Capital punishment in Germany
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Capital punishment in Germany has been abolished.
The current Constitution of Germany ("Grundgesetz") as adopted in 1949 does not allow capital punishment (Art. 102 GG: "Die Todesstrafe ist abgeschafft" - Capital punishment is abolished). Although article 21.1 of the constitution of the German state of Hesse provides the capital punishment for high crimes, this provision is inoperative due to the federal ban of the death penalty.
[edit] History
If the failed German constitution drafted by the Frankfurt Parliament in 1849 had come into force, capital punishment would have been abolished in most cases, since Art. III § 139 of the constitution stated: "Die Todesstrafe, ausgenommen wo das Kriegsrecht sie vorschreibt, oder das Seerecht im Fall von Meutereien sie zuläßt, [...], [ist] abgeschafft" ("Capital punishment, except when it is prescribed by martial law or permitted by the law of the seas in cases of mutiny, [...] [is] abolished").
Under Hitler nearly 40,000 death sentences were handed down, mainly by the Volksgerichtshof and also by the Reich Military Tribunal. Executions were carried out most often by beheading using the guillotine but from 1942 onwards hanging using the short-drop method was also commonplace. A firing squad was reserved for military offenders.
Murder, treasonable acts, abetment to treason, sabotage, looting, espionage, insidious publishing or rhetoric, listening to illegal foreign radio broadcasts, avoiding military service as a conscientious objector and hiding a person wanted by the government could all be punished by death in the Third Reich.
The last executions that took place on West German soil were those following the influence of Third Reich officials and World War II war criminals recently captured. In Berlin(West), which was an independently governed zone under allied control, was the last execution in West Germany carried out by guillotine in Moabit prison in 1949 (Berthold Wehmeyer, for murder and robbery).
The last execution in the GDR is believed to having been shooting of Werner Teske, accused of being a double agent, in 1981. The death penalty was not abolished in the German Democratic Republic until 1987.
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