| Type: | Official journal |
| Foundation: | (under the name) |
| Language: | German |
| Ceased Publication: | (Part I) |
| Oclc: | 224485947 |
The (; abbreviated RGBl.), was the government gazette of the German Reich from 1871 to 1945, thus covering the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, and Nazi Germany.
All laws of the German Reich in a formal sense (i.e., all laws that have been passed through the prescribed legislative process) had to be promulgated in it to become legally existent.
At least since the formation of the German Empire in 1871, the promulgation of a law was the last step in the German legislative process. The legal existence of a law depended on its formal (and complete) promulgation – this promulgation had to happen in the . The respective mechanism was laid down in the empire's constitution: Article 2 Sentence 2 of the 1871 Constitution prescribed that laws had to be promulgated in the . If no special provision was made, they entered into force 14 days after their publication. The gazette thus had a significant role in the formation of the laws of the empire.
This role continued during the Weimar Republic era (1919–1933): Article 70 of the 1919 Weimar Constitution commanded that laws had to be published within a month of their adoption in the and Article 71 again established that – in the absence of a special provision – they entered into force 14 days after their publication.
During Nazi Germany (1933–1945), Article 70 of 1919 Weimar Constitution formally remained in force, but the rule that laws entered into force 14 days after publication was only used once (for the ), because all other laws had their own special provision for their entry into force.
The predecessors of the were the (Federal Law Gazette for the North German Confederation), the official journal of the North German Confederation, which was established on 26 July 1867, and the older of the Kingdom of Prussia.
The was first issued – as – under this name on 8 May 1871. The issues of the 1871 volume of the were still published under the title (Federal Law Gazette for the North German Confederation), while the issues (27 January 1871 – 2 May 1871) of said volume were titled (Federal Law Gazette for the German Confederation).
The was originally published by the office of the German Reich Chancellor, while the Prussian (Law Collection Office) was in charge of the technical aspects of publishing the paper. Later the (1880–1918) and afterwards the (1918–1945) were responsible for its publication. The laws published in each volume of the – always covering one year – were numbered chronologically.
The was split into two parts on 1 April 1922; a proclamation of 6 March 1922 explained the splitting: Part II of the gazette should henceforth print those "publications that experience has shown to take up a lot of space and that many customers can do without", while laws and publications on all others topics would be published in part I. A list of topics was established that clarified which publications would be printed in part II. These were:
In 1924, publications concerning the "Administration of the Reichsbahn Company" and "Matters of Industrial Burden" were added as topics for part II of the gazette by a proclamation dated 30 August 1924.
In October 1923, a law was passed on the publication of ordinances of the empire . It was decided that such ordinances should generally be published in the, but they could also be published in the (Reich Ministerial Gazette) or the (German Reich Gazette). In 1924, the legal scholar J. Jastrow considered this to be the most important change in the history of the because since then it was no longer the only government gazette in which all laws (in a material sense) had to be published. He wrote:
The continued to be used in Nazi Germany (1933–1945). The Enabling Act of 1933, for example, provided in its Article 3 that all laws enacted by the government – and not only those passed by the legislature (the Reichstag) – were to be published in the . The ordinances of the Reich were at first still published in the three publications named in the 1923 law, but soon other government gazettes were formed and prescribed as suitable for publication of such ordinances.
The publication requirement for laws was, however, no longer generally observed: The legal scholar notes that not all binding law was published by the Nazi authorities in their government gazettes. Furthermore, the was no longer a government gazette for laws only, but also a paper for certain propaganda appeals by the Reich government without any legal value (see, for example, the [Proclamation of the Reich Government to the German People] concerning the re-introduction of compulsory military service in 1935). He comments:
After the, the scope of application of the was extended to Austria on 15 March 1938. Laws especially pertaining to Austria were printed in the and the (Law Gazette for the Land of Austria): The later was, however, discontinued in March 1940 and only the was used thereafter.
In the wake of the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute, the stopped using the typeface class Fraktur and began using Antiqua beginning with its first issue of 1942.
The last issue of the was published in its part I on 11 April 1945, five days before the Battle of Berlin began. Its successors are the (Federal Law Gazette) for Germany (1949–) and the (Law Gazette of the German Democratic Republic) for East Germany, which was published from 1949 to 1990.
The is commonly cited in two ways, depending on the year: If a publication in the gazette up to (and including) year 1921 is cited its abbreviation RGBl., the respective year (volume) and the page number is given. If a publication in the gazette after (and including 1922) is cited, the respective part of the RGBl. – Part I or Part II – is also provided by adding "I" or "II" after the year. If a specific law is cited and its year is given and it is the same as the volume of the, the year is usually omitted in the citation.
"RGBl. 1896 S. 195" (or 1896 195) thus gives the citation for the original version of the (German civil code) on page 195 of the 1896 volume of the, while "RGBl. 1933 I S. 141" or ( 1933 195) provides the citation for the Enabling Act of 1933 on page 141 of part I of the 1933 volume of the .