Do the German contact restrictions prohibit any form of celebrating? In response to the rapidly spreading coronavirus, Germany has enacted a general "ban on contact", effective starting today (Monday, 2020-03-23). It prohibits any gathering of more than two people in public and private spaces, except if they live in the same household. What I am very unclear about is the extent to which certain behaviours are restricted by this regulation, as coverage in news is IMHO extremely unclear. For instance, Berliner Morgenpost says: Gruppen feiernder Menschen auf öffentlichen Plätzen, in Wohnungen sowie privaten Einrichtungen sind angesichts der ernsten Lage in unserem Land inakzeptabel. In English: Groups of partying people in public spaces, in apartments, as well as private facilities are inacceptable due to the serious situation in our country. Tagesschau says: Gruppen feiernder Menschen - auch im Privaten - sind inakzeptabel In English: Groups of celebrating people - also in private - are inacceptable And Merkur.de says: „Gruppen feiernder Menschen sind inakzeptabel“, erklärten die Politiker unisono. Jegliche Feierlichkeiten sind untersagt, das gilt auch für Geburtstage. In English: "Groups of celebrating people are inacceptable.", the politicians explained in unison. Any kind of celebrations are prohibited, this includes birthdays. Now, what does this mean? At least some of the above statements can be interpreted in such a way that it's about the physically close group aspect. That is, celebrations whose participants meet in person in the same place are prohibited. But then, all of those statements, and definitely the last one, also sound a lot like it's the very activity of celebrating that is prohibited, presumably because the "serious situation in our country" makes such a behaviour unbecoming. Thus, it sounds like restrictions similar to the Tanzverbot (that declare various overtly joyful activities to be unbecoming and thus unlawful on certain holidays) are in place. Which interpretation is correct? Am I violating the newly imposed restrictions if I meet with some of my friends (each of which is sitting at home alone, or at most with their families) via videochat and "celebrate" (whatever is meant by that, let's count any joyful or relaxing leisure activity) with them online to brace against the effects of social isolation and cabin fever? And does it mean we cannot let our children have a joyful videochat with their friends whom they already cannot meet in person due to the closure of schools and child nurseries?
What most of your quotes are based on is this general consensus reached by the federal and state governments on how to proceed. The actually legal implementation happens on the state level in form of decrees. Therefore, the quoted texts are not to be taken as legal text, but human-readable¹. In particular they are not to be taken painstakingly literal, but context and common sense may be applied². The actual decrees are much more specific and clear. For example, let’s take the decree for Northrhine-Westphalia (translation mine): § 11 Veranstaltungen, Versammlungen, Gottesdienste, Beerdigungen (1) Veranstaltungen und Versammlungen sind untersagt. Ausgenommen sind […] § 12 Ansammlungen, Aufenthalt im öffentlichen Raum (1) Zusammenkünfte und Ansammlungen in der Öffentlichkeit von mehr als 2 Personen sind untersagt. Ausgenommen sind […] § 11 Events, gatherings, religious services, funerals (1) Events and gatherings are forbidden. Exempt are […] § 12 Gatherings and presence in public space (1) Congregations and gatherings of more than two persons in public are forbidden. Exempt from this are […] Most of this is clearly about in-person meetings. The only exception is the term “Veranstaltung” (event), which could be construed to cover online events. However, in other laws using this term, it clearly refers to in-person events. For example parts of this law governing the number of toilets available at an event do not make any sense for online events. I see nothing in the decree that would forbid online celebrations. In fact celebrations are not mentioned at all (and are covered by more general terms in the degree, as far as they are in-person). ¹ To be fair, the actual legal texts are not that bad in terms in human readability either. ² Mind that I do not wish to accuse you of lacking common sense here. After all the consensus dissonating with your common sense made you ask this question.
You don't have to interact with people if you don't want to If you don't want to talk or otherwise interact with somebody in a personal capacity, you don't have to. Your reasons for doing so are your reasons. Some of the congregation may have roles that require them to interact with Jane in what I will loosely call an &quot;official&quot; capacity. For example, if one of the congregants is a government employee and government business requires the interaction, they would have to do so. It gets a little tricky when there is not a clear legal duty to interact. For example, if a congregant is an employee of a company with which Jane has business and who would normally be the person to interact with Jane, they might reasonably claim that they have a religious belief that prevents them from doing so. Anti-discrimination law may require the employer to make reasonable accommodations for that belief, for example, by getting a different employee to interact with Jane.
