freedom of religion
noun · Religionsfreiheit
Freedom of religion is the Religionsfreiheit of Art. 4 GG, read as one unified right covering faith, conscience, creed and undisturbed practice, for everyone. The system point: Art. 4 GG carries no written limitation clause, the right is vorbehaltlos, limitable only by colliding constitutional law, while Art. 9 Abs. 2 ECHR has an express one; the ECHR proviso must not be translated into the Grundgesetz.
Which translation, when
Why
Freedom of religion is the Religionsfreiheit, and the words travel without loss; what must not travel is the limitation architecture. Art. 4 Abs. 1 und 2 GG protect the freedom of faith, of conscience and of religious and ideological creed together with the undisturbed practice of religion, and the constitutional court reads the guarantees as one unified fundamental right, covering the inner conviction, the forum internum, and its outward practice, the forum externum, in the positive and the negative direction, for everyone, religious communities and corporate bodies included. The architecture is what sets the German right apart: Art. 4 GG carries no written limitation clause. On the settled line of the constitutional court the right is vorbehaltlos gewährleistet and can be limited only by colliding fundamental rights of others and other goods of constitutional rank, with any restriction still requiring a statutory basis; the contrary view, reading Art. 136 Abs. 1 WRV via Art. 140 GG as a statutory reservation, has not prevailed, the court holding that limits on Art. 4 GG must flow from the constitution itself. The English environment is built differently: Art. 9 Abs. 2 ECHR attaches an express limitations clause, freedom to manifest one’s religion subject to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society. A translation that carries that proviso into a passage on the German guarantee converts a vorbehaltlos right into one under statutory reservation, and one that strips the proviso from a Convention passage overstates the ECHR right. So the safe rendering keeps Religionsfreiheit, marks whose guarantee the sentence describes, and leaves each limitation picture on its own side.
Typical mistakes
- Art. 4 GG protects faith, conscience, creed and practice as one unified right for everyone, so carving the practice out as a separate, weaker guarantee misdraws the scope.
- The right is vorbehaltlos, limitable only by colliding constitutional law on a statutory basis, so importing the ECHR proviso prescribed by law into the German guarantee rewrites its limitation architecture.
- The view that Art. 136 Abs. 1 WRV supplies a statutory reservation has not prevailed, so a text asserting a simple legal proviso for Art. 4 GG states the minority picture as the law.
What matters
An ECHR-flavoured text on religion heading into German: the translation should use Religionsfreiheit, keep the vorbehaltlos architecture for the Grundgesetz side, leave the prescribed-by-law proviso to the Convention side, and treat practice as part of the one unified right rather than a separate concession.
What the machine misses
Rendered by machine, freedom of religion becomes Religionsfreiheit without loss at the word level, but the limitation clauses travel with the source: an ECHR passage carries subject to such limitations as are prescribed by law, and the translation plants that written proviso where Art. 4 GG has none, turning a vorbehaltlos guaranteed right into one under statutory reservation. The architecture, not the word, is what the machine mistranslates.
Examples
| freedom of religion | Religionsfreiheit |
| the undisturbed practice of religion | die ungestörte Religionsausübung |
| freedom of faith and conscience | Glaubens- und Gewissensfreiheit |
| guaranteed without an express limitation clause | vorbehaltlos gewährleistet |