German Criminal Law: Führungszeugnis, Strafanzeige, Notwehr and Permits

German criminal law is federal. The Strafgesetzbuch, the Strafprozessordnung and the specialist statutes around them apply identically in all sixteen Bundesländer, so unlike tenancy or dog law there is no Land statute setting a different rule. What varies is enforcement practice, and one narrow but real exception: where a federal statute expressly empowers the Länder to legislate, as § 42 Abs. 5 Nr. 3 WaffG does for knives on local and regional transport, the answer genuinely does depend on the Land.

This hub covers the parts an ordinary resident actually meets: the certificate that an employer asks for, what happens when you report an offence or someone reports you, when force is lawful, and the three permission regimes that catch people out because the everyday assumption is wrong in each case.

Information last verified on 20 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

The certificate an employer asks for

The Führungszeugnis is the document most people in this area actually need, and the thing worth knowing before anything else is what it leaves out.

Under § 32 Abs. 2 BZRG a conviction of up to 90 Tagessätze, or up to three months' Freiheitsstrafe, is not entered at all, provided it is the only entry in the register. So a single modest conviction frequently produces a clean certificate.

Two separate BZRG timetables then govern what happens later, and conflating them is the most common error on this topic. § 34 BZRG sets how long a conviction keeps appearing on the certificate, in tiers of 3, 5, 10 and 20 years. § 46 BZRG sets the Tilgungsfrist for deletion from the Bundeszentralregister itself, and that one does have a 15 year tier.

Read the full page: what the Führungszeugnis shows and what it leaves out.

Reporting an offence, and what follows

A Strafanzeige is a report that an offence may have been committed. Anyone can make one, about anyone, at a Polizeidienststelle, the Staatsanwaltschaft or an Amtsgericht.

A Strafantrag is different. For an Antragsdelikt, and many of the offences an ordinary person encounters are Antragsdelikte, the prosecution needs an application from the entitled person within three months under § 77b StGB. That clock runs from knowledge of the act and the offender, and missing it closes the criminal route however strong the case is.

Once a report is filed the Staatsanwaltschaft, not the complainant, decides what happens. Most reports end in an Einstellung rather than a charge, and a criminal report is not a route to compensation.

Read the full page: how a Strafanzeige works and what follows.

When force is lawful

§ 32 StGB is broader than most readers expect and narrower than the internet suggests. It permits the defence necessary to avert a present unlawful attack, and German law does not require the defender to retreat, nor to weigh the harm done against the harm threatened in the way an anglophone proportionality test would.

What it does impose is Gebotenheit, a limit German courts have developed to exclude cases such as a gross imbalance between the interests at stake or an attack the defender provoked. § 33 StGB then covers exceeding those limits out of confusion, fear or fright.

Read the full page: how Notwehr works under § 32 StGB.

The three permission regimes people get wrong

Each of these catches people out for the same reason: the everyday assumption does not match the statute.

Where criminal law meets the rest of this site

Several topics that look criminal are covered in more depth elsewhere in the German section, because the offence is only half the question.

For the wider picture of German law, courts and other legal topics, see German law explained.

Frequently asked questions