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Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Алексей Николаевич Толстой; – 23 February 1945) was a Russian writer whose works span across many genres, but mainly belonged to science fiction and historical fiction.

Despite having opposed the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, he was able to return to Russia six years later and live a privileged life as a highly paid author, reputedly a millionaire, who adapted his writings to conform to the line laid down by the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

Parentage
Tolstoy's mother Alexandra Leontievna Turgeneva (1854–1906) was a grand-niece of Nikolay Turgenev, who had been a Decembrist, and a relative of the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. She married Count Nikolay Alexandrovich Tolstoy (1849–1900), a member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family and a distant relative of Leo Tolstoy.

Aleksey claimed that Count Tolstoy was his biological father, which allowed him to style himself as a Count; since his mother had taken a lover and left her husband before he was born, not all of his contemporaries believed him. The Nobel Prize winning author Ivan Bunin, who knew him as a young man, wrote in his diary, on 23 February 1953: "Aldanov said that Alyosha Tolstoy himself told him that he, T., bore the surname Bostrom until the age of 16 and then went to see his imaginary father, Count Nick Tolstoy, and begged to legitimize him." According to author and historian Nikolai Tolstoy, a distant relative:"His father had been a rake-hell cavalry officer, whose rowdy excesses proved too much even for his fellow hussars. He was obliged to leave his regiment and the two capital cities, and retired to an estate in Samara, Russia. There he met and married Alexandra Leontievna Turgenev, a lively girl of good family, but slender means. She bore him two sons, Alexander and Mstislav, and a daughter Elizabeth. But the wild blood of the Tolstoys did not allow him to settle down to an existing domestic harmony. Within a year the retired hussar had been exiled to Kostroma for insulting the Governor of Samara. When strings were eventually pulled to arrange his return, he celebrated it by provoking a fellow-noble to a duel. Alexandra fell in love with Alexei Appollonovich Bostrom. In May 1882, already two months pregnant with her fourth child, she fled into the arms of her lover. The Count threatened Bostrom with a revolver but was exculpated by the courts. The ecclesiastical court, in granting a divorce, ruled that the guilty wife should never be allowed to remarry. In order to keep the expected baby, Alexandra was compelled to assert that it was Bostrom's child."

What is known is that Bostrom brought the boy up as his own child, on his family farm in Samara province, and that he was known in his childhood and in his teens as Aleksey Bostrom. When he was 13, his mother began a lawsuit to have him recognized as the son of Count Tolstoy, which eventually he was on his 17th birthday, after which he was entitled to style himself as Count Tolstoy.

Early life
Tolstoy's adoptive father was a liberal landowner, who had supported the emancipation of Russian serfs in the 1860s. His mother wrote children's stories, using the pseudonym Alexander Bostrom. Due in part to their rejection by both the Russian nobility and the Church, Aleksey grew up in a staunchly atheistic and anti-monarchist environment, and was encouraged to be creative. He was home taught by his parents, and by a visiting tutor, until the age of 14, when the family moved to Samara, after selling their farm, and he was enrolled in a local school.

St. Petersburg
Count Nikolai Tolstoy died in 1900, leaving a will from which Aleksey received 30,000 rubles. This allowed him to move to St Petersburg, where he studied at the Technological Institute St Petersburg in 1901-06. In June 1902 he married a fellow student, Julia Rozhansky, the daughter of a provincial doctor. Their son, Yuri, was born in 1903. According to Nikolai Tolstoy, he took part in a student protest on 12 February 1902 along Nevsky Prospekt, which was broken up by police and Cossacks, and joined the Social Democratic Party, but there does not appear to be any corroboration for this account of his student radicalism. He avoided becoming involved in the 1905 Revolution, by moving to Dresden in February 1906, to enrol in the Royal Saxon Higher School after the government temporarily closed the Technological Institute.

In Dresden, he met Sofia Dymshitz (1889-1963), who had recently married another emigre student named Isaac Rosenfeld (1879-1978). She and Tolstoy became lovers, and returned to rent a shared apartment in St Petersburg, where she took up painting. (Her sister in law, Bella Rosenfeld, married Marc Chagall) Tolstoy's wife agreed to a divorce, which was finalised in 1910, but Rosenfeld always refused to divorce Dymshitz.

Paris
In 1907 Tolstoy broke off his studies to dedicate himself to writing. The couple decided to emigrate in 1907, and arrived in Paris in January 1908, to join a wide network of emigre Russian writers and artists, including Nikolay Gumilyov, Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont, Andrei Bely, Maximilian Voloshin. He and Gumilyov launched a periodical that folded after one issue for lack of funds. Tolstoy's first book of poems, Lyric, was published in 1907, at his own expense, but in later life he was embarrassed by it and preferred to forget it. His second poetry collection, Beyond the Blue Rivers (1908) was his last. In a letter to his adoptive father, he complained that the name 'Tolstoy' meant that people had high expectations of him, though Voloshin suggested to him that it was an advantage. One young poet he met mistook him for Leo Tolstoy, who had died in 1910 aged 82.

In 1908, he learnt from his ex-wife that their son had died from meningitis. According to Nikolai Tolstoy,

"Sophia claimed in a pious official memoir published in Moscow in 1973 that Alexey, 'took the child's death very much to heart.' One may question this. The father, after all, made no attempt to visit his ailing son before his lonely end, nor did he return for the funeral (though he did make another, business journey to Petersburg from Paris). As subsequent events were to show, he could evince extraordinary callousness toward individual members of the human race, whatever his broadly liberal viewpoint toward the species at large."

Return to Russia
Aleksey and Sophia returned to St Petersburg in January 1909. By 1910 his success as a writer enabled them to move into a flat along Nevsky Prospekt, but because of her husband's refusal to grant a divorce, when she became pregnant, she returned to Paris in May 1911, where he joined her, so that he could be registered under French law as the father of their daughter, Marianna. They returned to St Petersburg later in the year, but moved to Moscow in 1912.

In the summer of 1914 Tolstoy and Dymshitz took a vacation in Koktebel, Crimea, where he met a 17 year old ballerina named Margarita Kandaurova. Nikolai Tolstoy wrote in 1983 that "The break with Sophia was as abrupt as it had been with Julia. Out on a stroll, Aleksey said significantly, 'I feel that this winter you're going to leave me.' Sophia did not reply, but took the hint and departed for another visit to Paris. The baby Mariana was deposited with an aunt."

Tolstoy hoped to marry Kandaurova, but she rejected him, and before the end of the year he had met his third wife, Natalya Volkenstein, née Krandinskaya, by whom he had three children.

During World War I Tolstoy worked as a war correspondent, visiting England and France, and wrote several essays and two plays.

Emigre
Tolstoy opposed the Bolshevik Revolution. To escape living under Bolshevik rule, he moved with his family in 1918 to Odesa. Then, as the White Army was driven out of Crimea, they fled to Constantinople, before once more relocating to Paris. Unhappy at being, as he put it, "cut off from his homeland", in 1920, he wrote the story Nikita's Childhood, about growing up as an exile. Nikita was their oldest child, born in 1917, who was starting to speak with a French accent.

While living in France, Aleksey wrote several plays, and began writing a lengthy historical novel entitled, The Road to Calvary, which tracked the period from 1914 to 1919 including the Russian Civil War, which he had completed by 1921. Reaction to it in Soviet Russia was very hostile. The leading Bolshevik literary critic, Aleksandr Voronsky, editor of Krasnaya Nov described Tolstoy's depiction of the new regime as a "tendentious lie" full of "improbable banalities" and berated the writer for his "countish hatred, his lordly disdain, his spite, bitterness, fury."