While German law indeed requires providing correct contact information it does not require the recipient to answer queries. It is there so that you can submit legal notifications. In your case I wouldn't be so sure that the information is not correct. However, even if the contact information is incorrect, there is not much you can do about it. This is reserved to the following groups by § 8 Abs. 3 UWG: every competitor; associations with legal personality which exist for the promotion of commercial or of independent professional interests, so far as a considerable number of entrepreneurs belong thereto, and which distribute goods or services of the same or similar type on the same market, provided such associations are actually in a position, particularly in terms of their personnel, material and financial resources, to pursue the tasks, under their memoranda of association, of promoting commercial or independent professional interests, and so far as the contravention affects the interests of their members; qualified entities that prove that they are entered on the list of qualified entities pursuant to section 4 of the Injunctions Act or on the list of the Commission of the European Communities pursuant to Article 4 of Directive 98/27/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 May 1998 on injunctions for the protection of consumer interests (OJ Number L 166 page 51); Chambers of Industry and Commerce or Craft Chambers. Unless you are a competitor you are out of luck. The hoster or other providers can't do anything and don't need to, as they are not required to check legality of their user's websites. It doesn't really matter where you are by the way for these laws.
The GDPR has an exemption for purely personal or household activity. Creating a family tree seems purely personal as long as you don't publish it. You're also allowed to freely share the tree as long as it stays within that purely personal scope. Your proposed restriction of only showing data of blood relatives seems excessively strict. But assuming that this exemption wouldn't apply, there'd probably still be no problem. The GDPR does not require you to always obtain consent. It requires that the purposes for which you process personal data are covered by some legal basis. Consent is one such legal basis, but legitimate interest is another. You can likely argue that you have a legitimate interest to create a tree of your (extended) family. The legitimate interest must be weighed against the rights and freedoms of the affected persons. For example, contact information could be used for stalking. The balance of the legitimate interest check can be changed if you adopt suitable safeguards. Your idea of only sharing data with close relatives would be such a safeguard, but it might not be necessary. When you rely on legitimate interest, the affected person can object to further processing, furthermore they can request to be erased from your records. A request for erasure can be denied if there are overriding grounds to keep the data. E.g maybe only contact information has to be deleted but names, dates, and relations might be kept. You should notify persons when they are included into your records. It is your obligation as the data controller to make these decisions. If someone disagrees they can sue you or lodge a complaint with a supervision authority. Note that dead persons are not natural persons in the sense of the GDPR, and have no privacy. However, national laws may provide such protections.
Deadly self-defense is legal in Germany. The self-defense law (in particular Sect. 32 of the Criminal Code) makes no restrictions as far as the type of aggression and the type of defense is concerned. That means that - in principle - you can defend yourself against an attack by any means that is necessary to stop it. The principle behind that is "das Recht muss dem Unrecht nicht weichen", which translates to "the law does not have to yield to the unlawful". That particularily means that: You do not have to run. You do not have to yield. You do not have to wait for help from public authorities (notably the police). You can defend yourself (against any attack on you, be it life, limb or property), no matter if that would mean commiting a crime (even if that crime is killing a person). This is called "Trutzwehr" or "schneidiges Notwehrrecht", which can be translated to "active defense" or "aggressive defense" as opposed to passive defense. However... This regulation is not without pitfalls and limitations. There are quite a few, which means that in practice deadly force could be considered unlawful in self-defense. Books have been written about this subject alone, so it can not be exhaustively handled here. Some examples for corner cases are: Attackers that clearly can not understand the severity of their actions have to be spared from extreme effects of your self-defense. The classical book case is that you can't shoot little children stealing apples from your tree. If there is a massive discrepancy between what you want protect and the damage the attacker has to endure (called "qualitativer Notwehrexzess" - translating to "qualitatively eccessive self-defense"). If someone insults you, shooting him might go to far, since while your honour is attacked (which is protected by Sect. 185 Criminal Code), the attacker's life (protected by Sect. 212 Criminal Code) by far outweighs it. Note that, to ensure the effectiveness of the self-defense laws, the discrepancy must be extreme. And it does not mean you can't defend yourself. You just have to choose a less severe measure. So you might get away with knocking the insulter out. After the attack is over you hit the attacker once too often, which causes his death (called "quantitativer Notwehrexzess" - "quantitatively eccessive self-defense"). The attack was over at the time of the deadly blow, so your right for self-defense had ended. You might get away without punishment, if it was impossible for you to realize that the attack was over. If you only think an attack is happening, but it is not (for example someone attacking you with a rubber knife on Halloween). In this case there is no attack and so technically there is no right for self defense (called "Putativnotwehr"). Similar to the cases of excessive self-defense, it depends on your individual case (notable if you had a chance to realize the attack was false) if you are punished or not. To sum it up: You have the right to defend yourself by any means necessary, but you are held responsible if you go to far (not just a little, but really really to far).
