Germany -- Politics and government -- 1918-1933; Germany. Verfassung (1919)
This doctrine does not appear in the new German Constitution. The
Assembly at Weimar has substituted for it a conception by virtue of
which man, while still, it is true, enjoying a certain number of
individual prerogatives, nevertheless _must place them at the service
of the collectivity_. In whatever concerns liberty properly so-called,
property, the means of production, the intellectual development of man,
there is found everywhere this dominant idea of the social function of
man. Individual liberties are no longer an end in themselves, nor do
they constitute any longer an independent good. _They are limited and
conditioned by the duty of the individual to co-operate in the well-being
and the development of the collectivity._ They have no value and are not
protected except in the measure that they serve for the accomplishment of
this social duty.
2.--FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF THE INDIVIDUAL.
The Constitution commences by enumerating as completely as possible
individual liberties such as traditionally figure in most declarations of
rights. Not a single one of them is left out, and there have been even
others added: equality, at least in theory, of men and women; protection
of minorities; the right to secrecy in telegraphic and telephonic
communication; liberty of opinion extended to manifestations of thought
by means of motion picture films, etc.
One may, therefore, apply for the Germans the classic table of individual
liberties.
First, the civil equality. The suppression of privileges of birth or of
class. Titles of nobility have no other value except as a part of a name.
Titles may not be conferred except as they designate an employment or a
function. The state may no longer confer orders or honorary insignia and
no German may accept a title or order from a foreign government.
Then come the individual liberties properly so-called; not only the right
to come and go, but also the right to settle in any part of the Reich,
to emigrate to any non-German country, to be protected from surrender to
a foreign government for prosecution or punishment; guarantee against
arbitrary arrests, imprisonment, and other penalties; the inviolability
of domicile and correspondence.
In a third place, the right to freedom of activity; liberty to engage in
work, commerce and industry; liberty of creed and conscience; liberty to
practise religion; liberty of instruction; liberty to express publicly
one’s thoughts by words, speeches, printed matter, figures, films and in
any other manner; liberty of assembly and association.
In the fourth place the liberty of individual property. This cannot be
expropriated except for the common good, by virtue of a legislative
provision and must be indemnified.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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