By 1921, Tolstoy was bothered by the Gallicisms appearing in his son's spoken Russian language. Declaring that his son was becoming a foreigner, Aleksey moved the family to Berlin, which was then one of the main centers of the Russian diaspora. There, he wrote his science fiction novel, Aelita, and became associated with the 'Changing Landmarks' (Смена вех) group whose leading thinker was Nikolai Ustryalov, who were also known National Bolsheviks, because, despite their opposition to communism, they acknowledged that the Bolsheviks had united Russia. While there, he eventually began collaborating with Maxim Gorky on the Pro-Soviet journal Nakanune. Ilya Ehrenburg later recalled:"There was a place in Berlin that reminded one of Noah's Ark, where the clean and unclean met peacefully; it was called the House of Arts and was just a common German café where Russian writers gathered on Fridays. Stories were read aloud by Tolstoy ... Apparently, not all the dice had been cast yet. There were people who called Gorky the 'semi emigre'... Alexey Tolstoy, surrounded by Smena Vekh (Changing Landmarks) people, alternately praised the Bolsheviks as, 'unifiers of the Russian land,' and indulged in angry abuse. The fog was still swirling."

Soviet dignitary
Tolstoy revisited Russia in May 1923, and decided to return permanently, having decided that "no literature will come out of the emigration". In his farewell editorial printed in Nakanune, he wrote, "I am leaving with my family for the homeland forever. If there are people here abroad close to me, my words are addressed to them. Do I go to happiness? Oh, no: Russia is going through hard times. Once again she is enveloped by a wave of hatred... I am going home to a hard life."

Because of his ancestry he was sometimes called "Comrade Count" or "Red Count".

Far from experiencing a "hard life" in the Soviet Union, Tolstoy was a highly privileged Soviet citizen, who prospered under the dictator, Joseph Stalin, when other writers who had chosen to live under Soviet rule throughout the civil war were persecuted. According to a widespread rumour, he was a millionaire with a 'bottomless bank account'. The American journalist Eugene Lyons noted how "almost alone among Russians, Tolstoy lived in baronial style in a rambling many-roomed mansion stocked with rich antiques ... the whole atmosphere of ripe old-world culture seemed like a throw-back to a nearly forgotten period." Anna Akhmatova paid a back-handed tribute to his ability to live well in a short poem written in the 1920s, which included the lines: Ah, where are those islands ... Where the villain Yagoda Would not drive people to the wall and Alyoshka Tolstoy Would not skim it all. If Tolstoy was aware that she had linked his name with that of the reviled head of the NKVD, he did not bear a grudge. In 1940, he and Mikhail Sholokhov proposed that Akhmatova be awarded a Stalin Prize, which would have been her first official recognition by the Soviet literary establishment, but the proposal was vetoed by Stalin.

Soviet critics abruptly changed their view of Tolstoy's work once he had declared his new allegiance to the regime. Instead of being denounced in Krasnaya nov, he had more work published in that magazine during the 1920s than any other author apart from Maxim Gorky, starting with Aelita. A critic writing in the same magazine praised The Road to Calvary as the best novel ever written by an emigre Russian.

When Nadezhda Mandelstam published her memoirs in the 1960s, she opened with this enigmatic sentence: "After slapping Alexei Tolstoy in the face, M. immediately returned to Moscow." She did not explain why her husband, Osip Mandelstam struck Tolstoy, but makes it clear that Tolstoy was so well connected with the Soviet authorities that Mandelstam fled Leningrad because he was afraid that he would be arrested. According to other sources, Tolstoy had chaired a writers' 'court of honour' which looked into Mandelstam's complaint against a fellow writer who had slapped his wife, and objected to a verdict which implied fault on both sides.

Tolstoy was Chairman of the USSR Writers Union in 1936-38. In January 1937, during the second of the Moscow show trials, at which 17 defendants including former leading Bolsheviks such as Georgy Pyatakov and Karl Radek were forced to confess to crimes they had not committed, Tolstoy signed a collective letter, with other writers, declaring "We demand merciless punishment for traitors, spies and murderers who sell their homeland."

In 1937, he published his novel Bread, which eulogised Stalin's role in the defence of Tsaritsyn (later renamed Stalingrad) during the civil war. This prompted one Soviet reader to write to him anonymously, saying that he had previously admired Tolstoy as Russia's greatest living writer since the death of Maxim Gorky, but on reading Bread:

"I felt ashamed, bitter and very, very hurt. Don't you feel the stifling atmosphere in which 170 million Soviet people are suffocating? ... For the sake of Stalin's boundless ambition, historical facts are manipulated, and you put your thin hand to it ... In Bread, you are pushing the assertion that the revolution won thanks only to Stalin ... Fear is the dominant emotion that grips citizens of the USSR. Don't you see it? ... Do you live in an ivory tower?" In December 1937 Tolstoy was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. He became a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1939.

Peter the Great
Tolstoy spent 16 years studying the life of Peter the Great. His first work on this subject was his 1929 play, Na dybe ("On the Rack"). In the 1920s, Soviet historiography was dominated by the Bolshevik historian Mikhail Pokrovsky, who despised "Peter, whom fawning historians have called the great" as a tyrant who provoked war with Sweden and impoverished his subjects. Tolstoy's 1929 play was true to the party line, depicting Peter as a tyrant who "suppressed everyone and everything as if he had been possessed by demons, sowed fear, and put both his son and his country on the rack."

In 1935, after Pokrovsky had died and his school of history had been denounced by the party leadership, and the Soviet economy had begun the process of rapid industrialisation through Five Year Plans, Tolstoy wrote a radically different play, Peter I, in which – borrowing a motto from Pushkin that 'Russia came into Europe like the launching of a ship' – the construction of a ship, with Peter acting as the master builder, is the symbol of the entire play. Stalin went to see the play, but left before the end, setting off speculation that he did not like it. Critics consequently trashed it, until Stalin sent Tolstoy a note saying "A splendid play. Only it's a pity Peter is not depicted heroically enough", and summoned him to advise him on how to write a novelised version of the life of Peter.

The first volume of his uncompleted novel, Peter the Great was published in 1936, and won a Stalin Prize.

In 1939, with war looming in Russia, Tolstoy produced a third version of his play, which stressed the importance of the army, and the patriotism of its foot soldiers.

Ivan the Terrible
In December 1940 Tolstoy was commissioned to write a play about the life of Ivan the Terrible, after the Central Committee had issued an instruction that Ivan's role in history was to be re-evaluated. The instruction was followed by a phone call from Stalin, who told Tolstoy that Ivan had 'one shortcoming', which was that he 'repented of his cruelty.'

After the German invasion, Tolstoy moved to Zimenki, a village east of Moscow, where he wrote the first scenes of The Eagle and His Mate, covering the years 1553-59. In November 1941 he was evacuated to Tashkent, where he completed it the following February. This original version, which was to have been performed in the Maly Theatre was banned by order of the political director the Red Army, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, who sent Stalin a memo explaining that Tolstoy had failed to portray Ivan as "the outstanding stateman of the 16th century". Despite this official rebuke, Tolstoy was awarded a Stalin Prize in 1943 for The Road to Calvary.

In April 1943 Tolstoy completed The Difficult Years, his second play about Ivan, covering the years to 1571. In June he sent the script to Stalin, complaining that Shcherbakov had failed to say whether the play was to be allowed to be performed. Stalin then read both scripts, suggested changes, and final versions were completed in November. Both scripts were published in 1944, and The Eagle and His Mate received its premiere in the Maly Theatre in October, but the reviews were such that it was taken off, and the next performance opened a week after Tolstoy's death. The premiere of The Difficult Years was delayed until 1946.

Wartime
In November 1942 Tolstoy was appointed a member of the Extraordinary State Commission, established to investigate atrocities committed on Soviet territory by the German invaders and their allies. During the Nuremberg Trial the Soviet prosecutor Lev Smirnov posthumously credited Tolstoy with having led the team that investigated war crimes committed in Stavropol, which for the first time ascertained 'without reasonable doubt' that gas vans had been used by the Nazis to commit genocide.

