Contact debt

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Contact guilt is a term from German post-war law and relates to the question of whether a person can be proven to be hostile to the constitution .

The accusation of contact guilt emphasizes the external fact of a "contact" with rightly or wrongly politically suspected persons as such, regardless of the nature of the relationships or the content of those that occurred on the occasion of the "contact" Have had conversations. Instead of quoting the defamed person himself, characterizing his actions, naming his motives , places where he has stayed or people he has spoken to become publication organs in which he has written, events in which he has spoken , Organizations in which he participates politically suspected and then drawn a conclusion about the political attitudes of the attacked himself.

Thus the contact guilt construct is part of the broad spectrum of argumentum ad hominem , that is, it is not the thing that is attacked, but the person. It is a classic pseudo-argument and in any case unsuitable for providing legal evidence in criminal proceedings because it is not based on facts.

The term was established especially in the 1950s with organizational and personal connections of non-communist groups or individuals of the West German extra-parliamentary opposition to the KPD or National Front and SED .

Chief Federal Prosecutor Carlo Wiechmann cited the construction of the contact guilt to justify the anti- constitutionality of the working group for German understanding under the direction of Wilhelm Elfes in the indictment brought against Elfes and Friedrich Maase in 1956 for the establishment and promotion of an anti- constitutional association or a criminal association with intent to endanger the state.

However, the term was only coined afterwards (1962?) By Heinrich Hannover . It is also used in connection with McCarthyism (English: guilt by association ).

Since the so-called radical decree, employment in the public service has been dependent on the applicant's willingness to stand up for the free democratic basic order at any time . Even without their own membership in an anti-constitutional organization, some applicants were denied this willingness due to their contact with alleged anti-constitutionalists.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl A. Otto : APO - Extra-parliamentary opposition in sources and documents (1960-1970) , Cologne 1989, p. 91.
  2. ^ Karl Heinz Ness: The political criminal law of the Federal Republic and the reunification requirement of the Basic Law, Hamburg 1969, p. 98.
  3. ↑ Gunther Rojahn: Elfes - More than a judgment. Loading and unloading of a political issue Berlin, Univ.-Diss. 2009, p. 15, p. 89 ff.
  4. ^ Heinrich Hannover: Political defamation of the opposition in the free-democratic constitutional state , Dortmund-Barop 1962
  5. ↑ Klaus Farin: The Skins. Myth and Reality. Christoph Links Verlag , Berlin, 1997
  6. ↑ Christoph Gunkel: radical decree: The enemy in the classroom Der Spiegel , January 27, 2012
  7. ↑ Manfred Aschke , Michael Breitbach: About contact guilt and the constitutional requirement of the right enemy image. At the same time a comment on the Häberlein judgment of the VG Ansbach and the Nieß judgment of the Bavarian VGH. Democracy and Law 1978, pp. 3–14 ( PDF )