The lecture does not deal with the particular problems of the present total revision of the German penal code but with the basic positions held or to be held in their solution. This is done first in respect to the alternatives of repression and therapy, highly controversial in theory and important in practice for the particular formation of penal sanctions. On the one hand the author argues against the opinion that the dignity of man requires a retaliating or expiating penalty. He attempts to show that the form of penal correction should be determined not by the abstract concept of the freedom of the human will but by the concrete lack of freedom due to the socially or individually conditioned psychological stress on the criminal, if you want to enable hirn to live in harmony with the law. On the other hand retaliation cannot be replaced by therapy alone. Social regulations will lose their bind- ing force if they are not connected with sanctions. Therefore the function of therapy and repression is to harmonize with each other in faceted solutions. The second part of the lecture is concerned with the question of the points of view from which the social norms deserving the protection of penallaw should be selected.