The legal form of a contract with protective consequences for third parties (Vertrag mit Schutzwirkung für Dritte) is borrowed from German dogmatic scholarship, but may be interesting in this respect for an international audience as well.

A contract with protective consequences for (the benefit of) third parties.

As used by H-B. Schäfer (jur. Wörterbuchautor) in the article above.

If this is a contract where a provision works to the benefit of, or is enforceably by, a third party who did not sign the contract, the normal American legal expression would be "third-party beneficiary contract".

Die Voraussetzungen sind / The conditions are:

1) Anwendbarkeit / applicability
There must be a contract between two parties ("first party" and "second party") whereby the wrongdoer (i.e. "first party") one of them is. The aggrieved party is the third party.

2) Leistungsnähe / performance is closely related to the obligation
The aggrieved party (i.e. the third party) is in close contact to the second party. Hence the third party nearly touches the obligations of the contract.

3) Schutzpflicht / duty of protection from damage
A duty of protection from damage means that there is a relationship with a special duty of care, e.g. parents-children or employer-employee or landlord-tenant. Another case is that the duty of protection is obvious, e.g. an audited annual accounts implies for a financial institution that the certified annual accounts are correct.

4) Erkennbarkeit für den Schädiger / perceptibility to the wrongdoer
The wrongdoer must be able to percept the possible aggrieved parties. E.g. a landlord knows that the tenant's relatives are possible victims of negligence (e.g. a defective staircase).

5) Schutzbedürftigkeit / necessity of protection
There is no necessity of protection, if the aggrieved party has own contractual causes of action. Claims resulting of tort are insufficient.

Is that o.k.? Or just a nice try?

Kommentar zu Roberts Beitrag:
"third-party beneficiary contract" = "Vertrag zugunsten Dritter" (the original/explicit purport of the contract is to grant a benefit to a third person)
this is totally different to
"Vertrag mit Schutzwirkung zugunsten Dritter" (a third person comes to harm in the society of a contract of two different people)

contract with protective effetc to third party

TAF is absolutely right. What Robert supposes is actually a Vertrag zugunsten Dritter and that is a different thing.

Third the boss, as it were ;-) Robert is wrong and TAF is right.

For posterity ...

pretty late reaction this time mate...

Oooh, sorry indeed. Pray pardon.

;-)