Incitement of war and boycott
The first constitution of the German Democratic Republic from 1949, in Article 6, declared war and boycotts to be a crime within the meaning of the Criminal Code. Until 1957, the GDR judiciary used Article 6 by interpreting it as a replacement for the missing state protection paragraphs, including to impose the death penalty .
Use during the existence of the GDR
In the GDR - as in all of Germany - the Reich Criminal Code of 1871 was initially applicable without the state protection paragraphs that had been repealed by the Allied Control Council . In the 1950s, the public prosecutor's offices essentially subsumed political crimes under Article 6 (2) of the constitution. There it said:
- "Incitement to boycott democratic institutions and organizations, incitement to murder against democratic politicians, expressing hatred of faith, race, and people, military propaganda as well as incitement to war and all other acts directed against equality are crimes within the meaning of the penal code . Exercising democratic rights within the meaning of the constitution is not a boycott. "
The provision was formulated in the sense of a general clause in such a way that everything under it could be subsumed as a criminal offense that was directed against the interests of the SED in daily political events . According to a decision of the Supreme Court of the GDR (OG) in 1950, it was “a directly applicable criminal law” despite the lack of a penalty .
An example of the application of Article 6 was the trial of Johann Burianek , who, according to this interpretation, was the first to be sentenced to death by the OG and was executed with the guillotine on August 2, 1952 in Dresden.
When the Criminal Law Supplementary Act of December 11, 1957 had created extensive state protection provisions, the term boycotts disappeared from legal practice with the interpretation of Article 6 . It was no longer included in the GDR's penal code of January 12, 1968 and in the “socialist” constitution of the GDR from 1968 . Nonetheless, the 1968 Penal Code adopted the relevant criminal offenses. "Anti-state agitation" (Section 106) was punished with imprisonment from one to five years, in serious cases from two to 10 years. In addition to the offense of “defamation of the state” (Section 220), the chapter “Criminal offenses against the state order” contained, among other things, the “Impairment of state or social activity” (Section 214), hooliganism (Section 215) and the “formation of an association to prosecute unlawful persons Objectives "(§ 218) and the" illegal establishment of contact "(§ 219). The 2nd and 3rd Criminal Law Amendment Acts gradually increased the scope of punishment for these offenses.
The songwriter Bettina Wegner also ran into legal difficulties during the Prague Spring . It was similar u. a. with the civil rights activist Roland Jahn .
Handling of convictions for incitement to war and boycott after reunification
According to the highest court case law of the Federal Court of Justice , the very broad interpretation of the offense of war and boycott incitement by the public prosecutor's office in the GDR may not constitute a deliberate perversion of justice . According to the case law of the Federal Court of Justice, this was an interpretation that is unacceptable from the point of view of the rule of law and which objectively fulfills the offense of perverse law. On the other hand, from the point of view of the GDR judiciary , it was a legal opinion approved by the GDR Supreme Court , to which the public prosecutor in the GDR was bound by its strict instructions.
It can behave differently with judges if they inappropriately overstretched the offense of incitement to war and boycott or if the sentence imposed was unbearably disproportionate to the offense sentenced, for example the death penalty was pronounced for incitement to war and boycott.
literature
- Uwe Wesel : History of Law. From the early forms to the present. 2nd revised and expanded edition. Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47543-4 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Constitution of the German Democratic Republic of October 7, 1949
- ↑ OG, judgment of October 4, 1950, Az. 1 Zst. (I) 3/50, OGSt 1, 33–44 = NJ 1950, 452 ff.
- ↑ Criminal Law Amendment Act of December 11, 1957 ( Memento of the original of June 19, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Rita Sélitrenny: Double surveillance. Secret service investigative methods in the GDR remand centers . Ch.links, Berlin 2003, p. 49.
- ↑ BGH, judgment of July 26, 1999, Az. 5 StR 94/99, NStZ 1999, 361
- ^ BGH, judgment of November 16, 1995, Az. 5 StR 747/94, BGHSt 41, 317