In December 1943 Tolstoy was one of a contingent of Soviet and foreign journalists who were sent to Kharkov to cover the first war crimes trial, at which three Germans and a Soviet collaborator were sentenced to death. Ilya Ehrenburg, who also covered the trial, later wrote: "I did not go to the square where the accused were to be hanged. Tolstoy said he must be present: he did not feel he had the right to evade it. After the execution, he came back blacker than night."

In January 1944 Tolstoy was appointed a member of a special commission that was supposedly charged by the Politburo with investigating the massacre in Katyn forest of 22,000 Polish officers, who had been taken prisoner when the Soviet Union occupied the eastern part of Poland in 1939-1940 under a pact with Nazi Germany. In January 1944 he held a press conference for foreign journalists, in which he and other members of the commission asserted that the officers had been massacred by the Germans in August and September 1941. The special commission's report was submitted by the Soviet prosecution team at the Nuremberg Trials, but was not included in the verdict, and in the 1980s, the Soviets belatedly admitted that Stalin ordered the Katyn massacre. As the leading spokesman at the press conference in January 1944, Tolstoy played a major role in ensuring that the Soviet version of the Katyn massacre – which is now known to be a lie – was widely reported in the USA and Great Britain.

Death
Tolstoy died on 23 February 1945 in Moscow.

Legacy
Tolstoy is credited with having produced some of the earliest works of science fiction in the Russian language. His novels Aelita (1923) about a journey to Mars and The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (1927) have gained immense public popularity. The former spawned a pioneering sci-fi movie in 1924. His supernatural short story, Count Cagliostro, reportedly inspired the 1984 film Formula of Love.

He penned several books for children, starting with Nikita's Childhood, a memorable account of his early years (the book is sometimes mistakenly believed to be about his son, Nikita; in truth, however, he only used the name because it was his favorite – and he would later give it to his eldest son). In 1936, he created an adaptation of the famous Italian fairy tale about Pinocchio entitled the Adventures of Buratino or The Golden Key, whose main character, Buratino, quickly became hugely popular among the Soviet populace. The creator of the Moscow Children's Theatre, Natalya Sats spent several months persuading him to write the work, and finally won him over by supplying his wife with foreign fashion magazines.

He is also suspected of being the main author of a libelous and partly pornographic literary fraud entitled Vyrubova's Diary published in 1927, on instruction from the authorities, to discredit the Russian royal family. Anna Vyrubova was the lady-in-waiting to the Empress Alexandra, consort of Nicholas II, about whom there had been scandalous rumours of sexual relations with Rasputin or with the Tsar or his consort, all of which she denied when under arrest after the revolution. The 'diary' was "a vulgar and dirty forgery".

In 1974, a minor planet was discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova and named 3771 Alexejtolstoj after the Red Count.

Comments
While Tolstoy enjoyed huge popularity and success in Russia in his lifetime, western assessments of him have been generally negative because of his role as a Stalin apologist. Nikolai Tolstoy's summation of his distant relative was that "His personal character was without question beneath contempt ... in Stalin, he found a worthy master. Few families have produced a higher literary talent than Leo Tolstoy, but few have sunk to one as degraded as Alexei Nikolaevich.

Professor Gleb Struve, a former White Army soldier and committed anti-Communist, who became a leading authority on 20th century Russian literature reckoned that:

Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy is, without doubt, one of the most gifted Russian writers of the 20th century … But—and this is the point—this man, endowed with so many extraordinary gifts and sharing the heritage of the great age of Russian literature, lacks one quality which distinguished all of the great Russian poets and writers : a sense of moral and social responsibility. His essence is that of a cynic and opportunist. George Orwell branded Tolstoy, along with contemporary Ilya Ehrenburg, as a "literary prostitute" whose freedom of expression was denied by Soviet totalitarianism.

But Tolstoy's friend Ilya Ehrenburg reckoned that "like the real artist he was, he was never sure of himself, always dissatisfied, painfully seeking the right form to express what he wanted to say."

Selected works

 * Lirika, a poetry collection (1907)
 * Nikita's Childhood (1921)
 * The Road to Calvary, a trilogy (1921–40, Stalin Prize in 1943)
 * Aelita (1923)
 * The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin (aka The Garin Death Ray) (1926)
 * The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino (1936)
 * Peter I (1929–34, Stalin Prize in 1941)
 * A Week in Turenevo (published posthumously, 1958)
 * "Count Cagliostro" (supernatural short story)

title: Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy


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Conscription in Germany

The Federal Republic of Germany had conscription (Wehrpflicht, ) for male citizens between 1956 and 2011. On 22 November 2010, the German Minister of Defence proposed to the government to put conscription into abeyance on 1 July 2011. The constitution, however, retains provisions that would legalize the potential reintroduction of conscription.

The Grundgesetz (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany) and several special laws (e.g., Wehrpflichtgesetz ) regulated these duties and exceptions. In the last year of active conscription, men were obliged to serve six months either in the military, which they could refuse, or do alternative civilian service or honorary service for at least six months in a civil defence organisation.

Families of those who were oppressed by the Nazi regime (usually Jews) were exempted from conscription, though some volunteered to serve. Although conscription was of a military nature, in the last days of conscription twice as many draftees refused military service and served in alternative services. Women were not subject to conscription; they were allowed to join the military as volunteers.

From 2025, a compulsory questionnaire has to be filled in by German men when they turn 18. They have to make statements about their motivation to serve in the military. The government hopes to recruite up to 10000 men for military service. The scheme will be on a voluntary basis.

Military service for conscripts
Draftees who did not state that they were conscientious objectors and did not request service in the civil protection were by default drafted into military service (Wehrdienst) in the Bundeswehr (German federal defense forces).

Basic training (Allgemeine Grundausbildung) consisted of three months of combat training, then three months' service at the assigned post. The conscripted soldier would normally reach the rank of Obergefreiter (NATO code OR-3, comparable to U.S. Army Private First Class). During his service, he got free health care, housing, food, and a railway ticket allowing him to travel between his home and the military base. Conscripts got paid between €9.41 and €10.95 per day of basic pay (depending on rank) plus several bonus payments such as distance-from-home pay, additional food pay for days absent from service and others.

Conscripts could not be deployed to active service in conflicts against their will. The German contributions to forces such as ISAF in Afghanistan or KFOR in Kosovo exclusively comprise professional soldiers and volunteers. Conscripts who wished to partake in such missions must have volunteered for it; this included volunteering for a service extension (because the time of compulsory service, 9 months at most of the time in question, would not have sufficed for recruit training, post-specific training, mission-specific training, mission, and post-processing the mission put together).

Service in Civil Protection Services
Draftees could also opt for service in the Civil Protection, which was by law equal to military service. Today, this consists mostly of medical ambulance organisations and organisations for disaster relief (Katastrophenschutz). This was subject to validation by local authorities, who usually were allowed a certain contingent of such volunteers per year of birth. Thus, organizations such as the Technical Relief Service (Technisches Hilfswerk, or THW), volunteer fire departments, or other emergency assistance and crisis management agencies such as the Red Cross were supported in performing their volunteer services in disaster response. In the ambulance services, their service could overlap with the service of conscientious objectors.

Draftees in the Civil Protection got no payment outside of compensations for clothing and transportation expenses, as they were performing an honorary service (ehrenamtlich).

