Die Weimarer Reichsverfassung und das Verbot rückwirkender Strafverschärfung
The Weimar Constitution and the Prohibition of a Retroactive Harsher Punishment

Summary/Abstract: The principle “nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege” is one of the core principles of German criminal law and constitutional law. However, the history of this principle is quite varied. This article will focus on an essential part of this history, namely on the version of this principle in the Weimar Constitution of 1919. It will be shown that the principle of legality of criminal law was indeed expressed in that constitution, but that the exact scope of application of this constitutional principle was quite unclear. In this regard, it was uncertain whether the Weimar Constitution also prohibited the retroactive application of criminal laws to those cases for which a more lenient penalty was provided at the time of the offense. This ambiguity of the Weimar Constitution finally became apparent in 1933 in the so-called Reichstagsbrandprozess (Reichstag fire trial). The issue in these criminal proceedings was whether the burning of the parliament building in Berlin (February 27, 1933) was punishable by death, although this sanction was not provided at the time the crime was committed. In this essay, it will be shown that the National Socialists had to go to considerable effort to be able to ignore prohibitions on retroactivity. This undermining of the principle “nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege” forms an important example of the willingness of the legislature to negate essential protective principles of law in the Third Reich.

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