152-252.
  5. See claims from the statutory pension insurance for employees of the NSDAP and other criminal organizations at the time of National Socialism . Elaboration of the Scientific Services of the German Bundestag from January 9, 2013
  6. BVerfG, judgment of December 17, 1953 - 1 BvR 147/52 = BVerfGE 3, 58, margin no. 82, 183 ff., 192, 231
  7. Plenary Minutes, p. 5110 (PDF)
  8. See also Karsten Jedlitschka: Old boys network. The "Association of non-officiating (ousted) university teachers" and its lobbying policy in Bavaria using the example of the University of Munich. In: Elisabeth Kraus (ed.): The University of Munich in the Third Reich. Essays. Part II. Herbert Utz Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8316-0726-6 , pp. 571–613, here p. 580 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  9. § 53 (5) of the law regulating the legal relationships of persons falling under Article 131 of the Basic Law
  10. BVerfG, decision February 19, 1957 - 1 BvR 357/52
  11. Martin Rath: The "131 Law": The Inclusion of Nazi Officials Legal Tribune Online , February 19, 2017
  12. Federal Law Gazette I p. 279
  13. ^ The denazification Scientific Services of the German Bundestag , elaboration of September 27, 2011, p. 15.
  14. Federal Law Gazette II pp. 885, 889
  15. Unification Agreement of August 31, 1990 Annex I, Chap. II Subject B: Administration Section I No. 1–5. verassungen.de, accessed on October 2, 2016.
  16. Art. 3 of the law amending the civil servants 'supply law, the soldiers' supply law and other supply law provisions (BeamtVGÄndG 1993) of September 20, 1994 ( Federal Law Gazette I p. 2442 )