Conscientious objection
The German "Basic Law" requires that conscientious objection be possible, therefore draftees were allowed to perform civilian alternative service (Zivildienst or Wehrersatzdienst). The conscientious objection had to be declared in a personal letter to the local draft office (Kreiswehrersatzamt), with an appendix outlining one's moral objections. The draft office then sent this appendix to the Bundesamt für den Zivildienst (Federal Office for Civilian Service) for approval or denial. From 1983, the denial of a conscientious objection claim was quite rare, previously, the objector had to defend the validity of his claim in front of a committee at the Draft Office itself. These must have been directed against war and military service in general, without regard to the circumstances, and, if they had been finally rejected (which was then a common occurrence), the only legal recourse was to challenge the decision in administrative court. While the option of conscientious objection is required by law, in the past there were several hurdles in place to discourage it. Until 1983 conscientious objectors had to undergo a Gewissensprüfung (inspection of conscience), an oral examination before a board that tried their motivations, which could decide to deny them conscientious objector status.

Those who objected had to perform civilian alternative service, lasting the same amount of time as military service, plus one additional month, during which they may have found employment with a civilian institution that renders a public service, such as a kindergarten, hospital, rehabilitation center or assisted living facility for the elderly. Alternative service could be more convenient than military service since the draftee could continue living at home rather than in military barracks.

Before German reunification in 1990, citizens of West Berlin were exempt from the draft as West Berlin formally did not belong to the FRG. Some young men moved to Berlin immediately upon their high school graduation in order to avoid the draft entirely, and thus did not serve in either the military or in an alternative service. A total of around 50,000 West Germans evaded compulsory military service by moving to Berlin.

In East Germany, conscripts who were not willing to bear arms were drafted into the National People's Army as "construction soldiers" (Bausoldaten). They were used in public construction projects, and sometimes also to fill worker shortages in various parts of the East German economy, such as the mining industry. Men who served as "Bausoldaten" were frequently subjected to discrimination by the East German state, even after they had finished their service. For example, former "Bausoldaten" were often barred from enrolling in university.

Duration and payment
The German constitution also requires that the duration of civilian service does not exceed that of military service.

Since 2003 civilian service had the same duration in months as military service. Before, there was a rate in hours both services had to serve, which was then divided by the average daily work hours in military and civil service. Thereby, civil service tended to be 1–3 months longer than military service, as the latter used to have 50 working hours a week as against 40 working hours in civil organisations. This made four "military weeks" equivalent to five "civil weeks". This practice was abolished when the draft duration was reduced from 10/12 months to 9/9 and later 6/6 months.

Exemption from service
Women were not included in the draft, but they could serve voluntarily. Since 1975 women were allowed to serve in medical and music band functions. In 2001 the European Court of Justice ruled that limiting women to these functions was against European law. Subsequently, all positions in the Bundeswehr were opened up for women.

Under a deal between the German Defense Ministry and the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Jews up to the third generation of Holocaust victims were exempted from the military service obligation, but could still volunteer for military service. For decades, volunteering for military service was taboo in the German-Jewish community, but eventually, Jews began joining. In 2007, there were an estimated 200 Jewish soldiers serving in the Bundeswehr.

Men could be exempted from the service requirement for various other reasons. The most frequent reason for exoneration was a medical exemption (Ausmusterung). All conscripts, including conscientious objectors but excluding those exempt for other reasons, had to attend a medical examination (Musterung) at the local county draft bureau (Kreiswehrersatzamt). Those who did not fulfill certain standards did not have to serve, either in the military or in a civilian service.

Delinquents sentenced to more than a year or charged with a felony against peace, democracy, the state, or state security were not drafted for military service.

Priests were not drafted. Another provision exonerated everyone from military service who had two siblings who had already served. The same was true for men whose fathers, mothers, or siblings died in military or civil service. Men who were married, living in a registered civil union, or had children were also free to choose.

Workers performing tasks in areas of important public interest could be exempted from military service on request. This mostly applied to policemen, career firefighters, and specialists in telecommunication or engineering services.

Alternative services to Zivildienst
Another alternative was to become a foreign "development helper" ("Entwicklungshelfer"), which means that the person would be expected to work in a technical capacity in a recognized "developing country" for a period of not less than two years. To qualify for this option, the candidate had to meet the requests of the chosen agency which includes formal vocational training or an educational program that grants a recognized qualification in a marketable skill making him a useful asset in a developing host country. Many men who chose this option, become so engrossed in the developmental needs of such countries that they stayed abroad many years longer than the legal requirement. The disproportionately high percentage of German nationals found in many international aid, conservation, medical and technical assistance organizations active in developing countries may be directly attributable to this trend.

Women and undrafted men may have opted in to serve one year of voluntary service in a social or environmental institution, called "Freiwilliges Soziales Jahr" (FSJ) and "Freiwilliges Ökologisches Jahr" (FÖJ), respectively. It was not a real alternative to military service, but for most practical purposes identical to the civilian alternative service that conscientious objectors were required to serve. This included social security coverage for the term of service and might have given the young attendee a direction for their later career as well as a certain improvement in soft skills.

Total resisters (Totalverweigerung)
If a conscripted man refused to serve in the military or do any alternative service, this man was to be subject to legal prosecution and may have been sentenced to confinement in prison. In 2007 a 20-year-old was arrested by the Bundeswehr for being AWOL (Absent Without Official Leave). The sentence was dependent upon the way the conscripted man refuses to serve. In the military it was dealt with under military law. In the civilian alternative service it was AWOL. The court is never a court-martial. The accused was often dealt with by juvenile law and in theory could be punished by a term of imprisonment of up to 5 years or fined. In practice, 3 months was often imposed, as only longer first-time punishments are recorded in the "certificate of good conduct" Polizeiliches Führungszeugnis.

Political debate to suspend conscription
The post-Cold War downsizing of the Bundeswehr led to a considerable decrease in demand for young conscripts. Of all men reaching draftable age, less than one half actually served. In 2005 about 15% served in the military, while 31% performed civilian service or some other form of alternative service. More than 36% were screened out for medical reasons. This percentage was lower in the past (15% in 2003), but to avoid drafting more men than needed, medical standards had been raised. The remainder includes those who were exempt for various reasons, but is mostly made up of men who were not drafted because the military had already reached its recruitment goals. This had led to discussions about "draft equality" (Wehrgerechtigkeit), which is the principle that the draft should have applied equally and non-discriminatorily to all men.

The issue of Wehrgerechtigkeit was one aspect of the political debate over whether the Bundeswehr should be converted into a purely volunteer-based, professional army.

Historical arguments
Proponents of the draft argue that it conserved the military's firm rooting in civilian society and warn that a professional army might return to the militaristic, anti-democratic and elitist traditions of the Nazi and German Empire eras, despite the fact that those regimes practiced conscription. Draft service is sometimes defended as a tradition dating back to the 1848 Revolution, intended to ensure the continuity of the democratic state.

Military arguments
Military detractors of the draft claimed that shortening the service to six months, which was necessary to accommodate a constant number of conscripts in a shrinking army, had made conscription worthless because conscripts receive too little training. Military proponents countered that some service is better than none at all, bringing citizens in contact with their military and thereby countering above-mentioned fears of a disconnection between military and society.

Another factor was the armed forces' difficulty to find volunteers for senior positions beyond the conscript level. Many soldiers in advanced ranks were recruited from former conscripts who volunteer to extend their service. Abolishing the draft could close this pathway into the military. Therefore, military leaders fear that the abolition of the draft would lead to recruitment shortages even for higher ranking positions.

Financial arguments
Some detractors of the draft expect considerable savings in defence spending from abolishing the draft, because it would allow a downsizing of the armed forces, which owe much of their current size to the need to accommodate large numbers of conscripts. It is arguable how such a reduction in size would affect the Bundeswehr's capabilities. Those in favor of a downsizing claim that it would not affect the ability to act in conflict theatres, since conscripts cannot be involuntarily deployed to such areas, making such missions already today the domain of a quasi-professional army.

