The Räumungsklage: How an Eviction Lawsuit Actually Works in Germany

A Räumungsklage is the lawsuit a landlord has to bring to legally remove a tenant who has not left after a tenancy has ended. It is not optional in the sense of being one option among several. In Germany, a landlord cannot lawfully put a tenant out of a dwelling without going through this process and then having a court judgment enforced by a Gerichtsvollzieher, a court bailiff.

This page states the law as it applies to both sides of that process: the sequence from termination to judgment to enforcement, the deadline a court can give a tenant before enforcement, the restrictions on skipping ahead with an interim injunction, a cheaper enforcement variant known as the Berliner Räumung, and the hardship protection available at the enforcement stage itself.

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

Self-help eviction is unlawful, full stop

German law treats a tenant's possession of a rented dwelling as protected against interference even after a tenancy has ended, unless and until a court has ordered otherwise and that order has been properly enforced. § 858 BGB defines verbotene Eigenmacht, forbidden self-help, as interfering with someone's possession without their consent and without legal authorization to do so.

A landlord who changes the locks while the tenant is out, removes the tenant's belongings, or cuts off electricity, heating or water to pressure a tenant into leaving is committing exactly this kind of unlawful interference, even where the underlying termination of the tenancy was entirely valid. The tenant's remedy in that situation is not to argue about the termination at all, but simply to have possession restored, because the manner of eviction was unlawful regardless of the underlying merits.

Step one: a valid termination

Before any lawsuit can succeed, the tenancy has to have actually ended. That usually means an ordinary termination with notice under § 573 BGB, for a ground such as the landlord's own need for the dwelling, or an extraordinary termination without notice under § 543 BGB, most commonly for serious rent arrears. A landlord who sues for possession without a valid underlying termination loses the case regardless of how uncooperative the tenant has been, since the court first has to find that the tenancy actually ended.

Step two: the Räumungsklage itself

If the tenant does not leave once a termination has taken effect, the landlord's only lawful path forward is to file a Räumungsklage at the Amtsgericht with jurisdiction over the property. The lawsuit asks the court to order the tenant to vacate and hand back the dwelling. The tenant is served with the claim and can contest it, typically by disputing that the termination was valid, raising a hardship objection where one applies, or arguing the underlying facts, for example that the arrears claimed do not actually exist.

How long this stage takes varies enormously by court and by whether the case is contested on the facts, but it routinely runs to several months from filing to judgment, and considerably longer where the case is genuinely disputed rather than essentially unopposed.

Step three: the judgment becomes the Räumungstitel

A judgment ordering the tenant to vacate is the Räumungstitel, the title that makes enforcement possible under § 794 ZPO. Without this title, or an equivalent enforceable instrument such as a court-approved settlement, there is nothing for a Gerichtsvollzieher to act on. The existence of a valid title, not the landlord's own view that the tenant should have left already, is what unlocks the enforcement stage.

Step four: enforcement by the Gerichtsvollzieher

§ 885 ZPO governs enforcement of a judgment ordering the surrender of a dwelling: the Gerichtsvollzieher removes the party bound by the judgment from possession and puts the party entitled to possession, ordinarily the landlord, back in. This is carried out by a court-appointed bailiff, not by the landlord or anyone the landlord hires privately, and it follows its own notice and scheduling procedure separate from the underlying lawsuit.

The Räumungsfrist: extra time before enforcement

Even after a Räumungstitel exists, § 721 ZPO lets the court grant the tenant a Räumungsfrist, an additional period before the judgment can actually be enforced, on request or on the court's own initiative, taking account of the tenant's circumstances. This period is capped: the total Räumungsfrist cannot exceed one year, running from either the date the judgment becomes final or, where the judgment orders a future vacate date, from that date. This is separate from, and comes after, whatever notice period applied to the original termination.

