Legal change of 30 September–1 October 1968

The legal change of 30 September–1 October 1968 transformed a technical rule about accomplices into a barrier to prosecuting certain Nazi-era murders. Through an amendment to Section 50 of the Federal German Criminal Code, the Introductory Act to Administrative Offences changed how an accessory could be sentenced when that person lacked characteristics that made the principal offender liable for a particular crime. In the account presented at Fabrizio Collini’s trial, this distinction altered the applicable limitation period and helped explain why the investigation into Hans Meyer had been discontinued without resolving his guilt or innocence.

The rule before and after the change

Until 30 September 1968, Section 50 stated that each person participating in a crime committed a punishable offence regardless of the guilt of the others. Its provision on special personal qualities or circumstances likewise applied those grounds for a more severe or lenient penalty, or for excluding punishment, only to the offender or accessory concerned. The rule thus treated the relevant personal circumstances as belonging to the individual whose liability was being assessed.

Clause 1, No. 6 of the Introductory Act to Administrative Offences came into force on 1 October 1968, and Section 50 then included an additional provision. If an accessory did not possess the special characteristics that formed the basis of the perpetrator’s criminal liability, the accessory’s penalty was to be mitigated under the rules for an attempted crime. The provision concerning the individual application of special characteristics remained, but the new mitigation clause changed the sentencing consequences for accessories. The difference between the two versions is central to the novel’s account: a small addition to a general rule could change how participation in murder was legally classified for punishment.

How the amendment affected prosecution

At the trial, Dr Sybille Schwan explains that the amendment meant certain accessories to murder would be sentenced as if they were accessories to manslaughter. The resulting change in classification affected limitation periods. The novel describes the broader chronology as beginning with a 1960 rule under which crimes from the Third Reich were already subject to limitation, except for murder, which remained prosecutable. The 1968 change undermined that exception for some accessories: their offences became subject to a limitation period, and prosecution could no longer proceed once that period had expired.

Schwan presents the enactment as a catastrophe whose consequences were not recognized when the law passed. The Introductory Act to Administrative Offences appeared so minor that it was not debated in the German Bundestag, and, in her account, parliamentary deputies, legal committees and the legal administrations of the eleven Federal states failed to notice its effect. The press exposed the problem, but by the time attention had turned to it, the limitation consequence could not simply be undone. The novel connects the amendment to the collapse of planned prosecutions against officials responsible for mass killings in Poland and the Soviet Union, whose cases could no longer be brought under the relevant rules.

The Meyer investigation and the courtroom revelation

The legal change becomes personal when Richard Mattinger questions Schwan about the proceedings against Hans Meyer. Mattinger emphasizes that the Stuttgart Public Prosecutor’s Office had opened proceedings, conducted investigations and assembled a file, yet Meyer was neither charged nor convicted. Schwan confirms that the proceedings were discontinued; Mattinger then identifies 7 July 1969 as the date the Stuttgart office dropped its investigation. His questioning leaves the courtroom with the impression that Meyer’s conduct had been found legitimate, and Mattinger concludes that he has no further questions.

Afterward, Leinen challenges that implication. Schwan clarifies that she said the investigation had been discontinued, not that its underlying allegations had been disproved. The shooting had taken place, Meyer had been in command, and the proceedings ended because the statute of limitations had come into force. There had been no further investigation of Meyer’s guilt or innocence. This distinction changes the meaning of the official outcome: termination was not an exoneration after a completed inquiry, but the consequence of a legal time bar.

Leinen links that procedural result to Collini’s attempt to pursue the matter. He sets out that Collini identified the man who had his father shot, laid a charge, gave the authorities the evidence, and trusted them to act; about a year later, he received a single-sheet letter saying the proceedings had been discontinued because the offence was time-barred. The amendment therefore enters the trial not as abstract legal history but as the explanation for a failed route to accountability. The courtroom scene also turns on a correction: what first appears to settle Meyer’s status instead exposes that the state never reached a judgment on his guilt.

Legal certainty and historical responsibility

Schwan says that once a criminal offence has become subject to a limitation period, a constitutional state founded on the rule of law cannot reverse that ruling. The principle supplies the amendment’s lasting legal consequence: even after the effect of the change became clear, the resulting time bar could not simply be repealed to restore the possibility of prosecution. In the novel, legal certainty thus operates both as a constraint on arbitrary retroactive change and as the reason that a prosecution blocked by the amendment could not be revived.

The text further connects the change to Dr Eduard Dreher, who devised the Introductory Act to Administrative Offences. In describing his earlier career as Head Public Prosecutor at the Innsbruck Special Court during the Third Reich, Schwan points to his calls for severe penalties in cases involving food theft and the illegal purchase of clothing coupons. The connection gives the amendment a history beyond its technical wording: Dreher’s name is attached both to the provision’s effect on the prosecution of Nazi crimes and to a widely used criminal-law commentary that he co-authored with Tröndle. The novel places this legal inheritance in the hands of the courtroom itself, where Leinen holds up the commentary and asks whether its author is the same Dreher.

Afterlife and significance

The amendment’s effects extend beyond the fictional trial. In January 2012, a few months after the novel’s original German publication, the Federal Minister of Justice appointed a committee to reassess the Ministry’s legacy from the Nazi past; the novel was one of the committee’s points of reference. That real-world afterlife reinforces the narrative’s focus on how historical responsibility can be obscured by legal procedure, institutional oversight and the persistence of professional authorities.

The change is decisive because its consequences are presented at several levels at once: the altered wording of Section 50, the reclassification and limitation of certain accessory offences, the termination of the Meyer investigation, and the continuing difficulty of reversing a time bar under the rule of law. The distinction between a discontinued investigation and a finding of innocence is especially important. By making that distinction explicit, the trial reveals how a formally conclusive legal outcome can leave the central question of responsibility unanswered.