German Criminal Code: Offenses, Defenses, and Sentencing

The German Criminal Code, known in German as the Strafgesetzbuch or StGB, is the country’s central statute defining criminal offenses and their punishments. It is organized into a General Part that lays out the rules applying to every case — what counts as intent, when self-defense applies, how sentences are calculated — and a Special Part that defines individual crimes and sets their penalty ranges.¹ Alongside it sit companion statutes for regulatory offenses, juveniles, and international crimes, each covering ground the StGB deliberately leaves aside.

How the Code Is Organized

The StGB has two halves that work together. The General Part covers Sections 1 through 79 and sets the foundational rules: attempt, participation, defenses, sentencing, and limitation periods. The Special Part covers Sections 80 through 358 and defines specific offenses, grouped by the interest they protect — offenses against the state, against individuals, against property, against public administration, and so on.¹

A prosecutor charging someone with fraud identifies the specific offense in the Special Part and then applies the General Part’s rules on intent, defenses, and sentencing to work out what the case looks like. Neither half stands on its own.

Principles That Limit Punishment

Three principles anchor the whole system and cap what the state can do to someone accused of a crime.

The first is the legality principle. No act can be punished unless a written law defined it as a crime before it was committed. Section 1 of the StGB says this directly, and Article 103(2) of Germany’s Basic Law repeats it at constitutional level.¹² In practice, this means no retroactive criminalization, and every criminal statute must be specific enough that ordinary people can tell what it forbids.

The second is the prohibition on analogy. Judges cannot stretch a criminal statute to cover behavior that only resembles what the text describes. If conduct does not clearly fall within the wording of a statute, a court cannot convict on the reasoning that the conduct is similar enough. The power to create crimes stays with the legislature.

The third is the culpability principle. Punishment requires personal blameworthiness, and the severity of the punishment must be proportionate to the offender’s individual guilt rather than to general deterrence or political pressure.

Felonies, Misdemeanors, and Regulatory Offenses

Section 12 separates serious criminal offenses (Verbrechen) from less serious ones (Vergehen) based on the minimum sentence the statute prescribes, not the sentence a judge actually imposes. A Verbrechen carries a minimum prison term of one year or more. A Vergehen carries a lower minimum term or can be punished with a fine alone.¹

The classification has real consequences. An attempt to commit a felony is always punishable, even when the specific statute says nothing about attempts. For a misdemeanor, an attempt is punishable only if the statute explicitly says so.¹

Below the criminal threshold sits a separate category: regulatory offenses (Ordnungswidrigkeiten). These are governed not by the StGB but by the Act on Regulatory Offences (OWiG). A regulatory offense is an unlawful act that can only be sanctioned with a monetary fine — never imprisonment. Minor traffic violations and certain business compliance failures are typical examples. When the same act qualifies as both a criminal and a regulatory offense, criminal law takes priority, but if no criminal penalty is ultimately imposed the act can still be sanctioned as a regulatory offense. A final judgment on the regulatory side blocks later criminal prosecution of the same act.³

Intent, Negligence, and Mistakes

Section 15 sets the default: only intentional conduct triggers criminal liability, unless the specific offense statute expressly punishes negligence.¹ If a law says “whoever does X is punished with Y” and says nothing more, only someone who acted intentionally can be convicted.

Intent comes in several grades. The strongest is direct intent, where the person wants the criminal result. The weakest that still counts is conditional intent (dolus eventualis): the person recognizes the criminal result as a real possibility and goes ahead anyway, accepting it. The line between conditional intent and conscious negligence is one of the harder questions in German criminal law, and it turns up constantly in reckless-driving and bar-fight cases where the defendant claims they never meant for things to go that far.

Negligence applies when someone fails to exercise the care that would be expected of a reasonable person in the same situation and a foreseeable harm results. Because negligence is the exception, it only produces criminal liability where the Special Part specifically provides for it, as with negligent homicide or negligent bodily harm.

Liability for Failing to Act

Section 13 makes clear that inaction can also produce criminal liability. A person who fails to prevent a result that is part of a criminal offense can be punished, but only if they had a legal duty to prevent it and their failure to act is equivalent to actively causing the result.¹ A parent who watches their child drown, or a caretaker who lets a dependent starve, faces liability not for what they did but for what they were legally obliged to do and did not. Courts may reduce the sentence in omission cases.

