The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe ruled that the ban on surnames consisting of three or more parts, in effect since 1993, does not violate citizens' personal rights.
The complaint considered by the court was filed by a married couple from Munich, whose local civil registry office refused to accept a triple surname. For both spouses - lawyer Hans-Peter Kunz-Halstein and dentist Frieda Thalheim - this is the second marriage. The plaintiff wished to keep her previous surname, which is also borne by her children from her first marriage, but add her husband's double surname to it.
As Deutsche Welle notes, this is prohibited by law, and a wife can only add one part of her husband's surname. The couple Kunz-Halstein - Thalheim saw this as a violation of their personal rights, believing that a triple surname is the only way to express their family union.
German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries participated in the consideration of the case by the First Senate of the Constitutional Court in mid-February. In her opinion, the ban on triple surnames is justified, since otherwise it would be possible to create chains of an unlimited number of surname parts.