From this very proper interim regulation, the implementing ordinance has drawn the further conclusion, which is appropriate per se but definitely does not belong to an implementing ordinance accompanying a law that does not contain anything on the matter, that: “once adopted, a Jew’s real name can neither be changed later on nor replaced with another name, but has to be preserved without alteration and used in civil life and in legal dealings of any sort.”
There is no need to explain that the leap from last to first name had not even been legally admissible in that implementing ordinance, just as the regulation, for its part, is incompatible with a literal interpretation. In accordance with it, a Jew would not be allowed to conclude any legal transaction without specifying his first name! – The law and decree of August 16, 1838, have become ineffective for domestic Jews by virtue of the basic rights published in the decree of March 2, 1849, and the law of May 12, 1851, § 3 – until recently, when the long-forgotten regulation that it included, and, with it, the incongruity of the law and the decree already in place in those days, was renewed by means of regulation. Based on what has been said, no doubt should remain that § 2 of the decree of August 12, 1869, cannot be upheld vis-à-vis the law, indeed vis-à-vis the constitutional law.
II.
The principle of equality for all citizens irrespective of their denominational affiliation as stated in the present § 33 of the Constitutional Charter disturbs the syllogism that the Constitutional Charter stated in §§ 32, 33, and 56.
The three sections correspond with each other only in the earlier version. They express the idea: Everyone enjoys freedom of conscience but only the accepted Christian religious societies have civic and political equality as well as freedom of worship.
The intermediate link is eliminated, and now everyone is entitled to civic and political equality. The consequence of this is that there can no longer be an opposition between religio recepta and religio tolerata, of admitted and tolerated religion, for this would contradict the principle of civic legal equality. In fact, none of the constitutions – which, in accordance with the “Basic Rights of the German People,” make the enjoyment of political rights independent of religious denomination – preserve the preference of any one denomination over another.
From this perspective, subjecting §§ 32 and 56 to a revision may be justified.
This revision, by the way, could be carried out by merging both sections to the effect that: “Each inhabitant of the state is granted complete freedom of conscience and freedom of public worship [ . . . ] paragraph 2 of § 56.”
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