Postmortaler Schutz nichtvermogenswerter Personlichkeitsrechte

In 1968, the German Supreme Court decided in the case of Mephisto that survivors may prohibit presumptive detriments to the personality of a deceased relative. To this day, this judgment is still in force and adhered to by courts, although at the same time the question of its legal basis remains unanswered. The judges’ reasoning is missing stringency and clarity, and opinions voiced in the secondary literature of this case differ greatly. This volume looks at the existing models of justification and tests them for their compatibility with the dogmatics and foundations of civil law. It comes to the conclusion that existing law has no provisions for postmortal protection of nonasset personality rights. Taking the implications of constitutional law into consideration, it also studies how such a postmortal protection of nonasset personality rights might be codified in law. This makes clear that postmortal protection of nonasset personality rights is a public matter, the settlement of which should be a part of public law. It contains German text.