Experiences of countries who have abolished draft, especially the United States and France, show that professional armed forces can be more expensive than a draft-based military. Professional armies need to pay their soldiers higher wages, and have large advertising expenses to attract sufficient numbers of able recruits. The above-mentioned difficulties in recruiting soldiers for advanced ranks, as well as difficulties in retaining such higher-ranking soldiers whose term of service time ends, indicates that a professional army might have to make considerable financial efforts to be competitive as an employer.

Civic arguments
Civilian detractors argue that the draft was simply anachronistic, instilling an undue sense of militarism in young men, and also delaying their entry into the workforce. Others argued that especially young people often detached themselves from their community, consuming its benefits but trying to avoid its duties. The draft obliged male citizens to pay society back through their military or civilian service.

Furthermore, abolishing the draft also meant abolishing civilian service. A purely civilian compulsory service would be incompatible with the German basic law, which permitted the draft only for the purpose of defense. This caused a considerable drop in the number of people working in the care of children and elderly people. Such care facilities often relied on civilian service to furnish them with large numbers of very low-paid workers.

Apart from that, professional forces tend to be recruited largely from underprivileged groups. As of 2007, a disproportionate number of soldiers (about 4 out of 10) who volunteer beyond their basic service stem from the poorer eastern states of Germany. It is feared that a professional force increases this trend, disconnecting the armed forces from the more affluent groups in society.

Further mandatory services
In Germany, beside the suspended military service, a few other mandatory services feasible or even implemented by law in some municipalities.

Border Guard Service
By constitutional law a Compulsory Border Guard Service in the Federal Police (German: Bundespolizei)—the renamed Federal Border Guard (German: Bundesgrenzschutz) can be implemented. Currently the draft is suspended in peacetime like the draft for the military service.

Compulsory Fire Service
A Compulsory Fire Service for a local fire department is in force in a handful of municipalities.

Dyke Relief Service
In the case of floodings and crevasse the Dyke Relief Service (in German: Deichhilfe) can be set in force, citizens can be drafted by municipalities cleanup services or to make dykes safe.

Hand and hitch-up services
So-called hand and hitch-up services (Hand- und Spanndienste) or more contemporary the (mandatory) municipal services (German: Gemeindedienste) is an obligatory service, that can be requested by a local government and is still enforced in small townships to maintain municipal properties and infrastructure.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Conscription in Germany


text:
Vendavel

The Vendavel (alternate spellings include Vendevale and Vendaval) is a westerly wind that blows into the Mediterranean Sea around the area of the Straits of Gibraltar and Morocco. This is generally associated with travelling depressions entering the Mediterranean from the west.

title: Vendavel


text: Category:Law enforcement in the Soviet Union


text:
Gregale

The Gregale (Gregal, Gregal, Grecale, Grecal, Grigal, Gregau, Γραίγος, Graigos) is a Mediterranean wind that can occur during times when a low-pressure area moves through the area to the south of Malta and causes a strong, cool, northeasterly wind to affect the island. It also affects other islands of the Western Mediterranean. The Italian name "Grecale" could be translated as Greek wind, as the wind starts at the Ionian Island Zakynthos.

title: Gregale


text:
Talk:Conscription in Germany

Germans Who Live Abroad Are Exempt From Service
This was exactly what a consular official at my city's German consulate in the USA told me. I am a German national through my parents and a dual citizen. Germany's "algemeine Wehrpflicht" had a big impact on when and where I decided to apply for a German passport. It was my understanding that serving in a foreign military was historically a way that a person could lose his/her US citizenship. When I went to the German consulate in my city, the official who helped me told me that the German draft is only for residents of Germany. In other words, Germans who live in other countries are exempt from service. I would be interested to hear comments on the legality of this and especially whether or not we can include this clarification about foreign residency in this article. Cyclopean typewriter 16:12, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

 * According to the website of the Auswaertige Amt (German Foreign Office): 'Auch Deutsche im Ausland sind grundsätzlich wehrpflichtig.[...]Die Wehrpflicht ruht auch bei Auslandsdeutschen, die ihren ständigen Aufenthalt und ihre Lebensgrundlage bereits im Ausland haben, sofern Tatsachen die Annahme rechtfertigen, dass sie beabsichtigen, ihren ständigen Aufenthalt im Ausland beizubehalten. Das gilt insbesondere für Deutsche, die zugleich die Staatsangehörigkeit eines anderen Staates besitzen.'.
 * Someone else translate this into legal english, the gist is, that while germans living abroad can in principle be drafted, they will not be drafted if their live is not centered on Germany. This will be assumed for Germans abroad holding dual citizenship. So while you cannot evade the draft by moving abroad, you will not be drafted if your center of life is the US. Even moving to Germany temporarily (i.e. to go to university) will not change this.195.128.251.216 22:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

 * Germans who are residents of Germany and have not yet fulfilled their draft requirements, though, cannot evade the draft by moving abroad, as they are legally obliged to apply for permission to leave Germany for more than three months. 141.20.53.108 17:15, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

 * I came to this article looking exactly for this information. Why isn't it on the article? Is it for lack of sources? I have tried last night to find somewhere an article discussing this, but couldn't find much, and the few things I did find were posts by people in forums narrating personal experiences (which of course is not a valid source). But so far all stories point to what Cyclopean said being correct. I have yet to find any story of a dual-citizen abroad being drafted. Does anyone know of an official or otherwise credible source than can definitely confirm this? --Scuac (talk) 16:16, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

 * It's been a long time since these questions were raised, but the thing to note here that the English word conscription is loosely used as translation for all sorts of things. (Its literal translation into German, like that of "draft") would be something like Einziehung.) Wehrpflicht, per se, means "duty to defend [one's country]", and it applies, and still applies, for all Germans between 18 and 45, and for all that have already become NCOs or officers in some way up to 60. Now this is the Wehrpflicht we are talking about that holds, in principle, for German expatriates, though even this is apparently described as "dormant" (ruhend; sie ruht) for them, what ever that means.
 * Something different is the duty to fulfill one's Wehrpflicht by actually doing service, and this never existed for expatriates to my knowledge, unless perhaps in the state-of-defence. (Of course, Germans too talk about Wehrpflicht and mean this, rather than what the law actually calls Wehrpflicht.) Actually being drafted for such a service is not called Wehrpflicht but Wehrdienst or Grundwehrdienst.
 * (E. g. for Catholic clergy, the Wehrpflicht strictly so-called ceases if I am rightly informed upon their becoming a subdeacon; seminarians on the other hand still fall under it, but they get a draft exemption. Noone said German law couldn't be complicated.)--2001:A61:20B3:5701:3535:8A20:F76C:A375 (talk) 09:38, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Article history notes
Cut and paste job from conscription page. This section was getting too long. cleanup required. Zeimusu 14:29, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)

Questions
Introducing mandatory military service in BRD must have been a very controversial program at the time. But there doesn't seem to be much information out there about why it came about (or was allowed to), or even addressing any public discussion that might have occurred. knoodelhed 19:07, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
 * At first, there has been a very strong opposition against remilitarising West Germany at all. As conscription had been the normal military system in the past it was clear that remilitarisation also meant conscription. Also, given the constellation of powers in Europe and the perceived Soviet threat German remilitarisation had to be more than a political token. It was seen as a meaningful military contribution of the most populated country in Western Europe. That, however, meant that the German armed forces had to be of considerable size (initial plans foresaw between 400,000 and 500,000 man) that only could be reached through the draft. Conscription was introduced about one year after the first military units of Western Germany had been established.
 * The anti-military protesters of the 1950s were numerous and from all political groups. Their slogan was "Ohne mich" ("Without me") and indicated that most of the protesters were not willing to join any military force. Both, remilitarisation and conscription had to be agreed upon, however, by a great majority of the parliament as the necessary change of the constitution required a two-thirds vote. Chancellor Adenauer had succeeded to convince the oppositional Social Democrats to accept the change after long discussions and under the impression of the Soviet interventions in Eastern Germany 1953 and Hungary 1956.
 * Interestingly, the West German constitution of 1949 already knew the right to object military service at a time when Germany was strictly forbidden to have own military forces. This article of the constitution was to protect German citizens against being drafted into the service of Allied forces against there will (something that never happened).--KuK 18:38, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Draft dodgers
What happens if a man refuses to serve in the military or do any alternative service? (Alphaboi867 06:19, 24 September 2005 (UTC))
 * This man will be subject to legal prosecution and may be sentenced to confinement in prison. Such cases do occur, in fact, but are not very frequent.--KuK 18:38, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm not a native speaker so plz excuse my mistakes. sebastian 80.171.10.176 (talk) 19:40, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've heard that the judiciary has "found some way out" as it were, in sentencing such people to prison once, but not sentencing them if they are again drafted once they've come out and again refuse.--2001:A61:20B3:5701:3535:8A20:F76C:A375 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:41, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

