The German government wants to amend legal texts that date back to the time when the Nazis came to power. According to the government, this concerns at least 29 and possibly 40 laws containing texts from the period between 1933 and 1945.
Felix Klein has been appointed on behalf of the government to fight anti-Semitism. He is also involved in adapting the legal texts.
“Some texts are very anti-Semitic”, says Klein. At the moment, there is enough political support in the Bundestag to change the lyrics. Klein hopes to do this before September when the current government’s term comes to an end.
When Germany drafted a new code four years after World War II, it tried to deviate from the Nazis as much as possible. Yet many laws have been partly or completely adopted. For example, much of a law requiring Jews to add Sarah or Israel to their name if they do not have an exact Jewish name can still be found in the law book. In that text, Germany is referred to as if the Third Reich still exists.
Germany also wants to change the telephone alphabet at the same time. The Nazis deleted all Jewish names and replaced them with, for example, Friedrich.
The list was already revised in 1950, but the old names were not restored. Germany wants to roll this back in the fall of 2021, and a year later there should be a completely new game alphabet, referring to cities.