Skipping ahead: the limits on an interim injunction

A full Räumungsklage, with its own notice, hearing and appeal timeline, is not always fast. § 940a ZPO allows a landlord to seek eviction by einstweilige Verfügung, an interim injunction obtained more quickly and without a full trial, but only in narrow circumstances: where the tenant themselves committed unlawful self-help, such as re-entering after already having vacated or moving in without any right to the premises, or where there is a concrete danger to life or limb.

The statute also allows an interim eviction order against a third party unlawfully occupying the premises where the landlord had no earlier opportunity to bring the third party into the original proceedings, and against a tenant in serious rent default who ignores a court-ordered security payment. Even in these situations, the court generally has to hear the other side first. An ordinary dispute over whether a termination was valid, or how much rent is owed, does not qualify for this faster route and has to go through the full Räumungsklage.

The Berliner Räumung: a cheaper enforcement variant

A traditional eviction enforcement requires the Gerichtsvollzieher to remove every item of the tenant's property from the dwelling and place it in storage, with the landlord typically having to advance the often substantial cost of that removal and storage before enforcement proceeds. The Berliner Räumung, now codified in § 885a ZPO, is a variant that limits enforcement to putting the landlord back in possession of the rooms themselves, changing the locks in effect, while the tenant's movable belongings remain on the premises subject to the landlord's rights over them.

Under this limited form of enforcement, the landlord may remove and store items where doing so makes sense, may dispose of items with no apparent value in storing, and after a month, if the tenant has not reclaimed remaining belongings, may sell them under the ordinary rules for realizing on secured property, without a public auction announcement. Items that are not seizable, or that plainly have no sale value, must be handed back to the tenant on request at any time. Because the landlord does not have to fund a full removal and storage operation upfront, this variant is generally faster and considerably cheaper to carry out than a traditional full removal.

What happens to the tenant's belongings

Regardless of which enforcement variant is used, the tenant does not simply lose their possessions. Items removed and stored have to be returned to the tenant on request, and the Gerichtsvollzieher documents what was found in the dwelling at the time of enforcement, including photographically where useful, precisely so a later dispute about what happened to specific items can be resolved. A tenant who anticipates enforcement is well advised to remove anything of importance beforehand rather than relying on the enforcement process to safeguard it, since a landlord's liability for items lost or damaged during enforcement is generally limited to intentional conduct or gross negligence.

Hardship protection at the enforcement stage

§ 765a ZPO is a general provision allowing a court to suspend, restrict or temporarily prohibit an enforcement measure where carrying it out, weighed against the creditor's legitimate interest, would amount to hardship that is incompatible with public standards of decency. For residential evictions specifically, an application on this ground generally has to be made at least two weeks before the scheduled eviction date, unless the hardship arose after that point or the tenant was prevented from applying earlier through no fault of their own.

This protection is applied narrowly and is not a routine delay tactic. Courts have granted it in genuinely extreme circumstances, such as an acute risk of suicide or a comparably serious medical or safety crisis directly tied to the eviction itself, weighed against how long the landlord has already waited and the landlord's own interests. A tenant considering this route should expect it to require real, documented evidence of the specific hardship claimed, not a general reluctance to move.

Worked example of the full sequence

A landlord validly terminates a tenancy under § 573 BGB for owner move-in, with the required notice period under § 573c BGB. The tenant does not vacate on the stated date. The landlord files a Räumungsklage, which takes roughly five months to reach judgment given the tenant's contested hardship objection. The court finds the objection does not outweigh the landlord's need but grants a three month Räumungsfrist under § 721 ZPO given the tenant's circumstances.

Once that Räumungsfrist expires and the tenant still has not left, the landlord requests a Gerichtsvollzieher appointment for enforcement under the Berliner Räumung variant, which changes the locks and documents the belongings left behind rather than removing everything to storage. The tenant is given the standard period to reclaim any remaining belongings before the landlord may deal with them under § 885a ZPO. At no point in this sequence does the landlord act alone. Every step after the original termination runs through the court and the Gerichtsvollzieher.

For how a tenancy comes to an end in the first place, see ending a tenancy and owner move-in terminations. General background on German tenancy law is at German law explained.