Mistakes of Fact and Mistakes of Law

The code treats two kinds of mistakes very differently. A mistake of fact under Section 16 occurs when the person did not realize a factual circumstance that is part of the offense definition. Someone who walks off with a coat from a restaurant genuinely believing it is theirs lacks awareness of a key element — that the coat belongs to someone else — and cannot be convicted of intentional theft. Liability for negligence may still apply if the mistake itself was careless.¹

A mistake of law under Section 17 is different: the person knew exactly what they were doing but did not realize it was illegal. If the mistake was genuinely unavoidable, meaning no reasonable effort to learn the law would have revealed the prohibition, the person acts without guilt and faces no punishment. If the mistake was avoidable, the court may reduce the sentence but is not required to.¹ Courts set a high bar for “unavoidable,” especially when the defendant was acting in a professional capacity.

Attempt and Voluntary Withdrawal

An attempt begins the moment a person takes a step leading directly and immediately toward committing the offense as they envision it. Planning and preparation on their own are not enough; the person must cross into execution.¹

Attempts can be punished more leniently than completed offenses. For “grossly ignorant” attempts, where the act could never have succeeded because of the nature of the object or the means used, the court may waive punishment entirely. Trying to poison someone with sugar in the belief that it is arsenic sits in this category.¹

The code also provides an escape valve. A person who freely decides to stop before the offense is completed, or who actively prevents the result from occurring, escapes punishment for the attempt. The withdrawal must be genuinely voluntary; stopping because police arrived does not count. When multiple people are involved, each participant must personally make earnest efforts to prevent completion.¹

Perpetrators, Abettors, and Accessories

The code carefully separates roles. The principal perpetrator is anyone who commits the offense themselves or through another person. When two or more people commit an offense together, each counts as a joint perpetrator.¹

An abettor, or instigator, is someone who intentionally talks another person into committing a crime; the abettor faces the same penalty range as the perpetrator. An accessory, or aider, is someone who intentionally helps another person commit a crime by providing tools, information, or other support. The accessory’s penalty is based on what the perpetrator faces but must be reduced.¹

Each participant is punished according to their own personal guilt, regardless of the blameworthiness of the others. A defense that eliminates the principal perpetrator’s guilt does not automatically help or hurt the abettor or accessory.¹

Self-Defense, Necessity, and Mental Disorder

Self-Defense

Under Section 32, a person who acts in self-defense does not act unlawfully. Self-defense covers any defensive action necessary to repel an ongoing unlawful attack against oneself or someone else.¹ German self-defense law is broad compared with many other systems: there is no general duty to retreat, and the defender can use whatever force is necessary to stop the attack. The limit is proportionality. The defense must be the least harmful effective means available, and grossly disproportionate responses, such as using a firearm against an unarmed petty thief, can lose the protection.

Necessity

The code distinguishes two forms of necessity. Justifying necessity under Section 34 applies when someone commits an otherwise unlawful act to avert an imminent danger to any legally protected interest — life, property, freedom, and so on. The protected interest must substantially outweigh the one harmed, and the act must be a proportionate response.

Excusing necessity under Section 35 is narrower. It applies only when the danger threatens life, bodily integrity, or personal freedom of the person acting or someone close to them. The act remains technically unlawful, but the person is excused from guilt because the situation left no fair alternative. This excuse does not apply if the person caused the danger themselves or had a professional duty to accept it.

Mental Disorder

Section 20 provides that a person who was incapable of understanding the wrongfulness of their actions, or of acting in accordance with that understanding, acts without guilt. The recognized causes are a pathological mental disorder, a profound disturbance of consciousness, intellectual disability, or another serious mental condition. This is a complete defense against conviction, though the court may still order placement in a psychiatric hospital or another protective measure where the person poses a continuing danger. If capacity was substantially diminished rather than eliminated, Section 21 allows the court to reduce the sentence but does not require it.¹

Sentencing

Section 46 requires every sentence to be based on the offender’s individual guilt. Judges weigh specific factors for and against the offender, including motives, degree of planning, consequences of the offense, personal and financial situation, prior criminal history, and behavior after the crime, particularly efforts at restitution or reconciliation with the victim.¹ Factors already built into the offense definition cannot be counted a second time in sentencing.

Day-Fines

Fines are the most common sentence in German criminal law, accounting for roughly 85% of all adult convictions.⁴ Rather than a flat amount, the system uses day-fines (Tagessätze). The court first decides how many day-units the offense warrants, anywhere from 5 to 360, reflecting the seriousness of the crime. It then sets the value of each unit based on the offender’s average net daily income.¹ The total fine is units multiplied by daily rate, so a wealthy defendant and a low-income defendant convicted of the same offense may receive the same number of units but pay very different totals. Each unpaid unit converts into one day of imprisonment.

