English Translation

4-15 Carernreen 25 individual churches are issued and approved by the Reichsstatthalter. The determination and collection of the church contribution in the individual case follows independently by the churches in accordance with the contribution regulations. Furthermore, the state church contribution regulations contain provisions that allow the state to check the church contributions of the churches. The church contributions can only be enforced on the basis of a legally valid knowledge of the ordinary court, in contrast to the taxes of the Old Kingdom. Until the start of the new contribution scheme, the state has, on a transitional basis, granted the churches free-willed, precisely measured grants without recognition of a legal obligation to ensure the livelihood of the single pastors as well as the other financial needs of the churches during this period. It is evident that this kind of regulation is approaching the system of separation between the state and the church in the Old Kingdom. However, it would be premature to draw a conclusion from the large differences in the relations between the state and the church in the Great German Reich, including within the areas free of concordats according to the position of the government, to draw an end to the final settlement in the whole Reich. At least the possibility is to be expected that as the final result a system emerges, which, as far away from the system of a state church as from that of a complete separation between state and church, represents a third, quite peculiar type. VII. DIE LEGAL ASSESSMENT In the integration of new territories into the Great German-speaking Reich, the problem of legal approximation arose everywhere. Understandably, in the Sudeten German territories as little as in all other reunified or newly divided territories, the entire German Reich law could enter into force with one blow. Thus, the decree of the Führer of 1 October 1938 (RGBl. I 1331) in § 5 expressly stated that the law in force so far in the re-integrated territories should be maintained, insofar as this does not contradict the sense of the assumption of this territory by the German Reich. 116) it must be assumed that the fundamental law of the German constitutional law came into force immediately and, to the extent that it was still explicitly introduced (such as the Reichsflaggeset, the Ordinance on the symbols of dignity, the Decree on the Imperial Seal and few others), this introduction has only a declaratory significance.