The process in Wrzburg, which has been postponed again and again, should finally clarify on Thursday: Were the pictures inciting the people? And what penalty does the sender get?
A disturbing image from the Internet is the focus of a trial at the Wrzburg district court on Thursday: A Wehrmacht soldier aims a machine gun at the viewer. Below it says: “The fastest German asylum procedure, rejects up to 1,400 applications per minute”.
Example for hate postings
Xenophobic “hate postings” are punishable by law. With precisely this picture as a prime example, the legislature has asked the operators of social networks to report them to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). Federal Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) and Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) agreed on the notification procedure, and the interior ministers of the federal states agreed.
The picture has not only achieved notoriety in Wrzburg. It put an AfD MP in need of explanations, kept the Bundestag busy and a number of courts. In Meien and Stuttgart, it cost senders their jobs. Courts imposed fines for sedition in one case, including a nine-month suspended sentence.
7200 euros for sedition
In Wrzburg, a carnival official, who had since resigned, was supposed to pay 7200 euros in the first instance for distributing this and similar pictures in a WhatsApp group. The group was private, but the 25 participants were primarily Elferrte and other high-ranking representatives of the Giemaul guild in Wrzburg-Heidingsfeld up to the president of the carnival club.
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In Lower Franconia, the 2019 case caused a lot of excitement, also because the guild did not attack the sender, but the deputy chairwoman. The internally demanded that such statements be prevented. In the end, she was urged to leave the club. The official wanted to forbid her to make any statements about the case, even in court, but the court agreed with the woman, which only made the case public.
Politics distanced itself
The Lord Mayor of Wrzburg, Christian Schuchardt, and his deputies distanced themselves publicly from time to time, and other carnival clubs were disconcerted. The guild felt compelled to declare publicly that it rejects xenophobia.
The former functionary, who lost his position on the board, did not accept a penalty order from the Wrzburg public prosecutor. In the trial at the district court, an investigator on the witness stand said: Among the 6,000 pictures on the defendant’s cell phone were “also tasteless and racist”.
“You can laugh about a lot, but not about it”
The defendant says that he is not affiliated with any rightist thought, that he took it for a kind of satire and that he thought nothing wrong with the dissemination. His lawyer described the image of the threatening machine gunner as harmless as East Frisian jokes. The judge disagreed: “You can laugh about a lot, but not about it.”
The ex-officer wanted an acquittal, the prosecutor found the sentence too mild, and both appealed. A process was scheduled several times and then postponed again. Two years after the case became known, the regional court should now draw a line on Thursday.
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Wrzburg
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Manfred Schweidler
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District courts
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accused
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Federal Minister of the Interior
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Federal Minister of Justice
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Federal Criminal Police Office
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CSU
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Christian Schuchardt
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Christine Lambrecht
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German Bundestag
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Explanation need
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Investigators
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Guild Giemaul
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Horst Seehofer
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Appeal
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Interior minister
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racism
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SPD
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Prosecutors
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