page_title: Civil marriage
section_title: In other European countries
hierarchical_section_title: Civil marriage / History / In other European countries
caption_attribution_description: זוג ממתין לנישואין בכניסה לעיריה אלגרו
context_page_description: A civil marriage is a marriage performed, recorded and recognised by a government official. Such a marriage may be performed by a religious body and recognised by the state, or it may be entirely secular.
context_section_description: Many European countries had institutions similar to common-law marriage.  In 1566, the edict of the Council of Trent was proclaimed denying Catholics any form of marriage not executed in a religious ceremony before a priest and two witnesses.
  The Protestant pastor and theologian of Geneva, John Calvin, decreed that in order for a couple to be considered married they must be registered by the state in addition to a church ceremony.
  In 1792, with the French Revolution, religious marriage ceremonies in France were made secondary to civil marriage.  Religious ceremonies could still be performed, but only for couples who had already been married in a civil ceremony. Napoleon later spread this custom throughout most of Europe. In present-day France, only civil marriage has legal validity. A religious ceremony may be performed after or before the civil union, but it has no legal effect.
  In Germany, the Napoleonic code was valid only in territories conquered by Napoleon. With the fall of his empire, civil marriage in Germany began to die out. However, certain sovereign German states introduced civil marriages, which were either obligatory (like the French model) or optional, with either a religious or civil ceremony being accepted. Already before 1848 the Grand-Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach enacted optional civil marriages, followed by the German republics of the Free City of Frankfurt upon Main (1850, obligatory), Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (1851, optional) and Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck (1852, optional). German Grand-Duchies such as Oldenburg (1852/55, optional), Baden (1860) and Hesse (1860) as well as the Kingdom of Württemberg (1863) followed suit. Civil marriages enabled interfaith marriages as well as marriages between spouses of different Christian denominations.  After the unification of Germany in 1871, the Reichstag adopted a bill initiated by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck as the "Civil Marriage Law" in 1875 (see: Kulturkampf); since then, only civil marriages have been recognised in Germany.  Religious ceremonies may still be performed at the couple's discretion.  Until Dec. 31, 2008, religious marriages could not be performed until the couple had first married in a civil ceremony.
caption: A couple waiting to marry in the town of Alghero on the island of Sardinia, Italy
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