On a poster at the Rote Flora in the Schanzenviertel it says “Andy, you are so 1 dick, steps back” as well as “SoKo wall and color”.
Photo: dpa | Stupid Marks
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You have to give them one thing, the Hamburg residents: They are persistent. In the case of Pimmelgate 2.0, the parties involved don’t give each other anything. It all started with Interior Senator Andy Grote, who criticized thousands of people celebrating in Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel in a Twitter post after he himself had partied in a pub in disregard of the Corona rules. The user “ZooStPauli” then referred to him as “1 dick” on Twitter in May. Grote filed a criminal complaint, the investigation was started and culminated in a house search of the Twitter user in September. #Pimmelgate was born.
“Pimmelgate” – Andy Grote under attack
On one side is the left scene, which after the original conflict gives free rein to its creativity. After the police reaction to the tweet, strangers distributed yellow stickers with black inscription “Andy, you are so 1 dick” in the vicinity of the Senator’s apartment in the St. Pauli district. This kept the Hamburg police on their toes, whose efforts to tear off the stickers were documented and made the rounds on social media. According to the “Hamburger Morgenpost”, the officials themselves became aware of the 40 stickers at the beginning of October and removed them to secure evidence and not on behalf of the Senator.
But that’s not all: Last Saturday, a meter-high poster in the design of the sticker with the same message was emblazoned on the Rote Flora building, a politically autonomous cultural center in the Hanseatic city. What followed the announcement of war was the following exchange of blows: On Sunday morning the police had painted over the lettering on the poster with black paint. Shortly afterwards, the saying was sprayed onto the black paint with white graffiti paint. The police came back on Monday, painted over, the slogan reappeared. The “Hamburger Morgenpost” then asked on the title page in its Tuesday edition “Who has the biggest brush?”
According to the poster makers, the score is “Flora: III: Bulls II”. On Twitter, the Rote Flora called on the senator to resign. The police actually gave up the fight on Tuesday. A spokeswoman confirmed that the lettering would not be painted over any further. From the grotesque environment it is said that the SPDler is happy that the “children’s stuff” has come to an end and that the police do not have to deal with it any further.
The cat-and-mouse game between the left and the police also amused the Internet. Personalie Grote no longer only seems to occupy the Hanseatic city: “Thanks to #Pimmelgate I at least know what Hamburg’s interior senator is called,” joked the network. But the criticism about the proportionality of the police reaction also increased. Instead of dealing with hatspeech attacks on people, they took part in this “kid stuff”. It reminds of the ruling by the Berlin Regional Court in 2019, according to which Renate Künast, a Green Member of the Bundestag, could initially be described as a “filthy cunt” on Facebook. The parallels to Pimmelgate couldn’t be more obvious.
The biggest loser in history is not likely to be the police, but Grote himself. Because his intervention backfired completely. A tweet turned into a city-wide sticky campaign. #Pimmelgate has been trending on Twitter again and again since the house search in September. Actually he no longer wanted to be called “1 dick”, but at the moment nothing else is being talked about.
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