"Mine sraper"
It is my understanding the 'civillian service' alternative to conscription in Germany had a number of choices available in 2005-2007 at least. Our school in Western Australia had a wonderful young volunteer who came to Australia on this scheme. The deal, I think, was that he would volunteer his services to one of a number of options approved by the German authorities, his being volunteering as a school assistant in another country. The school's obligation was to provide board, lodgings and transport. His duties were to help out in the classroom or the yard - i.e. support children in their work, organise equipment for teachers, or help out with the gardening and maintenance. He was a wonderful young man and we were all in tears when he left.

(Moonfire 5 July 2013)

This phrase appears in the section detailing the 'first alternative' to active military duty, namely 'civilian service.' Being not personally familiar with the German language or current military forces, I am unsure as to whether this is a technical term, a poor translation, or a typographical error. I suspect that the desired term is 'mine sweeper', but I hesitate to make the correction as this seems a highly 'combat-oriented' duty to assign to those who are objecting to active service. I will check in a few weeks and if it has not been addressed by someone with first-hand knowledge, I will make the edit.

(Supasheep 09:34, 8 October 2005 (UTC))

 * You are probably right that this was a typographical error and poor translation at the same time. I think that the author meant something like "explosive ordnance disposal" i.e. disposal of unexploded bombs etc. However, I doubt that such a mission can be assigned to these untrained people so I deleted it. May be someone has more information and can fill the gap.--KuK 10:46, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

 * In Finland, where we have conscription, too, the fantasy of some militaristically-minded persons is that the persons who have refused conscription during the peace-time, would be used in military duties during war. (Finnish law does not recognize the right to civil service during war.) As the Wehrdienstverweiger have no military training, they could be used to clear mines by walking into mine field. Naturally, this is just a fantasy born in the minds of militarist crazies. I suspect the case was the same here, too. --MPorciusCato 07:42, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

 * The thing described above is by-the-way not actually "civilian service" (Zivildienst) strictly so-called, but an "other service in a foreign country" (anderer Dienst im Ausland or ADiA), with the basic difference that while civilian servants, like conscript soldiers, may be drafted (though most looked for a post themselves and were then drafted for it, this was not technically necessary), ADiA servants must volunteer, and that civilian service was (for my year) 9 months, whereas ADiA was 14 months.--2001:A61:20B3:5701:3535:8A20:F76C:A375 (talk) 09:45, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

No references or external links
Please add your sources to the page. Skinnyweed 21:02, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup - Garbled sentences
This article contains many garbled sentences and questionable English.

 * Conscripts get paid about 9 EUR per day of basic pay plus several other perks such as distance-from-home pay, additional food pay etc. An Obergefreiter (month 6-9) would receive up etc., but he has to agree to go on an International Mission, e.g. ISAF, if needed. Normal conscripts will not" is only one component of conscription.

 * As a result Germany changed its laws to allow this, though not for conscription.

 * The conscientious objection is normally accepted without any problem, it is no longer required to state the request before a board. One just has to "write a letter", outlining ones moral objections to military service.

 * "civilian service" ("Zivildienst")

 * Another provision allows the third son of a family to be completely exonerated from military service, if his older brothers participated.

 * For medical students it is possible to delay their military duty

 * The ongoing political debate over whether the German Federal Defense Force should be converted into a purely volunteer-based, professional army raises questions about the military draft policy. Since the current process selects an ever-decreasing number of men from each succeeding generation, conflicting views abound regarding the effect of the selection, both in terms of the overall quality of the force and the general fairness of the system. The final decision will most likely be influenced by the enhanced or even reduced roles that such a new "army" would be expected to play in German society in the years to come.

 * Furthermore would by making the Bundeswehr fully voluntary-based the amount of people working in care of children and elder people drop considerably. Due to the pay modalities those care facilities would lose personnel payed essentially nothing.

8/13/2006 edit
I stumbled across this article and found it in a pretty mediocre shape. Therefore I structured it and added some information.
 * Since my native language is not english, my prose may be a bit rough in some places. (However, it was already not very good to begin with.) Since I assume that facutal correctness trumps language, I edited it anyways. I'll be grateful to any native speaker who goes over it and smoothes the language.
 * I did not add my sources, as all of them were German, and therefore of little use to the average reader of an english encyclopedia. If the majority thinks that German sources are better than no sources, I may add them later.

 * An English language source would be preferred but any source is fine. In fact what would be even better are both original German language sources and English language sources as well. There are a considerable number of Wikipedia users who can read German (if not some German), such as my self, so these sources are useful. Kyle sb 11:24, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Factual errors
Sorry to inform you all, but this article is full of factual errors concerning the alternative service.

applying for (but not entering) extended armed forces service.
 * disaster relief service has been shortened to 6 years, after military and civil service have been shortened to 9 months.
 * disaster relief service does not require conscenious objection. I served myself in a medical disaster control unit, after first

The legal base of the disaster relief service stems from the law concerning military service, not the law concerning civil service. §13a Wehrpflichtgesetz. There is an additional clause in §14 of the law concerning civil service(Zivildienstgesetz), which grants a comparable entry into the disaster relief service (also 6 years) to conscentious objectors.

Since entering these facts would require a major restruction of the entry, I must unfortunately ask someone else to work on this. 141.26.70.165 20:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

 * This is correct: just changed the 7 to 6 and additionally changed the "state-driven" to NIL (it may be a NGO) as well as the "part-time" to "volunteer" service (you're treated completely like all of the other volunteers). I also would like to restructure the article: the disaster relief service is the third alternative in the duty of military and civil service (see §13a Wehrpflichtgesetz and §14 Zivildienstgesetz). Hmmm...I'll see, what I can do. --Bnow 16:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Done, added "Alternatives" and rewrote "Conscientious Objection" plus "Exemption from Service" to meet this (including development service, which as well is not necessarily based on a formal Conscientious Objection). By the way, there are some more exceptions, but maybe this could get into too much detail (see §12 Wehrpflichtgesetz which relays to the delay of service with alone six sections and several subsections). A nice addition would be, when the required time of service in disaster response changed from 10 over 7 to nowadays 6 years. I myself subscribed to 10 years (in a medical unit, too) and took advantage by the change to 7 years (theoretically - I'm still there...). --Bnow 17:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

More detailled information about objection
I've added a sentence about what kind of objection will be accepted. The draftee must assure that he is morraly unable to accept military service in any case (even not to defend a country under attack). The wording that you had suggested that any reason was sufficient. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 89.52.146.182 (talk) 14:30, 30 January 2007 (UTC).

