Legal Status
The spelling change is based on the international agreement of 1 July 1996, signed on behalf of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Strictly speaking, it is not a treaty. The signatories for Germany were the president of the "Conference of Ministers of Culture", Karl-Heinz Reck, and the parliamentary secretary of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Eduard Lintner. There have been no Bundestag (parliamentary) decisions on the reforms. Instead, as mentioned above, the German Supreme Court ruled that the reform in the public schools could be decided by the Ministers of Culture. Thus, as of 1 August 2005, the traditional spelling system is to be considered incorrect in the schools, except that two of the German states, Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia, had both officially rejected the reform. Since 2006, the new rules have become compulsory at the Bavarian and North Rhine-Westphalian public schools as well. It is presumed that from the schools the writing reforms will spread to the German-speaking public.
Read more about this topic: German Orthography Reform Of 1996
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