Zur religiös-weltanschaulichen Neutralität des Staates im österreichischen (Verfassungs-)Recht: Verfassungsprinzip, Baugesetz oder ideologischer Platzhalter?

What religious and ideological neutrality means in legal terms cannot be understood in the abstract, but only with regard to the specific state and its legal system. This article therefore examines the specific forms and effects of the neutrality of the Republic of Austria in terms of legal doctrine. Neutrality that is indifferent to ethical value decisions is alien to liberal democracy. While a monolithic understanding of neutrality must allow itself to be questioned with regard to its own ideological and civil-religious claim, Austrian law differentiates neutrality according to area. In the field of state sovereignty, neutrality excludes religion. In the area of social welfare, the guarantee of fundamental rights in cases of restricted mobility and in the broad area of the “cultural state”, on the other hand, the state is open to various forms of cooperation. Legal recognition offers religious communities a public legal form that implicitly expresses the expectation of cooperation. Challenges exist in terms of equality law and in relation to religions that partially or completely reject cooperation.