Elsässer-Ditfurth trial

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The Elsässer-Ditfurth trial is a publicly noticed legal dispute between the journalist Jürgen Elsässer and the journalist Jutta Ditfurth . Since May 2014, it has been disputed whether Ditfurth's public statement that Alsatian is an “ardent anti-Semite” is covered by her fundamental right to freedom of expression ( Article 5, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law ) or whether this statement is Elsässer's general right of personality ( Article 1, Paragraph 1 , Art. 2 Abs. 1 GG ) violated. In essence, it was about the factual relevance of the statement and the scientific definition of the term " anti-Semitism ".

The first court instance forbade Ditfurth to testify when threatened with punishment. The second imposed the entire legal costs on her after she had undertaken not to call Alsatian an “ardent anti-Semite” any more, but reserved the right to call him an “anti-Semite”. Her constitutional complaint was not accepted for decision in June 2016. She then filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in December 2016 . Its decision is still pending.

Interview statement

Since March 2014, Jutta Ditfurth has publicly criticized anti-Semitic and right-wing extremist tendencies at the vigil for peace at the time and sparked a media debate about it. On April 16, 2014, she justified her criticism in the television magazine Kulturzeit . She classified the calls to the vigils as a targeted cross-front strategy. She named linguistic codes as identifying features of anti-Semitic tendencies : For example, the organizer of the Berlin vigil, Lars Mährholz, traced all world wars and conflicts of the past hundred years to the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed). This stands for what was formerly known as “ World Jewry ”, as does the code word “East Coast”. Anti-Semitic caricatures and hateful texts against the Rothschilds can also be found on the websites of the vigil officials .

Ditfurth named three vigil representatives: “This is a propagandist, a radio maker, a previous one, Ken Jebsen , who also appears under other identities. Then there is Jürgen Elsässer, who was once a communist and is now an ardent anti-Semite and gay enemy , and his magazine COMPACT , and as the organizer of these peace demonstrations there is now Lars Mährholz, who pretends to be an innocent individual, but obviously the background [ ...] right esoteric circles , such as the zeitgeist movement or fascist circles such as imperial citizens . "

Because of this commitment against right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic tendencies at the vigil, she became a stimulus for their organizers and supporters. After the interview, she was exposed to a shit storm.

The judicial process

On May 26, 2014, Elsässer obtained an injunction against his designation as an "ardent anti-Semite" before the Munich I Regional Court . He presented this success at the vigil and in his magazine as a “victory” in the dispute over the veracity of the testimony. However, the court had not ruled on this. Because the order was incomplete and not served on time to Ditfurth, the regional court initially revoked it on July 30, 2014.

Elsässer sued for an omission of the designation before the 25th civil chamber (press chamber) of the district court Munich I. He was represented by lawyer Michael-Hubertus von Sprenger , who had previously been the lawyer of the Holocaust denier David Irving . The court reinstated the preliminary injunction in the main proceedings on November 17, 2014. In the main, Ditfurth condemned it on December 10, 2014, to refrain from the controversial designation while avoiding regulatory means and to reimburse or assume pre- and extrajudicial legal fees of the plaintiff in the amount of € 1,671.95.

Ditfurth appealed against this to the Munich Higher Regional Court . In order to be able to bear the legal costs, she publicly called for donations. Some artists donated paintings for an online auction, the proceeds of which were to help finance Ditfurth's process.

On March 16, 2015, Ditfurth's lawyer issued a cease and desist declaration : Without recognizing any legal obligation, she undertook not to call Elsässer an “ardent anti-Semite”, but reserved the right “to continue to call him an anti-Semite and his statements as anti-Semitic”. On May 5, Ditfurth's lawyer confirmed that she would only omit the adjective "glowing". On May 20, 2015, Elsässer's lawyer declared item 1 of the regional court judgment (condemnation to cease and desist) to be over. Insofar as Ditfurth's appeal was directed against the conviction of paying the plaintiff's pre- and extrajudicial legal fees, the 18th civil senate (press senate) of the Munich Higher Regional Court dismissed it without an oral hearing on September 28, 2015 ( Section 522 (2 ) ZPO ) on her the entire legal costs and did not allow an appeal to the Federal Court of Justice ( § 543 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 ZPO). The plaintiff had the right to omit the disputed designation, for which the Senate “still does not see sufficient factual evidence”; she had "unlawfully violated the plaintiff's general personal rights". The appeal regarding pre-judicial and extrajudicial legal fees is obviously unfounded. Insofar as the main matter of the legal dispute was consistently declared to be settled, the costs according to Section 91a of the German Code of Civil Procedure were imposed on the defendant at the reasonable discretion of the defendant, since they would have been unsuccessful without the corresponding declaration of settlement.

