German legal citation
As in most countries, Germany has a standard way of citing its legal codes and case law; an essentially identical system of citation is also used in Austria.
Citing portions of the German legal code
As an example, the famous or notorious Paragraph 175, which formerly made male homosexuality a crime in Germany, would most properly be cited in an English-language text as "§ 175 StGB (Germany)". "§" simply denotes "paragraph" (and can be pluralized as "§§"). "StGB" stands for Strafgesetzbuch (penal code); other similar usages would be "BGB" (Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the Civil Code) and "ZPO" (Zivilprozessordnung, the Civil Procedure Code). Paragraphs with the same number from these different codes are completely unrelated; thus, § 175 ZPO has nothing to do with § 175 StGB. Finally, unless the context is clear, "(Germany)" may be added to distinguish this from the similar system of citation for Austria; again, paragraphs with the same number in German and Austrian legal codes are unrelated.
Within such a paragraph, there may be numerous Absätze (singular Absatz). Thus, a particular portion of Paragraph 175 might be cited as "§ 175 (2) StGB (Germany)" or (depending on the amount of available context simply as "§ 175 (2) StGB" or even "§ 175 (2)". (In other contexts, the word Absatz would, itself, be translated into English as "paragraph". In this context, that would obviously be confusing. One is stuck either using the German word or referring to it as a "sub-paragraph".
Margaret Marks suggests (for British English) translating Paragraph as "Section" and Absatz as "subsection". For American English, she suggests leaving § intact except at the start of a sentence (where she would use "Section").
Citing German case law
The Entscheidungen des Bundesgerichtshofs in Strafsachen (cited as "BGHSt") covers case law in the present-day Federal Republic of Germany). Case law from German unification (187a) until 1945 would be in the Entscheidungen des Reichsgerichts in Strafsachen (cited as "RGSt").
