Civil Code (GDR)

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The civil code of the German Democratic Republic , abbreviated to ZGB or ZGB-GDR , was the central body of private law for the GDR . It replaced the BGB there on January 1, 1976 . The ZGB-GDR expired on October 3, 1990, but is still authoritative for many old cases due to the provisions of the Unification Treaty, for example in inheritance law matters.

history

Since Anton Menger's criticism of the BGB, there have been socialist efforts to reform civil law in favor of the “dispossessed classes”. Nevertheless, implementation was only taken seriously after the 8th Party Congress of the SED in 1971. In 1974 a first commission presented a draft to the Council of Ministers chaired by the Ministry of Justice . After the first reading in the People's Chamber , this draft was referred to the committees for further processing and implementation of a “people's discussion”. After the second reading, the law was passed on June 19, 1975. The statements made at the same time by individual Politburo and Commission members showed the motivations.

content

The Civil Code contains 480 paragraphs and is divided into seven parts:

I. Principles of socialist civil law.
II. Socialist property and personal property.
III. Contracts for the organization of material and cultural life.
IV. Use of land and buildings for living and recreation.
V. Protection of life, health and property from harm.
VI. Inheritance law.
VII. Special provisions on individual civil law relationships.

Property in the Civil Code

Unlike the BGB, the ZGB did not have a single form of property, but differentiated between personal property (§§ 22 ff.) And socialist property (§§ 17 ff.) As a generic term for the property of social organizations, cooperative property and public property. This differentiation was made according to functions of a social and economic nature.

Legal political significance

In a state governed by a planned economy like the GDR, civil law naturally played a much less important role than in the Federal Republic. According to the GDR understanding, civil law was there to regulate the supply relationships of the citizens.

The ZGB was characterized by improved comprehensibility (compare Section 57, Paragraph 2 of the Civil Code (form of power of attorney) with Section 167, Paragraph 2 of the Civil Code, which has in fact been repealed by permanent case law) as well as continuous official headings for each paragraph, which the BGB was only received in 2001 with the modernization of the law of obligations .

However, the small size is also the cause of a lack of accuracy. Section 33 (2) ZGB regulated the vindication , i.e. H. the owner's right to surrender against the unauthorized person in possession of an item. However, there is no definition of property itself in the Civil Code. The BGB, which was repealed with the introduction of the Civil Code, but was much more detailed, was often used in legal practice in similar cases as a secret “interpretation aid”.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Turner: The concept of property in the GDR. NJW 1990, p. 555.
  2. ↑ Uebeler: The historic plight of civil law of the GDR. DtZ 1990, 10.
  3. ^ Rainer Schröder: civil law culture of the GDR . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-428-09742-5 , pp. 76 .

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