On November 6, 2015, Ditfurth's lawyers lodged a constitutional complaint before the Federal Constitutional Court . This did not accept the constitutional complaint for decision in June 2016. It remained with the decision of the Higher Regional Court. Thereupon Ditfurth declared in December 2016 that she was forced to take the process to the ECHR. She again called for donations to pay for the legal costs.

Ditfurth's argument

The Regional Court of Munich I took the following information from Ditfurth into account:

  • Your statement is not a criticism of abuse or a personal defamation , but an expression of opinion in a political dispute with a group whose leading representatives include Elsässer. That is why he had to put up with criticism of these representatives as a whole.
  • Their anti-Semitism is hidden in a code, for example in pointing the blame on the Fed. In contrast, direct and unequivocal anti-Semitic statements would be avoided.
  • On June 28, 2013, Elsässer criticized the financial group Goldman Sachs for sucking out the German taxpayer. That is the traditional anti-Semitic cliché of “financial Jewry”.
  • On April 21, 2014, he used the metaphor of the "interest loop". This corresponds to the expression " interest bondage " in the 25-point program of the NSDAP of 1920.
  • He interpreted a certain scene in the Turkish film " Valley of the Wolves - Iraq " as anti-Semitic.
  • He had to allow anti-Semitic statements to be attributed to which many of his supporters agreed, according to a social science study.
  • Andreas Abu Bakr Rieger , co-editor of the magazine Compact , is clearly anti-Semite.

At the end of the hearing on October 10, 2014, Ditfurth gave an interview to the Nuremberg broadcaster Radio Z. On December 9, 2014 (one day before the regional court ruling ), she referred in an online article for publikative.org and HaGalil to further statements and actions by Elsässers that she had submitted to the court in writing:

  • At the Monday vigil on April 21, 2014, he spoke of the one percent of the "international financial oligarchy" who strangled and strangled "the 99 percent, including workers, the unemployed, the poor and many companies and companies in their interest loop". He highlighted four names (“Messrs. Rockefeller, Rothschild, Soros, Khodorkovsky” ...) and asked: “And why should it be anti-Semitism when you talk about how this tiny little layer of money aristocrats use the Federal Reserve for the to plunge the whole world into chaos? ”According to Ditfurth, he is following the traditional anti-Semitic juxtaposition of the raging (Jewish) and creative (German) capital. His selection of people with possible Jewish ancestors is anti-Semitic because he ignores the vast majority of Christian baptized capitalists.
  • On July 21, 2014, Elsässer said at a Monday vigil: “Anyone who is not allowed to talk about Zionism must also keep silent about fascism .” According to Ditfurth, he equated Israel with the Nazi regime and thus relativized the Holocaust .
  • Jebsen and Mährholz had also made anti-Semitic statements. Elsässer appeared with them and expressed solidarity with them against criticism of their anti-Semitic statements.
  • He had been invited to conferences by Holocaust deniers and congratulated the Iranian Holocaust denier and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re-election.
  • He offers anti-Semites a forum in his publications and works with publishers who also publish books by anti-Semites.

Ditfurth justified her appeal against the first instance judgment as follows: "In a country where I am not allowed to call an anti-Semite an anti-Semite, my life would be very difficult."

For the appointment procedure, the linguist Monika Schwarz-Friesel stated in an expert opinion: Elsässer's statements contained “all the essential and typical characteristics of modern verbal anti-Semitism in the variant of detour communication”. Ditfurth's designation of Elsässers as an "anti-Semite" is therefore "technically verifiable and to be regarded as justified by a scientific analysis of the statements and communicative activities of Mr. Jürgen Elsässer".

Elsässer's reasoning

Elsässer confirmed some of his statements quoted by Ditfurth before the Munich I Regional Court, but rejected the interpretation that they were anti-Semitic. In addition, he added other statements and information:

  • In 2009 he had the liberation of the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau called the "greatest act of the 20th century".
  • On February 9, 2010 he had declared: The fact that Nazi Germany unleashed and led the Second World War should not be forgotten and put into perspective. One should not join the Nazis , who misused the annual commemoration of the air raids on Dresden (February 13-15 , 1945) with the catchphrase “bomb holocaust” .
  • In 2011 he banned statements against Jews on his blog.
  • When he visited Iran in 2012, he met not only President Ahmadinejad, but also representatives of the Jewish minority.
  • The scene in question from the film “Valley of the Wolves” portrays the Jewish doctor who removes organs from prisoners and sells them as a “harmless figure” and as a “little profiteer”. The scene is an allegory for the relationship between the governments of the USA and Israel.
  • On July 21, 2014 Elsässer also said: "These oligarchies have no religion, they pray neither to God nor to Yahweh nor to Allah , they only pay homage to one idol, namely the cold Mammon ."
  • Because he did not express himself disparagingly about the Jews as a collective and distanced himself from Holocaust denial, Ditfurth's statement should be classified as a "low-substance factual assertion" and a defamatory criticism.

