Reich Nature Conservation Act

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Proclamation of the Reich Nature Conservation Act in the Reich Law Gazette 1935

The Reich Nature Conservation Act ( RNG ) of June 26, 1935 ( RGBl. IS 821) regulated for the first time in Germany the official interests of nature conservation , defined protection zones and introduced the concept of landscape protection area . The protection of species for plants and non-huntable animals was also enshrined in law for the first time. The RNG made to appropriate the entry into force state laws ( law for the care and preservation of the native nature in 1954 GDR , Federal Nature Conservation Act 1976 BRD , Law on Nature Conservation and Landscape Development 1997 Austria ) the basis for state nature protection actions in Germany and Austria.

origin

The roots of German nature conservation law go back to the 19th century, when the utilization and stress of natural resources increased due to technical progress, industrialization and urbanization and at the same time there was an awareness of the need for protection of nature. At the same time, the concept of the natural monument , which goes back to Alexander von Humboldt , was established for landscape elements such as caves, watercourses, rock formations, but also old trees and groups of trees. A further development of this view was reflected in the first nature conservation law constitutional norm in Germany, Article 150 of the Weimar Constitution , so it says there in sentence 1:

"The monuments of art, history and nature as well as the landscape enjoy the protection and care of the state."

This norm was classified in the second main part under the 4th section: "Education and School", under the generic term of monument protection , the protection of cultural assets such as art, historical and natural monuments were summarized. The concept of the natural monument could - unlike in German nature conservation law - "also include larger, two-dimensional, aesthetically or scientifically relevant natural substrates" and thus also named the landscape as a protected asset. Another common term that was subsumed under the preservation of monuments was heritage protection , which was both aesthetically and scientifically oriented, but also politically and socially oriented.

But the constitutional state goal of nature conservation did not go beyond a single sentence during the Weimar Republic. Although work was carried out on uniform systematic legislation for the empire, the introduction of a nature conservation law failed both because of property issues and because of the relationship between the central state and the states. It was only after 1933 that the Nazi state was able to assert itself centrally, both against the concerns of the states and against economic and agricultural interests.

legislation

In the years 1933 to 1935 the Nazi regime enacted extensive new legal regulations in the field of nature and environmental protection . In doing so, it was possible to fall back on existing legal regulations such as state laws and police regulations of the states as well as draft laws from the time of the Weimar Republic. The traditions from the Weimar Republic were continued in nature conservation policy and legislation.

The legal advisor and cave researcher Benno Wolf worked out the first drafts for a nature conservation law in Germany as early as the Weimar period. Due to his Jewish beliefs, he had to leave the State Agency for the Preservation of Natural Monuments in 1933 , and in 1942 he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp , where he died in 1943. The natural scientist Hans Klose took over Wolf's preparatory work and completed the design, which gave him the title “Father of Nature Conservation Act ".

On June 26, 1935, the Reich Nature Conservation Act (RNG) was passed by Adolf Hitler on behalf of the German Reich government and then promulgated in Reich Law Gazette No. 68 of July 1, 1935 (RGBl. IS 821). Parts of it came into force the day after, i.e. on July 2, 1935, while it came into force in its entirety on October 1, 1935. The RNG implementing ordinance was issued on October 31, 1935 and supplemented on March 18, 1936 by the nature conservation ordinance of March 18, 1936. For the 1938 attached Austria, the Act with GBl.fdLÖ. No. 245/1939 in force.

The passing of the law was largely due to the influence of the Reichsforstmeister and Reichsjägermeister Hermann Göring , who was responsible for nature conservation under National Socialism .

content

In the preamble of the Reich Nature Conservation Act, the ideological orientation that National Socialism sees in nature conservation is set out. It says in it:

“Today, as in the past, nature in the woods and fields of the German people is longing, joy and relaxation. [...] The 'conservation of natural monuments' that arose around the turn of the century could only be partially successful because essential political and ideological prerequisites were lacking; Only the transformation of German people created the prerequisites for effective nature conservation. "

In a contemporary legal commentary on the RNG, the lawyer Karl Asal describes the close intellectual affinity between the National Socialist worldview and nature conservation, as regulated by the law, and formulates four basic ideas: the law is the "application of the National Socialist basic ideas of the close interrelationships between blood and Soil as the basic features of our volkish existence ”, it shows“ a clear affinity with the strivings of National Socialism that are so often emphasized by the Führer and aimed at preserving tradition ”, and the organizing principle of nature conservation confirms National Socialist thinking“ as a regulating power in the fight against arbitrariness , Anarchy and Chaos "and finally the law underlines the social aspects:" Even the poorest national comrade should be guaranteed his share of German natural beauty. "

§ 2 RNG: Protection of plants and non-huntable animals

The following legal text, however, is considered to be free of nationalist ideas. It regulated the nationwide structure of nature conservation and its instruments (§§ 7-10 RNG), and created a tripartite double-level body of district, district and Reich nature conservation authorities. He also defined the protection of plants and "non-huntable animals" (§ 2 RNG) as well as four protection categories: natural monuments (§ 3 RNG), nature reserves (§ 4 RNG), landscape protection areas and protected parts of the landscape (§ 5 RNG). Another innovation is the addition of the maintenance of the landscape (§§ 19 and 20 RNG). Restrictions already existed within the law in the stipulation of § 6 RNG, insofar as the interests of the military, important road construction, inland and maritime shipping as well as vital business operations may not be impaired by nature conservation.

Effects

Marking of a natural monument in Kobersdorf according to the Reich Nature Conservation Act 1935

The Reich Nature Conservation Act was de jure the breakthrough for German nature conservation. However, it quickly became apparent that the Nazi regime had other priorities. Göring, as the commissioner of the four-year plans to prepare for war, and Walther Darré , Minister of Food and Agriculture and responsible for the so-called production battles , put the emphasis on intensive use of the landscape and not on its protection. Hans Klose described the reality of nature conservation law with the phrase "[the] labor service was let loose on the landscape ".

