Rehabilitation Process

The Unification Treaty of 1990 states that victims of injustice by the Socialist Unity Party (SED) are to be rehabilitated and compensated adequately. The Bundestag realized this article in 1992 with the 1st SED Injustice Rectification Act, the Criminal Law Rehabilitation Act (Strafrechtlichen Rehabilitierungsgesetz, StrRehaG). According to the StrRehaG, all sentences that resulted in deprivation of liberty or life under conditions similar to imprisonment (including detainment in a home) are to be rehabilitated if they served political persecution or other extraneous (sachfremd) purposes or if the legal consequences ordered are grossly disproportionate to the underlying offense.

  • political persecution
  • extraneaous purposes
  • gross disproportion
Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, Wikimedia Commons

Are you eligible for rehabilitation? Find it out with this quiz!​

Have you lived in a residential children's home (Kinderheim)
in the Soviet Occupational Zone (SOZ) or
German Democratic Republic (GDR) between the years 1945 and 1990?

Both legislation and jurisdiction regarding the Criminal Law Rehabilitation Act have changed a lot throughout the years. Get an overview with the help of the timeline below.

If a former institutionalized child can prove that being sent off to a care home served their political persecution (for example because of being a punk, listening to western music, having long hair, wearing peace signs), then they are to be rehabilitated after the Criminal Law Rehabilitation Act, even if they were “only” sent to a normal home and not a special home.

The second case the Criminal Law Rehabilitation Act states is if the incarceration served extraneaous purposes (German sachfremde Zwecke). This is for example when the reason for incarceration was to ensure the child’s further education but it was then sent to a facility where it had to drop out of school after the 8th grade as it was the case in special homes.

The third case in which a person can be rehabilitated is when the legal consequences ordered are grossly disproportionate to the underlying offense having been undertaken by the child. For example, missing school does not justify the human rights violations that came with the coercive “re-education” in special homes.