Reich Association Law

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Basic data
Title: Association Act
Short title: Reichsvereinsgesetz ( coll. )
Type: Reich Law , Federal Law
Scope: German Empire ,
Federal Republic of Germany
Legal matter: Special administrative law
References : 2180-2 a. F.
Original version from: April 19, 1908
( RGBl. P. 151)
Entry into force on: May 15, 1908
New announcement from: January 1, 1964
( Federal Law Gazette III p. 22)
Last change by: Sentences 1, 2 AA of June 26, 1916
(RGBl. P. 635)
Effective date of the
last change: 		July 14, 1916
(Art. 2 Sentence 3 RV )
Expiry: September 12, 1964
(Section 30 (1) No. 1  G of August 5, 1964 ,
Federal Law Gazette I, p. 593, 600 )
Please note the note on the applicable legal version.

The Reich Association Law (RVG) of April 19, 1908 standardized the until then legally fragmented association system in the German Empire into a nationwide association law . It thus realized - after 37 years - the relevant supervisory and regulatory sovereignty of federal authority, as stated in Article 4, Item 16 of the Reich Constitution .

The law was one of the larger domestic political projects of the Bulow bloc , which got it through the Reichstag with 195 votes to 168 . It came into force on May 15, 1908. Essential provisions of the RVG were bitterly opposed by the SPD and the center ; individual dissident members of the Liberal Association split off in the course of the debates and formed the Democratic Association .

Intention, content and criticism

In November 1907 the government introduced the draft for a nationwide binding law on associations and assemblies in the Reichstag. The template had been drawn up in the Reich Office of the Interior under the leadership of Bethmann Hollweg . The Reich leadership - and with it a majority of bourgeois MPs from the left-wing liberals to the conservatives - considered this centralization step to be inevitable, primarily for reasons of "state policy" in principle. In doing so, it defied the lively particularist interests in the individual states. Even beyond the government bloc, a wide variety of political forces and individual voices had announced the need for action in the previous years, as the failure to meet the requirement of a uniform imperial regulation of these questions formulated in the constitution in 1871 impaired and deformed political and cultural life in a way that was unique in Europe. Civil society associations that could work unhindered in Württemberg were banned in Saxony . The SPD was able to legally set up an electoral association and local associations in the Duchy of Saxony-Coburg and Gotha ; in the neighboring Principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen , this was prohibited due to the restrictive association law. Agricultural workers in Prussia were subject to the rules of the servants , they were generally prohibited from forming associations.

The basic approach of the law was all in all liberal and made the organization of associations much easier in large states such as Prussia and Saxony - and of course in many small states - whereas it represented a step backwards compared to the practice that had been common up until then in Württemberg and Baden . From now on, all citizens - including women for the first time - should be able to found associations of any orientation, composition and purpose without hindrance, provided that the pursued goals did not conflict with the criminal law (§ 1). As such, clubs were not subject to any authorization requirement and could freely join each other; only alliances with political purposes were encouraged to observe formalities such as the setting down of statutes and the appointment of an identifiable board of directors and to document this with the authorities (§ 3). In addition, they were obliged to notify the competent authority of all public meetings at least 24 hours in advance (Section 7). The mandatory registration, introduced for the first time, was the most permanent innovation established with the RVG; It was seen by many contemporary critics - especially in southern Germany - as a serious restriction on the freedom of assembly.

The RVG had much-discussed detailed provisions that hardly concealed their repressive reservations against parts of the population and which in some cases turned out to be very momentous. The police were given the de facto right to send up to two officers to all - by no means only to public - meetings of any association; they were allowed to make records and, under certain conditions, also to dissolve the meeting in question. The formal restriction of this “visitation right” to “political meetings” was meaningless in practice, since it was up to the respective police authorities to decide which meetings were to be regarded as “political” and which were not; It was therefore clear that "a great deal will depend on the application by the police forces ." The right of association finally granted to the farm workers in the RVG remained largely theoretical until the First World War - and beyond. It did not explicitly abolish the prohibition of political activity expressed in the servants' order and thus gave the landowners - also because of the deliberately unclear definition of the "political association" in the law - the ample opportunity to protest against unionized workers for "political agitation" and " Breach of contract ". The German Agricultural Workers' Association , founded in 1909, made hardly any progress against the large landowners of Eastern Elbe, who often acted as employers and head of administration in personal union (cf. Gutsgebiet ), and in 1913 only had 20,267 members. The RVG generally prohibited young people under the age of 18 from organizing themselves in political associations or participating in their meetings (§ 17 and § 18). This “exceptional law against youth” was directed particularly against social democratic and union youth work. The relevant provisions led to a dramatic de-politicization of the youth workers' movement, actively promoted by reformist functionaries of the SPD, who declared the youth associations that had previously been active close to the SPD to be “unsympathetic” and “excessively radical”. The social democratic youth associations, which merged in September 1908 in Berlin to form the Association of Working Youth in Germany , had to expressly note in its statute that the new association had no political character or pursued political purposes. The so-called language paragraph (§ 7 in the draft, § 12 in the law), which decreed that negotiations in public meetings should only be conducted in German, caused the most violent criticism. That was tantamount to banning minority languages ​​in public life. Only “international congresses” and electoral assemblies in the run-up to Reichstag elections were excluded from the regulation (but not in the case of state and municipal elections). The selective disciplinary intent of this provision was underlined by the fact that conservatives and national liberals spoke out on the public stage in the Reichstag in favor of allowing “loyal foreign speakers” such as Lithuanians and Masurians to use their respective languages ​​without restriction. Subsequently, Prussia in particular undermined the last remaining reflexes of loyalty of this minority with the rigorous application of this paragraph to the living environment of the three million Polish-speaking inhabitants of its eastern provinces. In April 1917, the language paragraph was deleted as a friendly - but no longer heeded - gesture towards the Polish reign that had been founded by Germany and Austria-Hungary a few months earlier .

Web links

Wikisource: Reichsvereinsgesetz  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Wahl, Adalbert, German History from the Foundation of the Reich to the Outbreak of the World War (Volume 4), Stuttgart 1936, p. 12.
  2. ↑ See Wahl, Deutsche Geschichte Volume 4, p. 10.
  3. ↑ See Schulze, Gerhard, The November Revolution 1918 in Thuringia, Erfurt 1976, p. 10.
  4. ↑ Wahl, German History Volume 4, p. 13.
  5. ↑ See Hübner, Hans, Kathe, Heinz (arr.), Situation and Struggle of Farm Workers in East Elbe Prussia. From the beginning of the 19th century to the November Revolution 1918/19, Berlin 1977, Volume 2, p. 432.
  6. ↑ See Fricke, Dieter, Handbuch zur Geschichte der Deutschen Arbeiterbew Movement 1869–1917, Berlin 1987, Volume 2, p. 970.
  7. ↑ Fricke, Handbuch, Volume 1, p. 463.
  8. ↑ See Nipperdey, Thomas, Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918. Volume I. The world of work and civil spirit, Munich 1998, p. 116.
  9. ↑ Quoted from Fricke, Handbuch, Volume 1, p. 470.
  10. ↑ See Fricke, Handbuch, Volume 1, p. 469.
  11. ↑ See Wahl, Deutsche Geschichte Volume 4, p. 11.
  12. ↑ See Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, German History of Society (Volume IV). From the beginning of the First World War to the establishment of the two German states. 1914–1949, Munich 2003, p. 170.