When you fall ill in Germany, your employer must continue paying 100% of your regular salary for up to six weeks per illness (§ 3 EFZG) — not the state, not your health insurance, but the employer, at full rate and from the first day of incapacity. Entgeltfortzahlung im Krankheitsfall is one of the strongest employee protections in German law, and it applies to every employee: full-time, part-time, fixed-term and minijob alike. The disputes we see in practice are rarely about the principle — they are about the fine print: waiting periods, recurring illnesses and what exactly counts as „regular” pay.
Who is entitled — and from when
Three conditions, and only three:
- You are an employee. The size of the company is irrelevant; so is whether you are still in your probation period.
- The employment has existed for four weeks without interruption (§ 3(3) EFZG). During this waiting period the employer owes nothing; statutorily insured employees receive Krankengeld from their health fund instead, so the first month of a new job is not unprotected — just paid at a lower rate.
- You did not cause the incapacity through fault of your own. The bar is high: „fault” here means gross, reckless self-endangerment — the textbook examples are drunk driving or a brawl the employee provoked. Ordinary sport, including skiing and amateur football, does not count. Illness is almost never „your fault” in this legal sense.
Six weeks per illness — how the clock runs
The entitlement is six weeks (42 calendar days) per illness, not per year. How separate episodes interact follows three rules that decide many disputes:
A new, unrelated illness restarts the six weeks
If you recover from a slipped disc, work again, and three weeks later catch pneumonia, the pneumonia triggers a fresh six-week entitlement. There is no annual cap: an employee unlucky enough to suffer several distinct illnesses in one year is entitled to six weeks of full pay for each of them.
Overlapping illnesses merge (Einheit des Verhinderungsfalls)
If a second illness begins while you are still unfit from the first, the two form a single continuous case of prevention — the six weeks do not restart. The dividing line is razor-thin: was there even one day (or, per case law, a few hours of restored fitness between two sick notes) on which you were fit for work? Employers increasingly litigate exactly this point, and the burden of showing that the first incapacity had ended before the second began generally lies with the employee.
The same illness returning: Fortsetzungserkrankung
If the same underlying condition brings you down repeatedly, the episodes are added together toward one six-week pot — unless one of the two statutory reset rules applies (§ 3(1) EFZG). You earn a fresh six weeks for the same illness only if:
- at least six months passed since the last incapacity based on that condition, or
- at least twelve months passed since the first incapacity based on that condition.
Chronic conditions — back problems, migraine, depressive episodes — live in this rule. Whether two episodes stem from „the same” underlying condition is a medical question the employer usually cannot answer alone, which is why the health fund and the Medizinischer Dienst are typically brought in.
How much: the Lohnausfallprinzip
The amount follows the loss-of-pay principle (§ 4 EFZG): you receive what you would have earned had you worked — your individual, current pay, not an average of past months. In detail:
- Included: base salary, shift and night allowances you would have earned on the scheduled shifts, regular performance-linked components, and contractual supplements.
- Overtime: pay specifically for overtime is excluded by statute (§ 4(1a) EFZG) — but where overtime is worked so consistently that it has effectively become part of your regular working pattern, case law treats those hours as part of the „regular working time” and they must be paid. An employee who has worked 45 hours every week for the past year can generally claim continued pay on that basis, not on the contractual 40.
- Excluded: genuine expense reimbursements (travel allowances, per-diems) that compensate costs you do not incur while ill.
Continued pay is fully taxable and subject to social contributions like normal salary — your payslip during the six weeks should look essentially unchanged.
When the employer doubts your illness
A properly issued AU certificate carries high evidential value, and an employer cannot simply stop paying because it is suspicious. Its lawful options are limited:
- Medizinischer Dienst review (§ 275(1a) SGB V): the employer can ask your health insurance fund to have the Medizinischer Dienst examine whether the incapacity is genuine. The examination is by the fund’s medical service — not by a company doctor of the employer’s choosing.
- Attacking the evidential value in court: only concrete circumstances shake an AU — for example, a sickness „announced” in advance after a refused vacation request, or, per recent Federal Labor Court case law, certificates covering precisely and exclusively the notice period after a dismissal. If the evidential value is shaken, you must prove the illness by other means, usually through your treating doctor.
Sickness and dismissal frequently travel together: being ill does not prevent a dismissal, and dismissals issued during or because of illness are often attackable — see termination while on sick leave. Whatever the payment dispute, the three-week deadline for a Kündigungsschutzklage is unforgiving.
Worked example
Marketing specialist in Frankfurt, gross €5,100 per month (net about €3,200), statutorily insured, three years’ tenure.
- March–April: herniated disc, unfit for eight weeks. Weeks 1–6: the employer continues the full €5,100 per month — about €7,650 across the six weeks. Weeks 7–8: Entgeltfortzahlung is exhausted; her health fund pays Krankengeld of roughly €96 per calendar day before her social-contribution share, around €2,530 per month net — a drop of about €670 per month.
- August: the disc flares up again, three weeks out. Same illness, less than six months since the last episode, less than twelve months since the first — a Fortsetzungserkrankung with the six-week pot already empty. The employer owes nothing; Krankengeld applies from day one.
- October: influenza, two weeks out. A new, unrelated illness: a fresh six-week entitlement begins and the employer pays the full €2,550 for those two weeks.
When the employer in August initially claimed the October flu was „also spine-related” and refused payment, a written demand citing the distinct diagnosis resolved the matter within a week.
Frequently asked questions
Do minijobbers really get six weeks of full pay?
Yes. Entgeltfortzahlung applies to all employees, including marginal employment. A minijobber scheduled for €520 per month receives that amount for up to six weeks of illness, after the four-week waiting period.
What if I fall ill in my first month of employment?
The employer owes nothing during the four-week waiting period (§ 3(3) EFZG), but statutorily insured employees receive Krankengeld from their fund for those days. From day 29 of the employment, the employer takes over for the remainder of the six weeks.
My employer just stopped paying mid-illness. What should I do?
Demand payment in writing with a clear deadline, citing § 3 EFZG. Check your contract for exclusion periods — many require claims to be asserted within three months. If the employer does not pay, a payment claim at the labor court is straightforward; in parallel, ask your health fund to step in with Krankengeld so you are not left without income during the dispute.
Does a rehab or Kur measure count as illness?
Approved medical rehabilitation and preventive-care measures trigger the same continued-pay entitlement (§ 9 EFZG), provided a social-insurance carrier has approved the measure. The six-week clock and the waiting period apply in the same way.
What happens to public holidays and vacation during sick leave?
Public holidays within sick leave are paid as they would have been anyway. Certified sick days during approved vacation are not deducted from your vacation account — see sick during vacation — though you may not simply extend the vacation on your own initiative.