Strafgesetzbuch

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Strafgesetzbuch is the name of the German, Swiss, Liechtenstein and Austrian criminal law. It is often abbreviated to StGB. This article focuses on the German code. The German Strafgesetzbuch goes back to the Strafgesetzbuch of the German Empire passed in the year 1871 which was mostly identical to the StGB of the North German Confederation. This Reichsstrafgesetzbuch (Imperial Criminal Law) was changed very many times in the following decades as the legislature had to react not only to changing moral concepts and constitutional provision granted by the Grundgesetz, but also to scientific and technical reforms. Examples of such new crimes are money laundering or computer sabotage. The StGB serves as a codification of criminal law, i.e. although there are various provisions affecting criminal law, such as definitions of crimes and law enforcement, in other acts, the StGB is the central legal text and constitutes the foundation of Germany's criminal law.