German Recording Law: Aufnahmerecht, Surveillance and Evidence Explained

Germany does not have a single recording law. It has three separate legal regimes that can all apply to one act, plus a fourth question, admissibility, that is decided by a different test again.

The spoken word is protected by the criminal law in § 201 StGB. The image is protected by § 201a StGB and § 184k StGB in the criminal code, and separately by the Recht am eigenen Bild in the KunstUrhG. The handling of any recording that identifies a person is data processing governed by the DSGVO and the BDSG. And whether a court will let the resulting recording be used as evidence is decided by a balancing exercise that can come out the opposite way from all three.

That structure is the single most useful thing to hold on to, because it explains results that otherwise look contradictory. A recording can be a criminal offence and still be admitted in a civil case. A photograph can be lawful to take and unlawful to publish. A camera can be lawful to own and unlawful to point where it is pointing.

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

The three regimes

The fastest way to work out any German recording question is to ask which of the three regimes the act touches, in order, and then ask the admissibility question separately at the end.

The spoken word: § 201 StGB

§ 201 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 StGB punishes whoever, without authorisation, records the non-public spoken word of another person on a sound carrier. The maximum is imprisonment of three years or a fine, rising to five years under § 201 Abs. 3 StGB where the offender is an Amtsträger.

The protection is broad. It does not ask where the conversation took place, only whether the words were addressed to a limited and determinable circle of listeners rather than to a general public. A loud exchange in a restaurant is still non-public. A speech at an open public meeting is not.

Consent from every participant removes the unbefugt element. Consent from one participant does not, which is the point at which readers arriving from a one party consent system most often get German law wrong.

The image: § 201a StGB, § 184k StGB and the KunstUrhG

The image regime is narrower and more fragmented. § 201a Abs. 1 Nr. 1 StGB requires that the person was in a dwelling or in a space specially protected against view, so it does not reach a photograph taken in an ordinary public street. Its maximum is two years or a fine.

§ 184k StGB fills the gap that leaves for upskirting and downblousing, by protecting body areas that are shielded against view by clothing regardless of where the person is standing. It sits in the sexual offences chapter and has its own complaint requirement in § 184k Abs. 2 StGB.

Alongside both, § 22 KunstUrhG requires the consent of the person depicted before a portrait may be disseminated or publicly displayed, subject to the exceptions in § 23 KunstUrhG for contemporary history, incidental appearance and assemblies. Publication is therefore its own question, with its own criminal provision in § 33 KunstUrhG.

Data processing: DSGVO and BDSG

Any recording from which a person can be identified is personal data, so processing it needs a lawful basis under the DSGVO, with the BDSG supplying national rules in the areas left to member state law. This layer runs in parallel with the criminal law rather than instead of it.

Supervision here is frequently described wrongly as a joint effort between the federal and Land authorities. It is not. The Bundesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit supervises federal public bodies together with telecommunications and postal providers. The seventeen Landesdatenschutzbehörden supervise virtually the entire private economy plus Land and municipal bodies, so almost every complaint about a private employer, a shop or a neighbour goes to a Land authority. Bavaria is the exception worth knowing: it runs two, the Bayerischer Landesbeauftragte für den Datenschutz for public bodies and the Bayerisches Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht for the private sector, which is why there are seventeen Land authorities for sixteen Länder.

The fourth question: will a court actually use it?

Admissibility is not a fourth regime so much as a separate doctrine, and blurring it with the criminal analysis is the most common error in this area.

The criminal question is answered inside § 201 StGB or § 201a StGB, with § 34 StGB rechtfertigender Notstand as a narrow potential justification. § 34 StGB requires a present danger that cannot be averted otherwise and a protected interest that substantially outweighs the one impaired, and it is applied restrictively.

The admissibility question is answered instead by a Güter- und Interessenabwägung, a balancing of the general personality right derived from Art. 2 Abs. 1 in conjunction with Art. 1 Abs. 1 GG against the opposing party's interest in effective legal protection and a functioning administration of justice.

