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| Prohibition Act | |
|---|---|
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| Provisional State Government | |
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| Citation | StGBl. Nr. 13/1945 |
| Enacted by | Provisional State Government |
| Commenced | 6 June 1945 |
| Status: Amended | |
TheVerbotsgesetz 1947 (Prohibition Act 1947), abbreviatedVerbotsG, is anAustrianconstitutional law originally passed on 8 May 1945 (Victory in Europe Day)[1] and amended multiple times, most significantly in February 1947 and in 1992. It banned theNazi Party and its subsidiaries and required former party members to register with local authorities. Individuals were also subject to criminal sanctions and banned from employment in positions of power.
In later decades, the law's provisions against propaganda came to be used againstneo-Nazism with a focus onHolocaust denial as well as the deliberate belittlement of any Naziatrocities. Because the law does not explicitly mention these categories, there was considerable disagreement between regional courts, leading to the 1992 amendment resolving those doubts.[2]
According to Article I VerbotsG, the Nazi Party, its paramilitary organisations such asSS,SA, theNational Socialist Motor Corps andNational Socialist Flyers Corps, as well as all affiliated associations were dissolved and banned. To underpin the prohibition, theVerbotsgesetz itself, though constitutional law, comprises severalpenal provisions classifying any act of (re-)engagement in National Socialist activities (Wiederbetätigung) as a punishable offense. Section 3 h VerbotsG included in 1992 states that
whoever in a printed work, on broadcasting or in any other media, or whoever otherwise publicly in a matter that it makes it accessible to many people, denies, belittles, condones or tries to justify the Nazi genocide or other Nazi crimes against humanity
shall be punished with imprisonment for one year up to ten years, in the case of special perilousness of the offender or the engagement up to twenty years. All cases are to be tried byjury.[3]
The Austrian legal scholar and judgeWilhelm Malaniuk justified the admissibility of the non-application of thenulla poena sine lege principle with regard to theVerbotsgesetz: "Because these are criminal acts that violate the laws of humanity so grossly that such lawbreakers are not entitled to the guarantee function of the offense."[4]
The 1945 law required all Austrian members of the Nazi Party or their subsidiaries such as theSturmabteilung (SA) andSchutzstaffel (SS) to register, forced their dismissal from administrative positions and certain high-level positions in the private sector, and barred them from gaining such employment. They were also ineligible to stand in theelection of 1945. Fines could be levied based on assessments of individual involvement with the Nazi regime.
These efforts ofdenazification did not last long. With the public mood shifting from considering Austria as a perpetrator of Nazi aggression toone of its victims, calls to end the endless process of almost two years of self-reflection grew louder. French and American opposition managed to delay a first, partialamnesty until 1947. The changes, deemed thebeginning of the end of denazification, abolished objective criteria such as early party membership in the assessment of individual guilt and instead called for a more subjective assessment of one'scommitment to Nazi ideology. The assessments were also shifted to the local agencies wishing to hire the person in question, opening the process to conflicts of interest and favoritism.
A total amnesty was passed by parliament in 1952 but vetoed by the allied powers. When, in 1957, they relinquished this power, all efforts at denazification on the individual level were eliminated from the law. The following decades saw a return to power of many eager participants of the Nazi regime and its crimes in public office, industry, and culture. Thus, it did not surprise when the 1970Kreisky cabinet included a total of six former Nazis as ministers.[5] WhileJohann Öllinger, minister of agriculture, SS-Untersturmführer, and SA member from 1933 resigned after being exposed by West Germany'sDer Spiegel, Nazi party member no. 1,089,867 from 1932, Oskar Weihs, was immediately appointed to little public opposition.[6]
In 1985 the Austrian Constitutional Court ruled that the remaining regulations are directly applicable in the country's legal system, binding every court and every administrative agency of Austria. Upon the 1992 amendment, the Austrian Supreme Court stated that any reasoning or argumentation concerning the Nazi genocide and the Nazi crimes against humanity is notadmissible in evidence.
TheNational Democratic Party (Austria) was banned by a verdict of theConstitutional Court of Austria on the basis of the Verbotsgesetz 1947 in 1988.
Up to today numerous verdicts are handed down byAustrian courts based on theVerbotsgesetz, most notably the conviction ofDavid Irving at theViennaLandesgericht für Strafsachen on 20 February 2006.
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