Conscription for Women
The statement that "Women are not included in the draft" is not correct per se. Women (from 18 to 55) can be called up "for duty in civilian and military hospitals" if there are not enough volunteers available for such duty. GG Art. 12a, Abs. 4:
 * (4) Kann im Verteidigungsfalle der Bedarf an zivilen Dienstleistungen im zivilen Sanitäts- und Heilwesen sowie in der ortsfesten militärischen Lazarettorganisation nicht auf freiwilliger Grundlage gedeckt werden, so können Frauen vom vollendeten achtzehnten bis zum vollendeten fünfundfünfzigsten Lebensjahr durch Gesetz oder auf Grund eines Gesetzes zu derartigen Dienstleistungen herangezogen werden.

Kato2k6 00:17, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, yes ... but they are not put before draft committees, and afaik there is no law that establishes such duties even for the State of Defence - the Basic Law only makes such laws possible, doesn't establish these duties itself. --77.4.78.80 (talk) 21:37, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Wartime
(from the text, blanked out)

''unverified: After completing his nine months, the CO will remain as a kind of "civilian reservist", because he may be drafted in case of defence to serve in a hospital, fire dept. etc. | added: this may be a misunderstanding of §14 Zivildienstgesetz, which states, that a civil servicer don't has to fulfill military duty even in wartime, but may be drafted for civil services again. Since all german man can be drafted to (military) service in wartime, this is just an additional exception to respect the former given objection, not a "civilian reservist" thing.''

This needs to be cleared up imo.
 * §79 ZDG details applicable sections of the law for Civilian Service in wartime. In particular, §4 Abs.1, 6 WPflG (re-drafting people who have served for continuous military service during wartime) "is applied accordingly"; §43 ZDG, Abs.1,1 (regulating dismissal of people in Civilian Service after their regular time) is suspended.
 * §53 ZDG explicitly states a duty to attend Civilian Service in wartime (not doing so is punishable the same way as fleeing regular service).

This clearly means that during wartime, the government can legally draft any conscientious objectors who have served their full time before to perform Civilian Service, making them equal to Bundeswehr reservists. The German Red Cross in this German-language guide to Civilian Service also states their legal opinion of this: ''Im Verteidigungsfall kann eine Dienstleistung bis zum 60. Lebensjahr angeordnet werden. Dies gilt auch für ehemalige ZDL. Die Einberufung kann nur durch das BAZ erfolgen. Der Charakter des Zivildienstes als soziale Dienstleistung wird auch im Verteidigungsfall nicht aufgehoben.''

Similarly, there should be at least some mention in the article that any conscript, after completed service, will be on reserve duty (until the age of 60) and can be called up both for military exercises in peacetime (not for Conscientious Objectors), or for indefinite service during wartime.

Kato2k6 00:17, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No, a Zivi is not a Bw reservist. In the State of Defence he can, yes, be drafted for a Dienstleistung. But while some legal forms of redrafting reservists are also called Dienstleistung, the character of the Civilian Service as a soziale Dienstleistung is not suspended (translating cour last German sentence). In this context sozial includes the meaning non-military. Article 12a says that any law which regulates the Civilian service must include the possibility for any consc. obj. to a service without any connection to the Armed Forces.--91.34.239.227 (talk) 10:18, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

HTML comments and "Political Debate" section
The article contains a number of HTML comments (e.g.: ). I think this is a poor way of conducting discussions about the article — that's what the discussion page is for. Please make your comments here, where other editors can review and respond to them.

The "Political Debate" section consumes probably more than a third of the article. I have a few remarks about it:
 * Firstly, the article should above all give a correct description of the status quo. The debate about how the status quo should be changed is IMHO of far lesser importance, especially because it doesn't seem like anything is going to change anytime soon, one way or another.
 * A political debate, especially one still in progress, is notoriously hard to present in a NPOV and up-to-date manner. Therefore I think a brief description (that shows in broad strokes what people are generally talking about) is better than a finely detailed description of each and every fringe branch of the debate. The latter usually just invites someone to write an even more finely detailed description of the counterpoint to that particular argument, and is a b*tch to keep up-to-date as new arguments and counter-arguments are made.
 * If you absolutely must add to the debate section, then please try to present all sides of the debate. The Brevity I ask for is no excuse for POV. Anyway, Wikipedia is not the place where is debate is going to be resolved, therefore favoring one side over another really serves no purpose, except for detracting from the impartiality and therefore the quality of the article.

84.138.170.1 11:37, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Women volunteers
What percentage of German women volunteer for service equivalent to that performed by men? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.197.19 (talk) 20:18, 6 October 2007 (UTC) And for comparison what percentage of German men are excused because of one of the various exemptions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.197.19 (talk) 21:20, 6 October 2007 (UTC) Oh, one more question, does being part of a civil union give men the same right to avoid conscription as heterosexual marriage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.197.19 (talk) 21:41, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Historical Arguments
I took out Weimar Republic as it couldn't be described as anti-deomcratic (it was a democracy) or particularly elitist. Even the Nazi regeime couldn't really be regarded as elitist. If the the section means to suggest that the professional army in these periods was anti-democratic and elitist, there may be more truth in it but that doesn't seem to be what its suggesting. Perhaps it just needs rewriting as it doesn't read particularly well anyway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Clomb (talk • contribs) 18:58, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

twice as many as what?
the opening states: Although the conscription is of a military nature, nowadays twice as many draftees refuse military service and serve in alternative services. What does that mean? twice as many people refuse military service as accept it? that needs cited I'd think, and I highly doubt that. I think what is meant is "nowadays twice as many people refuse service as was formerly the case in the insert decade " anyways, it needs clarified and cited.

--Jadger (talk) 02:33, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

 * You are right the formulation is ambiguous and needs to be rephrased. As I am very familiar with the actual conditions, I can clarify the meaning for you. Your first suggestion is what is meant. The number of people performing the social service is recently about twice as high as the number of people opting for the military service. What you suggested would actually be very far off, since virtually nobody went into civil service during the insert decade. So compared to that time, the number of people to refuse military service might be 100 or 1000 times higher today.
 * Personally, I will not put a fact-tag, since the ratio 1 to 2 is, according to me, the recent practice and I have no reason to doubt it. However, you are free to do so and it should not be a problem to provide a source and thus improve the article. Tomeasy (talk) 09:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

It's not that they are all refusing military service though, the Bundeswehr does not have a need for many of the people that could be conscripted, so they are not drafted. instead they go into the civil services.

--Jadger (talk) 18:39, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

 * One important thing to add: If a person is not drafted, he is not obliged to do the civil service. By the way, this group of people has grown rapidly in the past ten years. Is there something you would like to change with the article? T om ea s y talk 23:00, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

 * What the original statement - rather unmistakably - said, and what seems to be the case (I don't have done the statistics myself but it does feel that way) is that, yes, in the end twice as many people filed their conscientious objection (considered not much more than a formality in a supposed neutral decision "army or civil service?", other than by some few such as myself who would have probably preferred civil service but couldn't object falsely) compared with the number of those actually drafted. I guess they didn't count those judged unfit medically, those having exemptions for their engagement in a volunteer fire brigade and the like (who didn't need to object conscientiously and could just opt out).--2001:A61:20B3:5701:5598:6B85:176:D444 (talk) 15:07, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Article needs to be expanded (or reduced)
This article only deals with conscription today. It needs to be expanded to include the history of conscription in Germany as least since the Unification of Germany. Urban XII (talk) 15:01, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The article soon may have to be revised completely, as the present government (2010), is about to change the conscription laws drastically, to the effect, that Germany will have an army consisting of volunteers solely.

