Data Protection Information of the Notaries

1. Who is the controller, who can you contact?

The controller for processing your personal data may be Notary Dr. Peter Diedrich Berlin and Notary Dr. István Sándor Szabados. When fulfilling his notarial duties, each of the abovementioned notaries is a sole controller within the meaning of data protection law regulations. For all enquiries relating to data protection, you can contact the responsible notary in each case or the corresponding data protection officer. Contact can be established as follows:

Notary Dr. Peter Diedrich
BEHREN PALAIS
Behrenstr. 36, 10117 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 88929440
Fax: +49 30 889294499
Diedrich@dsc-legal.com
Notary Dr. István Sándor Szabados
BEHREN PALAIS
Behrenstr. 36, 10117 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 88929440
Fax: +49 30 889294499
Szabados@dsc-legal.com
Mr. Thomas-Oliver Neye
Data Protection Officer of the Notaries
Dr. Peter Diedrich and Dr. Istvan Szabados
BEHREN PALAIS
Behrenstr. 36, 10117 Berlin
Phone: +49 30 88929440
Fax: +49 30 889294499
Neye@dsc-legal.com

2. Which data do our notaries process and where does the data come from?

Our notaries process personal data, such as

data regarding personal identification (e.g. first and last name, date and place of birth, nationality, marital status; in individual cases birth register number;
data for establishing contact (e.g. postal address, phone and fax numbers, e-mail address;
for property contracts the tax ID number;
in particular cases, such as marriage contracts, wills, deeds of inheritance or adoptions, also data about family situation and assets, as well as information about health status or other sensitive data, for instance because this serves to document the legal capacity;
in particular cases, also data regarding legal relationships with third parties (e.g. reference numbers or loan or account numbers with financial institutions).

In general, our notaries will receive this data directly from you. If the data was not obtained directly from you, it was provided by the party from whom the assignment was made.

Our notaries also process data from public registers (e.g. land register, commercial register, cooperative register and association register).

3. For which purposes and on what legal basis does the data processing occur?

As notaries, we hold a public office. The official work is to perform a task which lies in the general interest of proper preventive administration of justice, and thereby in the public interest, as well as in the exercise of official authority (Art. 6 (1) sent. 1 lit. e of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)).

Your data will exclusively be processed in order to conduct the notarial activities requested by you, and potentially by other individuals involved in a transaction, according to the official duties, for instance to draft notarial deeds, to perform notarial recordings, to execute notarial deeds or to provide notarial advice. Therefore, the processing of personal data only occurs on the basis of professional and procedural stipulations that the officiating notary is bound to fulfil, primarily resulting from the German Federal Code For Notaries (Bundesnotarordnung) and the German Notarisation Act (Beurkundungsgesetz). At the same time, these provisions also establish a legal obligation for our aforementioned notaries to process the necessary data (Art. 6 (1) sent. 1 lit. c GDPR). Failure to provide the information requested from you by one of our aforementioned notaries would make it necessary for this notary to refuse any (ongoing) exercise of the official business.

If not acting for the fulfilment of public services, the officiating notary will process your data in order to pursue his legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party, unless your interests or fundamental rights and freedoms override this (Art. 6 (1) sent. 1 lit. f GDPR).

4. To whom do I transfer data?

As a notary public, I am subject to a statutory obligation of confidentiality. This obligation of confidentiality also applies for all my employees, and other individuals engaged by me, who are involved in fulfilment of my duties.

In any other case, I may only transfer your data if and insofar as I am obligated to do so in the individual case, for instance due to notification obligations vis-à-vis financial authorities, or to public registers such as the land register, trade or association register, central register of wills, register for enduring powers of attorney, courts such as probate courts, guardianship court or family court, or authorities. As part of registry and administrative supervision, under certain circumstances I am also obligated to provide information to the Chamber of Notaries Public or my professional supervisory authority, who are also subject to an official obligation of confidentiality.

In any other cases, I will only transfer your data if I am obligated to do so based on declarations submitted by you, or if you have requested the transfer.

5. Is data transferred to third countries?

Your personal data will only be transferred to third countries if specially requested by you, or if and insofar as a party to the deed is registered in a third country.

6. How long will your data be stored?

Your personal data will be processed and stored within the scope of the statutory retention obligations. In accordance with Sec. 5 (4) of the German Official Regulations for Notaries (Dienstordnung für Notarinnen und Notare - DONot), the following retention periods apply for the retention of notarial documents:

roll of deeds, index of inheritance contracts, name directory to the roll of deeds and collection of deeds including the separately retained inheritance contracts (Sec. 18 (4) DONot): 100 years,
securities registry, estate accounts, name directory to the estate accounts, escrow account list, general files: 30 years,
ancillary files: 7 years; the notary may determine a longer retention period in writing by the last editing of content at the latest (e.g. in the event of testamentary disposition or if there is risk of recourse); this stipulation can also be generally reached for individual types of legal transactions such as e.g. testamentary dispositions.

After the expiry of the retention periods, your data will be erased and/or the paper documents will be destroyed, unless our notaries are obligated to adhere to a longer storage period according to Article 6 (1) sent. 1 lit. c GDPR, due to retention and documentation obligations under tax and trade law (from the German Commercial Code [Handelsgesetzbuch], Criminal Code [Strafgesetzbuch], Money Laundering Act [Geldwäschegesetz] or Tax Code [Abgabenordnung]), or professional regulations for the purpose of reviewing conflicts of law, or if they are entitled to further retention according to Article 6 (1) sent. 1 lit. f GDPR in order to defend against any liability claims.

7. What rights do you have?

You have the right

to receive information about whether our notaries have been processing personal data concerning you, and if so, the purposes for processing the personal data, which categories of personal data are processed, to whom the data is transferred, how long the data will be stored and which rights you have in this regard.
to request the rectification of personal data concerning you that have been stored by one of our notaries. You also have the right to request the completion of incomplete data concerning you that have been have stored by one of our notaries;
to request the erasure of personal data concerning you, as long as there is a legal reason for erasure (cf. Art. 17 GDPR) and the processing of your data is not required in order to fulfil a legal obligation or for other overriding reasons within the meaning of the GDPR;
to request that our notaries restrict the further processing of your data (e.g. to assert legal claims or for reasons of significant public interest), for instance while reviewing your claim to rectification or objection, or if we reject your request for erasure (cf. Art. 18 GDPR);
to object to processing, insofar as this is required for the officiating notary to exercise his duties within the public interest or to fulfil his public office, if the reasons for the objection result from your particular situation;
to lodge a data protection complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority with jurisdiction over our aforementioned notaries is:

Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information
Friedrichstraße 219
D-10969 Berlin, Germany
Phone: +49 30 138890
Fax: +49 30 2155050
Email: mailbox@datenschutz-berlin.de