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German Federal Act (June 8, 1815)

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Art. 16. The diversity of Christian confessions cannot justify any discrepancies in the enjoyment of civic and political rights in the lands and territories of the German Confederation.
The Confederal Assembly will deliberate on how to improve, in the most concurrent manner possible, the civic status of adherents to the Jewish faith, and how, with special regard to the same, the enjoyment of civic rights could be obtained and secured in exchange for the assumption of full civic duties in the Confederal states; yet adherents to this faith will retain rights already granted to them by the individual Confederal states.

[ . . . ]



Source of English translation: The first part of the text (up to Article 11) was adapted from James Harvey Robinson and Charles A. Beard, Readings in Modern European History, Volume II, Europe since the Congress of Vienna. Ginn & Company: Boston, New York, Chicago, London, 1909, pp. 16-20. The remainder of the text was translated from the following German source by Jeremiah Riemer.

Source: Karl Bindung, Deutsche Staatsgrundgesetze [German Federal Laws], Number III, p. 19 ff; original German text also reprinted in Ernst Rudolf Huber, ed., Deutsche Verfassungsdokumente 1803-1850 [German Constitutional Documents 1803-1850], vol. 1, Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte [Documents on German Constitutional History], 3rd ed., rev. and enl. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1978, pp. 84-90.

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