Twenty-ninth Criminal Law Amendment Act

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Basic data
Title: Twenty-ninth Criminal Law Amendment Act - §§ 175, 182 StGB
Abbreviation: 29th StrÄndG
Type: Federal law
Scope: Federal Republic of Germany
Issued on the basis of: Art. 74 para. 1 no. 1 GG
Legal matter: Criminal law
Issued on: May 31, 1994 ( BGBl. I p. 1168 )
Entry into force on: June 11, 1994
GESTA : C108
Weblink: Text of the law
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

With the twenty-ninth Criminal Law Amendment Act of May 31, 1994, the German Bundestag reformed German sexual law : The homosexuality of male adults was decriminalized, and the criminal protection of young people from sexual abuse was replaced by a uniform youth protection regulation .

structure

The shell law is divided into four articles.

Article 1: Amendment of the Criminal Code

Art. 1 No. 1 changed the section “Offenses against sexual self-determination” in the Criminal Code . Section 175 of the Criminal Code, which had criminalized homosexual acts between men for over a hundred years, was repealed. Article 1 No. 2 revised Section 182 of the Criminal Code. This resulted in an internal German legal alignment after reunification in 1990.

While Section 182 of the Criminal Code in the version valid until June 11, 1994 forbade “seducing a girl under sixteen years of age to have sex”, Section 149 of the GDR penalized adult men “who took advantage of moral immaturity with gifts and promises of advantages or similarly abused a young people aged between 14 and 16 years to exercise or with him intercourse make sexual intercourse similar acts. "§ 151 StGB-DDR, which 175 corresponded to the Criminal Code of the Federal Republic of Germany in about the §, was after a decision by the Supreme Court of the GDR on July 1, 1989.

For a transitional period after the establishment of German unity, Section 149 of the StGB-GDR continued to apply in the accession area, while Sections 175 and 182 of the old version of the Criminal Code were not applied there.

The new version of § 182 StGB standardized the criminal liability of sexual abuse of young people. According to this, a person over the age of 18 is punished for abusing a person under the age of 16 for certain sexual acts. As well as on the perpetrator and victim side, the offense was formulated in a gender-neutral way, so that boys were included in the protection area and women in the group of possible perpetrators. This also applies to perpetrators and victims of the same sex. This still covers homosexual acts, but obviously the protection of minors from sexual abuse is in the foreground, not the same-sex relationship as such. The social and psychological maturation process is protected, in which the young people up to the age of 16 should learn to deal with sexuality and to enter into partner relationships without developmental disabilities. At the same time, homosexual acts between adults are not punishable.

In 2008 the age of consent was increased to 18 years.

Article 2: Changes to Other Laws

Art. 2 concerned subsequent editorial changes in the Act on Voluntary Castration and Other Treatment Methods and in the Youth Labor Protection Act .

Article 3: Failure to apply the provisions of the Unification Treaty

With the entry into force of Section 182 of the new version of the Criminal Code, provisions for the entry into force of the old version in the acceding area had become obsolete and no longer applicable.

Article 4: Entry into force

The law came into effect on June 11, 1994. At the same time, Section 149 of the GDR Criminal Code became invalid.

history

Section 175 of the Criminal Code criminalized homosexuality between men for over a hundred years. During the National Socialist era , the paragraph was tightened. The Federal Republic adopted the tightened version from the Nazi era. It was valid until 1969 and was partially decriminalized as part of the major criminal law reform . The second defuse followed in 1973. The occasion was always a decision by the Federal Constitutional Court .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Draft of a Criminal Law Amendment Act - §§ 175, 182 StGB (StrÄndG) BT-Drs. 12/4584 of March 18, 1993, p. 4 ff.
  2. ↑ § 182 StGB in the November 24, 1973/28. November 1973 to June 11, 1994 version applicable. dejure.org, accessed April 16, 2020.
  3. ↑ Answer of the Federal Government to a Small Inquiry BT-Drs. 12/3036 of July 14, 1992.
  4. ↑ Christian Sachse, Stefanie Knorr, Benjamin Baumgart: Legal Background on the Sexual Abuse of Children and Adolescents in the GDR. In: Sexual abuse in the GDR. Sexual violence in childhood and adolescence: research as a contribution to coming to terms with it. Springer VS , Wiesbaden 2018, pp. 133–172
  5. ↑ § 182 StGB in the version valid from June 11, 1994
  6. ↑ Draft of a Criminal Law Amendment Act - §§ 175, 182 StGB (StrÄndG) BT-Drs. 12/4584 of March 18, 1993, p. 6 f.
  7. ↑ § 182 StGB in the version valid since November 4, 2008. dejure.org, accessed April 16, 2020.
  8. ↑ BVerfG, judgment of May 10, 1957 - 1 BvR 550/52 = BVerfGE 6, 389
  9. ↑ BVerfG, decision of October 2, 1973 - 1 BvL 7/72 = BVerfGE 36, 41
  10. ↑ Constantin Baron van Lijnden : Case law on § 175 StGB: The "unrestrained sexual need of homosexual men" Legal Tribune Online , May 12, 2016