Lex Soraya

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Lex Soraya is a popular name for a failed legislative proposal from 1958 in the Federal Republic of Germany . A law should criminalize insulting foreign heads of state by spreading allegations about their private life or their family members, insofar as these are likely to harm the relationship between the Federal Republic of Germany and the state concerned. The trigger was an article in Stern magazine on April 19, 1958 about the divorce of the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi from his second wife Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiari .

background

In April 1958, Stern authors Hans Wehrle and Gerd Heidemann published an article in which they claimed, among other things, that a coup against the Shah was imminent and speculated about the separation from his wife. The Iranian government saw this article as an inexcusable insult to the Shah. The then German ambassador in Tehran, Lutz Gielhammer , was appointed several times to the office of the Persian court marshal . In order to prevent further damage to the German-Iranian relationship, Federal Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano granted the necessary authorization to bring charges against the magazine for insult. The proceedings before the Hamburg Regional Court were discontinued.

Legislative proposals

In order to facilitate future criminal prosecution in similar cases, the Federal Cabinet submitted the draft of a Fifth Criminal Law Amendment Act in June 1958, which was intended to amend the Criminal Code accordingly. The draft law was heavily criticized in public as an inadmissible interference with the freedom of the press , in particular by the German Press Council , and was stopped when it was first discussed in the Bundesrat . The country representatives said that the planned regulations were so imprecise that the citizens could not see when they made a criminal offense and when not. This is tantamount to illegal censorship . The vote against the initiative was unanimous.

Insulting organs and representatives of foreign states is not regarded as an insult (Section 185 of the Criminal Code ), but was specifically regulated as a criminal offense against representatives of foreign states in Section 103 of the StGB. This criminal provision was abolished in 2017 after the Böhmermann affair with effect from January 1, 2018.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Wehrle, Gerd Heidemann: A thousand and one powers - Since Soraya left the imperial court, the strong men of Tehran have been fighting over love, oil and gold ducats . In: Der Stern, No. 16/1958, April 19, 1958, pp. 13-22
  2. ↑ Philipp Rock: Power, Markets and Morals - On the role of human rights in the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany in the sixties and seventies , Frankfurt a. M. (Peter Lang) 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-59705-7 , p. 185
  3. ↑ Federal Council Document 181/58
  4. ↑ LEX SORAYA - Truth not allowed . In: Der Spiegel, June 4, 1958
  5. ↑ Negotiations of the Federal Council 1958, p. 173
  6. ↑ Federal Law Gazette 2017 Part I No. 48, issued on July 21, 2017, page 2439