Summary:

I.
The Federal Constitutional Court had to decide on a constitutional complaint of an applicant who had unsuccessfully sought rehabilitation for having been placed in children’s homes in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).

The applicant, who was 13 years old at the time, and his mother were caught trying to leave the GDR for the Federal Republic of Germany in the autumn of 1977. The applicant’s mother was sentenced to imprisonment, whereas the applicant was committed to a children’s home. In June 1978, the mother was released from prison and resettled in the Federal Republic of Germany, whereupon she tried to get her son relocated as well to reunite the family. Yet her son was only released from the children’s home and allowed to relocate to the Federal Republic of Germany in December 1978. In 2014, the applicant applied for rehabilitation, under the Act on Rehabilitation and Compensation for Victims of Criminal Prosecution and Injustice in the Former GDR, on grounds of his forced stay in the children’s home. He argued that his being committed to a children’s home, and in any case his delayed release, had been politically motivated and not based on legitimate reasons. He could have been sent to live with relatives instead of being sent to a children’s home, and after his mother’s release from prison he could have been reunited with her immediately instead of months later. The ordinary courts rejected the application for rehabilitation.

II.

The Federal Constitutional Court granted his constitutional complaint, based on the following considerations:

The ordinary courts had not properly investigated the facts of the case and had thus failed to provide effective legal protection to the applicant. In particular, the courts had simply assumed that the applicant’s parents had not actively tried to ensure that the applicant would be taken in by other family members despite the applicant’s substantiated submission that his mother had sent letters to relatives, which were identified by name, while in prison. Moreover, the courts attributed the applicant’s delayed release and resettlement to organisational and bureaucratic obstacles even though the GDR files on the applicant’s case do not appear to contain any documentation supporting this assumption. To the extent that the courts referred to a conflict between the applicant’s parents regarding outstanding child-support payments, it is not clear how this is related to the applicant’s forced and prolonged stay at a children’s home.

Given the courts had assumed circumstances for which no plausible indications existed, the decisions rendered on this basis must be considered arbitrary. A rehabilitation procedure conducted in such ineffective manner runs counter to the principle of the rule of law enshrined in the Basic Law.