German Legal Citation - Citing Portions of The German Legal Code

Citing Portions of The German Legal Code

As an example, the famous or notorious Paragraph 175, which formerly made male homosexuality a crime in Germany, would most properly be cited in an English-language text as "§ 175 StGB (Germany)". "§" simply denotes "paragraph" (and can be pluralized as "§§"). "StGB" stands for Strafgesetzbuch (penal code); other similar usages would be "BGB" (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the Civil Code) and "ZPO" (Zivilprozessordnung, the Civil Procedure Code). Paragraphs with the same number from these different codes are completely unrelated; thus, § 175 ZPO has nothing to do with § 175 StGB.

Finally, unless the context is clear, "(Germany)" may be added to distinguish this from the similar system of citation for Austria; again, paragraphs with the same number in German and Austrian legal codes are unrelated, except in laws that were introduced in Austria with the Anschluss in 1938, such as the AktG (Stock Corporations Act), which, of course, has frequently been amended in different ways in both countries since then. A method that is sometimes employed in Austrian legal writing to distinguish between Austrian and German law is to add a lower case "d" for Germany (German: Deutschland) and an "ö" for Austria (German: Österreich) before the abbreviation of the respective code, e.g. "dAktG" and "öAktG" referring to the German and Austrian stock corporations acts.

Within such a paragraph, there may be numerous Absätze (singular Absatz). The Absätze are cited as "Abs.". Thus, a particular portion of Paragraph 175 might be cited as "§ 175 Abs. 2 StGB (Germany)". Texts addressed at a purely legal audience commonly make use of an informal shorthand, abbreviating Absätze for example as Roman numerals. Thus, in such texts, this same provision might be cited simply as "§ 175 II StGB" or even "§ 175 II" depending on the amount of available context. In Austria, the Absätze are usually cited as "Abs" (without a dot), e.g. "§ 1295 Abs 2 ABGB". Numbered lists are cited with a capital "Z" (standing for Zahl i.e. number), e.g. "§ 73 Abs 1 Z 4 BWG". By contrast, in Germany, the abbreviation "Nr." (standing for Nummer i.e. number) is used instead.

In non-legal contexts, for example in text formatting, the word Absatz would normally be equivalent to English "paragraph", but in legal usage an Absatz is a subdivision of a Paragraph; we must either use the German word or translate it as "sub-paragraph". Margaret Marks suggests (for British English) translating Paragraph as "Section" and Absatz as "subsection". For American English, she suggests leaving § intact except at the start of a sentence (where she would use "Section"), and translating Absatz as "subsection".

The Basic Law (constitution) of Germany is divided into Artikel or articles, not sections. To cite the Basic Law a notation like "Artikel 1 GG", where GG stands for Grundgesetz, basic law, is used.