Imprisonment

Fixed-term prison sentences run from one month to a maximum of fifteen years. Life imprisonment exists but is rare — roughly 0.1% of prison sentences.¹ Life does not always mean dying in prison. After serving at least fifteen years, a person sentenced to life may apply for suspension of the remainder on probation, provided the severity of their guilt does not require continued imprisonment, the prognosis is favorable, and they consent.⁴ German courts generally avoid short prison terms, and for first-time and minor offenders a fine or a suspended sentence is almost always preferred.

Suspended Sentences

Where a court imposes a prison term of one year or less, it may suspend the sentence on probation if the conviction itself is likely to serve as a sufficient warning. For sentences between one and two years, suspension is still possible but only when special circumstances relating to the offense and the offender’s character are present.¹ Sentences above two years cannot be suspended. Repeat offenders rarely qualify for the “special circumstances” exception.

Reform Measures and Asset Forfeiture

Alongside punishment, the StGB provides for measures of reform and prevention, a parallel track focused on public safety and rehabilitation rather than blame. Sections 61 through 72 set out these measures, which can be ordered independently of or in addition to a criminal sentence.¹ They include placement in a psychiatric hospital, commitment to a drug or alcohol treatment facility, preventive detention for offenders posing a continuing serious threat, suspension of a driver’s license, and professional bans. Each measure must be proportionate to the danger the offender poses and the severity of expected future offenses.

Under the confiscation rules in Sections 73 through 76a, a court must order forfeiture of anything the offender obtained through or for the commission of an unlawful act, including profits derived from those proceeds. If the original proceeds are gone — spent, hidden, or destroyed — the court orders forfeiture of an equivalent sum of money. Forfeiture can also reach third parties who received criminal proceeds, particularly when they obtained them for free, without legal basis, or with knowledge of their criminal origin. Tools and products of the crime, such as weapons used in an assault or counterfeit goods produced by fraud, can likewise be confiscated, provided the measure stays proportionate to the offense.¹ Even when prosecution of a specific person is impossible because the suspect died, fled, or lacks criminal responsibility, the court may independently order confiscation.

Statutes of Limitations

Most offenses in Germany cannot be prosecuted forever. Section 78 sets limitation periods based on the maximum penalty the offense carries:¹

30 years for offenses punishable by life imprisonment
20 years for offenses with a maximum sentence exceeding 10 years
10 years for offenses with a maximum sentence exceeding 5 years but not more than 10
5 years for offenses with a maximum sentence exceeding 1 year but not more than 5
3 years for all remaining offenses

The clock starts running when the offense is completed, or when the criminal result occurs if that happens later. Certain investigative steps, such as the first formal interrogation of the suspect, issuance of an arrest warrant, or the filing of charges, interrupt the limitation period and restart it from zero. Prosecution is absolutely barred once double the original limitation period has passed, regardless of interruptions. Murder is the major exception: it has no statute of limitations and can be prosecuted no matter how much time has passed.¹

Where the Code Applies

Section 3 establishes the territoriality principle: German criminal law applies to any offense committed within Germany’s borders, regardless of the offender’s nationality or residency status.¹ Section 4 extends this to offenses committed aboard German ships and aircraft even when outside German territory. Section 7 allows prosecution of German nationals for crimes committed abroad, provided the act is also punishable where it occurred.

A separate statute, the Code of Crimes against International Law (Völkerstrafgesetzbuch, or VStGB), reaches further. Under this code, Germany can prosecute the most serious international crimes regardless of where they occurred and even when neither the perpetrator nor the victim has any connection to Germany.⁵ The crimes covered include genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes — such as attacks on civilians, use of prohibited weapons, torture, enslavement, and the use of child soldiers. Germany has used this jurisdiction in practice to prosecute individuals involved in atrocities committed in Syria and other conflict zones.

What the StGB Does Not Cover: Children and Juveniles

The StGB does not apply to children under fourteen. That is the absolute minimum age of criminal responsibility in Germany, with no exceptions. Between fourteen and seventeen, a young person is classified as a juvenile and falls under the Youth Courts Act (Jugendgerichtsgesetz, or JGG) rather than the general criminal code.⁶

Even for juveniles over fourteen, criminal responsibility is not automatic. The court must find that the juvenile was mature enough at the time of the offense to understand the wrongfulness of their actions and to act in accordance with that understanding.⁶ Young adults between eighteen and twenty may be tried under juvenile law as well if the court finds their development or the nature of the offense warrants it.

1
Gesetze im Internet. German Criminal Code
2
Gesetze im Internet. Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany
3
Gesetze im Internet. Act on Regulatory Offences
4
Federal Ministry of Justice. Criminal Justice in Germany – Facts and Figures
5
Gesetze im Internet. Code of Crimes against International Law
6
Gesetze im Internet. Youth Courts Act (JGG)