In 1940 there were over 800 registered nature reserves in Germany according to the Reich Nature Conservation Book and more than 50,000 natural monuments were listed in the districts' natural monuments books. Due to the law, the State Agency for the Preservation of Natural Monuments was converted into the Reich Agency for Nature Conservation in 1936 .

After 1945

The protected areas designated on the basis of this law are among the oldest protected areas in the area of ​​the Nazi state at the time, and the main features still exist today. After 1945, the regulations of the Reich Nature Conservation Act as the basis of the legislation of the federal states - both in the Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR and Austria - in some cases continued until the early 1970s. It has not been classified as a law of National Socialist ideology.

With the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the legal literature and case law initially assumed that the RNG could continue to exist as federal law. However, with the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court of October 14, 1958, it was determined that the RNG could no longer apply because it went beyond the competence of the federal government to legislate framework . Rather, it is about state law that continues to apply , which can also be modified by the respective state legislature.

However, as early as 1949, § 24 RNG, which provided for a restriction of property without compensation in matters of nature conservation and was thus not compatible with the Basic Law of the Federal Republic, lost its substantive validity . In the 1950s, the Federal Administrative Court ruled that "the law in its concerns and regulations was not shaped by the National Socialist worldview ".

In the GDR, too, the Reich Nature Conservation Act initially continued to apply. In 1954, the RNG was replaced with the entry into force of the Act on the Care and Conservation of Local Nature . In addition to protected assets, which the RNG had already named, the landscape protection area and the objective of preserving nature and landscape for people came into being.

In Austria, where, after the restoration of the legal framework in the Second Republic, nature conservation law was state law anyway , there were hardly any problems in adopting the adequate basic provisions. Vorarlberg even promulgated the law in 1969 - with only minor changes - as a new nature conservation law , in this form it was then valid until the new law on nature conservation and landscape development of 1997.

See also

literature

  • Ernst-Rainer Hönes : 70 years of the Reich Nature Conservation Act . In: Monument Protection Information 29/2 (2005), pp. 76–86.
  • Ernst-Rainer Hönes: 80 years of the Reich Nature Conservation Act . In: Natur und Recht (NuR) 37 (2015), pp. 661–669.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Federal Agency for Nature Conservation: 100 Years of Nature Conservation as a State Task , Background Info, 2006; also as a PDF file , accessed on April 12, 2010.
  2. ↑ Martin Stock: "Nature and Landscape" according to German nature conservation law ; in: Institute for Science and Technology Research, IWT Paper No. 23, Conference Documentation The Nature of Nature , Bielefeld University, 12. – 14. November 1998, p. 208; also as a PDF file , copy at archive.org.
  3. ^ Edeltraud Klueting: The legal regulations of the National Socialist Reich government for animal welfare, nature conservation and environmental protection . In: Joachim Radkau, Frank Uekötter (Ed.): Nature Conservation and National Socialism , Frankfurt / New York (Campus Verlag) 2003, p. 103.
  4. ↑ Joachim Radkau: Nature and Power. A world history of the environment . Munich 2002, p. 298
  5. ↑ See § 27 of the Reich Nature Law in the RGBl. IS 825
  6. ^ Karl Asal: The nature conservation legislation of the Reich, Reichsverwaltungsblatt 1936 , p. 369 ff., Quoted from Martin Stock: "Nature and landscape" according to German nature conservation law , p. 209
  7. ↑ BVerfGE 8, 186 (192 ff.), Decision of the Second Senate of October 14, 1958, Az. 2 BvO 2/57; see also Jens Ivo Engels : 'High Times' and 'Thick Stroke': Interpretation and Preservation of the Past in West German Nature Conservation after the Second World War . In: Joachim Radkau, Frank Uekötter (Ed.): Nature Conservation and National Socialism , Frankfurt / New York (Campus Verlag) 2003, p. 383; also as a PDF file , accessed April 12, 2010; also: Andreas Fisahn : Nature Conservation Law - On the Way to Competing Legislation? , Lecture 2000: Homepage of the Law Faculty of Bielefeld University , accessed on April 12, 2010
  8. ↑ Jens Ivo Engels: 'High time' and 'thick line': Interpretation and preservation of the past in West German nature conservation after the Second World War , p. 388f.
  9. ↑ BVerwG of October 7, 1954, DÖV 1955, p. 186; also BVerwG of March 26, 1955, BVerwGE 2, 35 .; see also: Andreas Fisahn: Nature Conservation Law - On the Way to Competing Legislation? , Lecture 2000, Homepage of the Law Faculty of Bielefeld University , accessed on April 12, 2010
  10. ↑ GW Zwanzig, The Further Development of Nature Conservation Law in Germany after 1945, 1962, p. 19f .; HE
  11. ↑ Rösler, Schwab, Lambrecht (ed.): Nature conservation in the GDR. Economica publishing house. Bonn 1990. ISBN 3-926831-74-X : p. 21.
  12. ↑ Act amending the Nature Conservation Act . LGBl. No. 24/1969. ( Online ). : "The Reich Nature Conservation Act, GBl. Fd LO No. 245/1939, is amended as follows: [...]" (Art. I). Ordinance of the Vorarlberg state government on the reprint of the nature conservation law (nature conservation law) . LGBl. No. 36/1969. ( Online ). : “In the new announcement, the additions and amendments to the Reich Nature Conservation Act, GBl. Fd L. Ö. Resulting from the law on an amendment to the Nature Conservation Act, LGBl. No. 24/1969. No. 245/1939, taken into account. "(Art. II (1))