End of conscription in Germany ends on July 1, 2011
Conscription ends in Germany on July 1, 2011. 92.252.121.8 (talk) 22:52, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * FAZ:Wehrpflicht soll zum 1. Juli 2011 ausgesetzt werden

I am reading that conscription is "suspended". Suspended, the English word used by Der Spiegel, should be differentiated from a word such as abolished. For instance, the draft in the United States could be considered to have been suspended since 1973 (un-suspended circa 1960), but not abolished, although it could be described as "ended". While they both may be construed as an "end" to the constant draft in Germany, I think the use of this term is misleading. I think the temporary nature of the "end" should be noted and such use of the word qualified by such a statement. I think "suspended" instead of "ended" is appropriate. Int21h (talk) 06:59, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Conscription
 * remains in the constitution as a possible thing the simple-lawgiver can enact,
 * is abolished in general (see Conscription Law § 2),
 * is automatically reestablished in a State of Defence or State of Tension.
 * For some reason I cannot understand, it is No. 1 (and not No. 3) which the German public takes as reason to speak of suspension, in stead of abolishment. However, the previous law which had common conscription is, as such, abolished and not suspended (abolished in peace, you could say); Art. 12a GG never was in itself anything else than a possibility for the simple-lawgiver. I personally would call it suspension if the Minister of Defense could reenact conscription by his own decison, according to the need of the Bundeswehr. I personally would say that the USA have abolished conscription. Do whatever you like:-) --91.34.249.236 (talk) 15:39, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

WWI and WWII?
What about a few facts about German conscription for and during WWI and WWII?

title: Talk:Conscription in Germany


text:
Lime Rock Park

Lime Rock Park is a natural-terrain motorsport road racing venue located in Lakeville, Connecticut, United States, a hamlet in the town of Salisbury, in the state's northwest corner. Built in 1956, it is the nation's third oldest continuously operating road racing venue, behind Road America (1955) and Willow Springs International Motorsports Park (1953). The track was owned by Skip Barber from 1984 to April 2021, a former race car driver who started the Skip Barber Racing School in 1975. Now, it is owned by Lime Rock Group, LLC. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

History
The 1.530 mi Lime Rock track was originally conceived of in 1956 by Jim Vaill, who, along with John Fitch and Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, built the track utilizing state-of-the-art road and highway safety principles of the time. The first race, a mix of G-Production class and an MG class, was held on April 28, 1957. The winner of the G-Production was Ted Sprigg in an Alfa Romeo Giulietta. The winner of the MG class was Charles Callanan in an MG TC.

In 1959, Lime Rock was the site of a notable upset, when Rodger Ward won a Formula Libre race driving an Offenhauser-engined midget car, usually used on oval tracks. Ward used an advantageous power-to-weight ratio and his dirt-track cornering abilities to defeat several highly regarded sports cars and drivers for the victory. The year, the track also hosted the Little Le Mans race, won by Charles Callanan and Roger Penske in a Fiat Abarth. In 2008, the track was re-paved and two new corner complexes were added.

The track has a loyal following, though it did face some resistance from the local community shortly after it opened. In 1959, the Lime Rock Protective Association, with support from the nearby Trinity Episcopal Church, took the park to Litchfield Superior Court in an effort to ban Sunday racing. The court issued a permanent injunction against Sunday racing, and its decision was upheld by the Connecticut Supreme Court. While restrictive, the carefully crafted injunction was also enabling. It preserved the track's right to conduct unmuffled sports car racing on Fridays and Saturdays, plus testing on Tuesdays and other operating benefits. The injunction stands to this day.

The track has featured many well-known racers including Paul Newman, who supported his own Newman-Haas team with Bob Sharp, Mario Andretti, Stirling Moss, Dan Gurney, Sam Posey, and Mark Donohue. Other racers have included Parnelli Jones, Joey Logano, Austin Dillon, Simon Pagenaud, Alexander Rossi, and Tom Cruise. Posey and Newman have sections of the circuit named for them.

The Rolex Sports Car Series, American Le Mans Series and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship have used a configuration which included the chicane at turn five and West Bend.

Track
The track is a natural terrain road course, constructed over hilly terrain in the Berkshire Mountains, part of the greater Appalachian mountain range. The famous Appalachian Trail hiking route passes by the circuit on the ridge lines visible from the track a half mile to the east. The venue is somewhat unique in that it features no grandstands or bleacher seating, instead inviting fans to bring chairs and blankets and enjoy the racing from its grassy hillside areas under the shade of trees. While the venue is relatively compact, the relatively short track is renowned for its spectator experience, offering fans an up close view and close quarters racing.

For years the track was listed as being 1.530 mi in length—the story goes that right after it was built, somebody used the odometer in a Chevrolet to measure the track length—and 1.53 was taken as gospel. Following the 2008 reconstruction (see below), Lime Rock's operations people measured all four possible configurations, and as it turns out, each was 1.500 mi long, plus or minus a few hundred feet. The IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship gives the distance of the track as 1.474 mi. The "classic" configuration is seven turns, while the three optional layouts are eight, nine and ten turns, respectively.

Events

 * Current

 * May: Trans-Am Series Trans Am Memorial Day Classic
 * July: International Race of Champions
 * September: Lime Rock Historic Festival

 * Former

 * American Le Mans Series
 * Northeast Grand Prix (2004–2013)
 * Can-Am (1983–1985)
 * Ferrari Challenge North America (1994–2001, 2003–2005, 2011–2013, 2016)
 * Formula BMW Americas (2004, 2006–2009)
 * IMSA GT Championship (1972–1998)
 * Northeast Grand Prix (1958–1964, 1986–1992)
 * IMSA SportsCar Championship
 * Northeast Grand Prix (2015–2019, 2021–2023)
 * IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge (2023)
 * Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America (2013)
 * Michelin Pilot Challenge (2006–2019, 2021–2023)
 * NASCAR K&N Pro Series East (1993–2010)
 * NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour (2010–2011)
 * North American Touring Car Championship (1996)
 * Pirelli World Challenge
 * Lime Rock Park Grand Prix (1992–1993, 1995–2005, 2007–2008, 2013, 2016–2018)
 * Rolex Sports Car Series
 * Lime Rock Grand Prix (2000–2001, 2006–2008, 2010–2013)
 * SCCA Continental Championship Formula 5000 (1968–1972)
 * SCCA National Sports Car Championship (1958–1964)
 * Star Mazda Championship (2004)
 * United States Road Racing Championship
 * Lime Rock Grand Prix (1999)

Lap records
The fastest unofficial all-time track record set during a race weekend is 0:43.112 seconds, set by P. J. Jones in a Toyota Eagle MkIII, during qualifying for the 1993 Toyota Trucks Lime Rock Grand Prix. As of July 2023, the fastest official race lap records at Lime Rock Park are listed as:

title: Lime Rock Park


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Category talk:Redirects from plurals

Needless?
It's needless. There are myriads of redirects from plurals. If we list them all, this category will become way too large. Science3456 22:13, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

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Please see Category talk:Redirects from other capitalisations for why I changed to the LargeCategoryTOC2 template.

—  Paine Ellsworth  (  CLIMAX  )  06:03, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

title: Category talk:Redirects from plurals


text: Category:Czech astronomers

title: Category:Czech astronomers


text: Category:Czech scientists

title: Category:Czech scientists


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User:DasAlbatross

My introduction to the Wikipedia was through the Sollog fiasco. I would like to become a more regular contributor as I go on.

title: User:DasAlbatross


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West Friesland

West Friesland or Westfriesland can refer to the following:

 * West Friesland (region), a contemporary region in the province of North Holland, Netherlands
 * The same region as the State of West Friesland in the Dutch Republic
 * Occasionally, the region where the West Frisian language is spoken, i.e., mostly the province of Friesland in the Netherlands
 * West Frisia, the western part of the historical region of Frisia
 * Westfriesland, a Dutch ship of the line of 78/80 guns of the Admiralty of the Noorderkwartier, built in c. 1666
 * Westfriesland, a Dutch ship of the line of 90 guns of the Admiralty of the Noorderkwartier, built in 1682

title: West Friesland