Historical background to the adoption of Germany’s Criminal Code of 1871

The study is devoted to the historical prerequisites for the adoption of the German Criminal Code of 1871, which played an important role in the political unification of disparate states. It analyzes the reasons, goals and conditions of the unification of German legislation, as well as the preceding codification and accompanying historical events. The conclusion states that the structure and terminology of the Prussian Land Ordinance were used as the basis for this law. The relevant part of the old Statute had already been firmly divided into general and special parts, and numerous elements and definitions were retained. It is noted that the legal protection of the king and of public order continued to be given great importance in the new law, which was not the case in the criminal codes of Bavaria and the Rhineland, which were based on revolutionary models. Among the radical novelties of the Code are: the introduction of the rule of law. The replacement of the language understandable to ordinary citizens by provisions with general and special sections to facilitate the work of lawyers, and the humanization of punishments, which was expressed in the abolition of punishments of “honor”, corporal punishment and the abolition of cruel executions. It is argued that the penal code introduced in 1851 played a crucial role in the process of German expansion. After the establishment of the North German Union in the Austro-Prussian-Italian War of 1866, and the annexation by Prussia of the territories of Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Hesse-Homburg, Frankfurt am Main, and Nassau, the Code was extended, with minor modifications, to the whole territory of the Union, and after the foundation of the Second Reich in 1871, which, in turn, was only an extension of the North German Union - on January 1, 1872, it was also extended to the southern German lands.