Those two doctrines are not interchangeable. The Bundesgerichtshof made the split visible in its dashcam decision of 15 May 2018, VI ZR 233/17, where the recording breached the data protection law applicable at the time and was nevertheless admissible in the civil accident liability suit. The court got there through the balancing exercise, not through § 34 StGB.

So a recording can be criminal and still be used, or perfectly lawful and still excluded. Both outcomes are normal, and neither tells you anything about the other.

The complaint requirement, and where it differs

Most of these offences are prosecuted only on the application of the person affected, but the details differ between provisions and are widely misreported.

In every case § 77b Abs. 1 StGB sets the period at three months, running under § 77b Abs. 2 StGB from the end of the day on which the entitled person learns of both the act and the identity of the offender. That start point matters: a recording discovered years later can still be within time if the discovery was recent.

The pages in this section

Each page below takes one situation and works it through all the applicable regimes, with the statutory text and a worked example.

Recording conversations under § 201 StGB

The core criminal provision on the spoken word. What nichtöffentlich gesprochenes Wort actually means, why participating in a conversation gives no recording privilege, the separate offence of passing a recording on, the penalties including the raised maximum for an Amtsträger, and the absolute complaint requirement in § 205 Abs. 1 Satz 1 StGB.

Recording phone calls

The telephone specific position, including what changes for business call recording, why an announcement is not automatically the same thing as consent from every participant, and how the data protection layer sits on top of the criminal one.

Secret recordings as evidence

The admissibility question in its own right: the balancing exercise, where the balance usually lands, why the dashcam decision does not amount to a general licence, and why a recording being unlawful is not the end of the analysis.

Dashcams

Permanent loop recording from a vehicle, the data protection problems it creates, and the 2018 Bundesgerichtshof decision that held such a recording breached data protection law and was still admissible in the civil accident liability proceedings.

Workplace surveillance

Cameras, monitoring and covert recording in the employment relationship, where the criminal provisions, the data protection rules and works council participation rights all apply at once, and where a covert recording made by an employee has its own employment law consequences.

Neighbour surveillance cameras

The most common private dispute in this area: a camera on a neighbouring property, what it may cover, the difference between a camera that films only its owner's land and one that reaches beyond it, and the civil claims available.

Photographing and filming a person: § 201a and § 184k StGB

The image side in full. What § 201a StGB actually covers and what it does not, the distinct upskirting offence in § 184k StGB, and the Recht am eigenen Bild in §§ 22, 23 and 33 KunstUrhG, which governs publication rather than taking.

Find your situation

How a single act runs through all four questions

Take a concrete case. An employee, expecting a difficult meeting, sets a phone to record video in a jacket pocket and films a closed meeting with a manager in an office.

The spoken word question comes first. The meeting is non-public, since it was addressed to a determinable circle, and the manager did not agree, so § 201 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 StGB is engaged at the moment recording starts. The three year maximum applies, and prosecution would depend on a Strafantrag within the § 77b StGB period.

The image question is next and comes out differently. An office is generally not a dwelling and generally not a space specially protected against view, so § 201a Abs. 1 Nr. 1 StGB is unlikely to be engaged by the filming itself. Sharing the file could still engage § 201a Abs. 2 StGB if the image is capable of seriously damaging the manager's reputation, and publishing a recognisable still would engage § 22 KunstUrhG.

The data protection question is third. The file is personal data about an identifiable person, processed by the employee, so it needs a lawful basis, and any complaint about it would go to the competent Landesdatenschutzbehörde rather than to the BfDI.

The admissibility question is last and is answered by none of the above. If the employee later wants to rely on the recording in a labour court, the court will balance the manager's general personality right against the employee's interest in effective legal protection, on the specific facts. The recording being a criminal offence is a weighty factor in that balance, but the dashcam decision shows it is not automatically decisive.

Related sections

Where a recording is published in a way that also asserts something untrue or insulting about a person, the reputation provisions come into play, and those are structured differently again. See German defamation law.

For the wider picture of German law, courts and other legal topics for people living in Germany, see German law explained.