Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring

The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring ( GezVeN ) July 14, 1933 ( Reich Law Gazette I, p 529) was a German law. It entered into force on 1 January 1934. The law served in the National Socialist German Reich of the so-called racial hygiene. The examination of a sterilization process were formally legal form action " Erbgesundheitsgerichte " created.

§ 1 (2 ) said that the following diseases were affected:

Before 1945

To May 1945 at least 400,000 people were forcibly sterilized. Overall, an estimated 6,000 women and 600 men died from complications during the medical procedure by applying the law.

The law was based on a planned even before the Nazi takeover bill, which in 1932 was drafted by the Prussian Health Office led by eugenicists such as Hermann Muckermann, Arthur Ostermann, director of Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, Richard Goldschmidt and others. The draft contained sterilization laws on a voluntary basis; however learned this point in the deliberations criticism from the health experts of the Socialist Group in the Prussian Parliament Benno Chajes, which suggested forced sterilization for certain cases with regard to legislation in some states of the U.S. and the Swiss canton of Vaud. Although this legislative proposal received wide support, he was also due to the political chaos due to the deposition of the Prussian government no longer law.

In contrast to this early draft law, which provided for sterilization on a voluntary basis, the law adopted by the National Socialists was tightened in several points; so the possibility of forced sterilization was now given.

After 1945

The GezVeN was not lifted after the German surrender in May 1945, as a large part of the legislation passed in the time of National Socialism by the Control Council laws and was gone. In the Control Council Directorate, the head of the legal department of the U.S. Military Government Charles H. Fahy called for a provisional suspension of the law, unless an application may again in the public interest. Some countries met then their own regulations:

  • In Thuringia, the law was repealed on 20 August 1945.
  • Bayern picked up the law on November 20, 1945.
  • After an in Hesse decreed on May 16, 1946 Regulation, the law was no longer apply until further notice.
  • Württemberg- Baden enforced the law by a statute enacted on July 24, 1946 law.

The Soviet occupation commanded in their zone on 8 January 1946, the repeal of the law. The English occupation issued on 28 July 1947, a Regulation on the resumption of Erbgesundheitsverfahren. However, there were no more Erbgesundheitsgerichte, so that the law was not applied in practice. After 1949, the law was thus continued in the newly founded Federal Republic, while it was abolished in the GDR. Since the early 1950s it came from the medical profession and the judiciary of the Federal Republic of receivables for a new introduction and regulation of eugenic forced sterilization, but do not let prevail.

The federal government said on February 7, 1957 in the German Bundestag:

With this assessment, the victim of the law were not entitled to receive compensation.

In 1974 the Act of parliament for the whole of Germany was overridden and 1986 declared the District Court of Kiel, that the Erbgesundheitsgesetz contradicts the Basic Law.

In 1988, the federal outlawed the law when he adopted a Decision, which states:

On 25 August 1998, the Bundestag passed a law repealing Nazi injustice judgments in criminal justice and sterilization decisions of the former Erbgesundheitsgerichte. Thus, the Bundestag picked up the final decisions issued by the courts due to the GezVeN for sterilization.

The victims of the Nazi " Erbgesundheitsgesetzes " have no legal right to compensation because they have not been recognized to this day as victims of National Socialism. 2007 the law was outlawed by the German Bundestag and thus contradicts the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. For this reason it was placed with the entry into force of the Basic Law repealed.

Swell

  • Arthur Gütt, Ernst Rudin and Falk Ruttke: .. Prevention Act of Genetically Diseased Offspring July 14, 1933 By Excerpt from the law against dangerous habitual criminals and on measures of assurance and improvement from November 24, 1933 Lehmann, Munich 1934
  • Rudolf Beyer. Prevention Act of hereditary diseases with the implementing decree of December 5, 1933 Reclam, Leipzig 1934
  • Ludwig Binswanger: Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. A critical review and appraisal. Schwabe, Basel 1938
  • Hermann Boehm: Hereditary Health - Public Health. The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring in principle and application. An introduction for physicians. German medical profession, Berlin, 1939
  • Karl Bonhoeffer: The psychiatric tasks in the implementation of the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. With an appendix: The technique of sterilization. Clinical lectures in the heredity course, Berlin March 1934. Karger, Berlin 1934
  • Buurman: The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring and its request to the pastor. Vereinsdruckerei, Potsdam 1934
  • Heinrich Effenberger. Differences arising from the Law on the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring July 14, 1933 difficulties in sterilization erbkranker women Maretzke & Märtin, Trebnitzgrund 1935
  • Rudolf Fuchs. The offspring of schizophrenics and the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, Windsheimer, Erlangen -Bruck 1936
  • Hans Harmsen: The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. A handout for the training of acting in our institutions and in the welfare of nurses. Service of life, Berlin -Grunewald 1935 idem: experience with the German Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. 1954
Hereditary Health Court Feeble-minded Huntington's disease Bavaria Sambia Schwelm Schwerin
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