The liberal constitutional lawyer Robert von Mohl became the first German Justice Minister during the 1848 revolutions. However, the attempt by the newly elected Frankfurt National Assembly to establish a democratic German nation state failed in the face of opposition from the Prussian king. The first Imperial or Reich Ministry of Justice (Reichsjustizministerium) was therefore short-lived, lasting only until 1849.

A German state was not successfully established until 1871 – and this time not as a result of a popular vote, but by “iron and blood”. The Imperial Office of Justice (Reichsjustizamt) of this new German Empire was set up in 1877. Bismarck, the Imperial Chancellor, did not want any other ministers who might challenge his authority. Instead of ministries, he therefore set up imperial offices (Reichsämter), which were headed by state secretaries. The Imperial Office of Justice was primarily responsible for preparing legislation relating to the justice system. The Office’s remit also included the Imperial Court, the Imperial Prosecutor’s Office and the Imperial Patent Office. Most of the courts and judicial authorities, however, remained under the control of the Länder. This was the era in which a uniform German body of law emerged and the rule of law became more firmly established. Major statutes such as the Courts Constitution Act, the Code of Civil Procedure and, ultimately, the Civil Code came into force during this period.

In 1919 under the Weimar Republic, the Office of Justice became the (Reich) Ministry of Justice (Reichsjustizministerium). Now, there were ministers of justice who were answerable to the parliament or Reichstag. The Weimar Constitution built on the existing, formal framework of the rule of law to create a democratic, constitutional social state. The most influential minister of justice during the Weimar Republic was the philosopher Gustav Radbruch. Legislation introduced during his term in office included a youth courts act.

Nazism and the Nazi policy of Gleichschaltung (“coordination”) eroded the autonomy of the Länder, and the Reich Ministry of Justice progressively assumed control of the entire German justice system from 1934 onwards. The Ministry was instrumental in the destruction of the rule of law and the perversion of justice under National Socialism. A detailed critical examination of this, the darkest chapter in the history of Germany’s justice system, was not undertaken until decades later. In 1989, the Federal Ministry of Justice then put together an exhibition entitled “In the Name of the German People: Justice and National Socialism”. The exhibition was given a permanent home at the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg in 2008.

Following the defeat of Nazism and the post-war division of Germany, the German Democratic Republic established its own Ministry of Justice in East Berlin in 1949. The GDR Justice Ministry was part of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and served in part to direct a partisan and politicised judiciary. An exhibition launched by the Federal Ministry of Justice in 1994 entitled “In the Name of the People? The justice system in the SED state” takes a closer look at this period.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, meanwhile, the adoption of the Basic Law in 1949 reversed the centralisation of the justice system. Article 92 of the Basic Law stated that “judicial power shall be vested in the judges; it shall be exercised by the Federal Constitutional Court, by the federal courts provided for in this Basic Law, and by the courts of the Länder.” This meant that all courts below the level of the federal courts were designated courts of the Länder and were thus also administered by the Länder. The Federal Ministry of Justice once again became a “legislative ministry”, as the Justice Ministry of the Weimar Republic had been: its duties relate primarily to the legislative process rather than to government administration or the immediate activity of governing. Of course, this does not mean that the Ministry enacts laws. Legislating is the preserve of the German Bundestag and the Bundesrat. However, the Federal Ministry of Justice prepares Federal Government draft legislation in areas within its remit, and is also responsible for scrutinising legislative drafts from other ministries to check compliance with the German Basic Law. Alongside work on legislation, the remit of the Federal Ministry of Justice also includes the following courts and public authorities: the Federal Court of Justice and the Office of the Federal Public Prosecutor General; the Federal Administrative Court; the Federal Fiscal Court; the German Patent and Trade Mark Office; and the Federal Office of Justice, which was set up in 2007.

The Federal Ministry of Justice has been the central judicial authority for the whole of the country since German reunification in 1990. In the summer of 1999, the Ministry moved from Bonn to Berlin – to the city that was home both to the justice ministry of the very first German republic, and to that of the National Socialist regime. Berlin has witnessed high points and horrific low points in German legal history. And that is another, central reason why critical engagement with the history of justice ministries in this country is so important to us.