also, what is &quot;cannot be punished on account thereof because they lacked criminal responsibility due to the intoxication or if this cannot be ruled out&quot;? I can not understand This means that if a person, while drunk, does soemthign that would otherwise be a crime, but the person cannot be charged because s/he was too drunk to know that s/he was committing a crime, such a person can insted be charged with having become intoxicated, and given up to the same punishment that would have been given for conviction for doign the unlawful act. For example, if a person damaged property while under the influence of alcohol (drunk), it might be impossible under German law to prosecute for the crime of intentionally damaging property, because one could not prove that the person knew what s/he was doing, and knew that it was criminal. In such a case the person could be charged with having intentionally or carelessly become drunk, but the penalty can't be more than the penalty for having damaged property would have been, nor can it be more than five years. As a practical matter, I think it very unlikely that the police would seek to impose a fine if they didn't issue any ticket or other paperwork at the scene, nor mention any such intention. However, they might be legally able to do so.
This question and many related ones are analysed in detail by Eugene Volokh, in a long paper that is worth reading in its entirety if you are interested in the topic. The [Supreme] Court has offered “speech integral to [illegal] conduct” as one of the “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech” excluded from First Amendment protection. But if this exception is indeed to be well defined and narrowly limited, courts need to explain and cabin its scope. This Article — the first, to my knowledge, to consider the exception in depth — aims to help with that task. On threats, he says: Companies are generally barred from firing employees for voting for a union, and unions are generally barred from retaliating against employees for their speech. The Court therefore concluded that speech that threatens unlawful retaliation is itself unlawful. On blackmail, he says: [...] telling black citizens “stop shopping at white-owned stores or we’ll publicize your behavior to your neighbors and fellow church members” is similarly constitutionally protected. On the other hand, “vote for this civil rights bill or I’ll disclose that you cheated on your wife” is likely unprotected. In general the line where the First Amendment protections end and criminal speech begins is surprisingly vague. General advice to avoid self-incrimination by not answering questions from the police is clearly protected. Threatening a witness with violence is clearly not. In between are shades of grey.
The funding of public-service broadcasting in Germany was changed effective 2013-01-01. Under the current rules (Rundfunkbeitragsstaatsvertrag, in German), a monthly fee is to be paid for every single unit of housing (flat or single-family house), unless it is uninhabitated. It is otherwise immaterial how many people live there or whether any of them owns a receiver¹ or not. Certain people are exempt from the broadcasting fee or eligible to a reduced fee; however, in a multi-person housing unit, this only applies if each inhabitant satisfies the criteria for exemption or reduction. The “ARD ZDF Deutschlandradio Beitragsservice”, or Beitragsservice² for short, is the entity tasked with collecting the broadcasting fees. According to section 2(1) of the Rundfunkbeitragsstaatsvertrag, if a housing unit has multiple inhabitants, they are jointly and severally liable for the broadcasting fee. This means that the Beitragsservice gets to choose which inhabitant they claim the money from; and apparently, in your case, they have chosen you. You, in turn, can claim a proportionate amount of the fee from your flatmates or former flatmates, according to general principles of civil law. This may be difficult in practice, though, if your former flatmates aren’t willing to pay or are hard to reach; enforcing your claim may be time-consuming and costly. Regarding the announced visit, I can only speculate. One possibility is that the Beitragsservice might want to check whether your flat is really just a single unit of housing; if one of your flatmates, e.g., has a separate entrance, their room might be another unit for which they would have to pay their own broadcasting fee. (Note that Beitragsservice representatives have no special rights; you are never required to invite them in.) A second, more unpleasant possibility is that the matter has already progressed and a bailiff will appear in order to carry out a distraint. (They do have special rights, and it is not a good idea to try and lock them out.) If the letter is indeed from the city administration, that unfortunately hints at the second possibility. In that case, you should definitely see a lawyer, as soon as possible. ¹&nbsp;Note that under the rules valid until 2012, where it did matter, a computer with Internet access was also considered a radio, termed a “neuartiges Rundfunkgerät” (“novel radio receiver”). ²&nbsp;It used to be known as Gebühreneinzugszentrale, GEZ, an acronym that is still often used informally.