Reasons for judgment

Petra Grönke-Müller, presiding judge at the District Court of Munich I, defined anti-Semitism as follows at the end of the hearing:

"An ardent anti-Semite in Germany is someone who expresses himself anti-Semitic with conviction, with a conviction that the Third Reich does not condemn, and cannot be viewed in isolation from 1933 to 1945 against the background of history."

The reasoning for the judgment states: “The designation“ glowing anti-Semite ”is an insult within the meaning of Section 185 of the Criminal Code and a designation that is likely to violate the plaintiff's personal rights in a significant and extensive manner. It has to be taken into account that, especially against the background of the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship and the Holocaust, the designation as a `` glowing anti-Semite '' is particularly suitable for degrading the person so designated and hurting their honor. This term expresses the fact that those who share the convictions that led to the murder of 6 million Jews under the National Socialist reign of terror and who attack people solely because of their membership of a religious community and make them responsible for the evils of the world. In the necessary balance between the plaintiff's personal rights and the defendant's freedom of expression, it must therefore be taken into account whether the defendant has sufficient evidence and connecting facts from which a glowing anti-Semitic conviction or attitude of the plaintiff […] can be inferred. The statements and actions of the plaintiff presented by the defendant, on which the defendant relies, do not provide sufficient connecting factors for the conviction of the court to be able to judge the plaintiff as an "ardent anti-Semite". "

The Munich Higher Regional Court commented on the written submissions of both parties as follows:

  • Ditfurth only criticized the sources used by the regional court for the definition of the term "anti-Semite", not the latter itself. The definition corresponds to common usage.
  • With the epithet “glowing” Ditfurth could not have meant Elsässer's inner attitude and his particularly sophisticated dissemination of anti-Semitic stereotypes, but only the intensity with which he expressed his worldview. Because without external evidence, she could neither determine nor evaluate his attitude. Previously in that interview she accused Mährholz of using anti-Semitic “codes”, but did not call him an anti-Semite.
  • In the interview, Ditfurth did not have to name any facts on which she based her assessment. Criticism is permissible in the public opinion struggle even without direct evidence. Her call on May 21, 2014 on Facebook to send her “information and materials on Jürgen Elsässer's anti-Semitism” should therefore not be taken into account.
  • Not everyone who uses expressions such as “Federal Reserve”, “Financial oligarchy on the American East Coast” or “East Coast” is alluding to the alleged Jewish world conspiracy or intending to make this anti-Semitic allusion.
  • The fact that “someone never explicitly expresses himself anti-Semitic, but repeatedly expresses himself against anti-Semitism” suggests “the conclusion that he is not an anti-Semite, than the conclusion drawn by the plaintiff that he is a particularly dangerous anti-Semite for that very reason. who only cleverly conceals his attitude. "
  • Neither a close cooperation between Elsässers and Jebsen nor a consent of Elsässers to anti-Semitic statements by Jebsen is sufficiently proven.
  • Schwarz-Friesel's interpretation of Elsässer's statements is not verifiable and partly incomprehensible. Social democrats coined the term “ financial capitalism ” to criticize the concentration of capital in a few hands. The word retains that meaning even when anti-Semites use it. It is absurd that Alsatian did not mean the hedge funds and private equity funds mentioned by “locusts” , but Jews.
  • Anti-Semitic posts by third parties on Elsässer's blog are not attributable to him, even if he does not remove them immediately.
  • The significantly increased circulation of Elsässer's magazine Compact between January and September 2014 does not speak against the pillory effect of Ditfurth's statement.

reception

Authors of German newspaper reports criticized the regional court's definition that anti-Semitism was only an expressly positive attitude towards the Nazi era . According to Henryk M. Broder ( Die Welt ), this view could be “the first official step towards the abolition of anti-Semitism in Germany”. Current anti-Semites distanced themselves from the anti-Semitism of the National Socialists in order to then equate Israel's Palestinian policy with the National Socialist Jewish policy all the more uninhibited. This anti-Semitism disguised as criticism of Israel is elegantly disposed of by the court.

For the Berlin lawyer Nathan Gelbart ( Jüdische Allgemeine ), the district court showed “ignorance of historical facts” and ignorance of the currently widespread anti-Semitism. His definition prevents anti-Semites from being called by their names and restricts the freedom of expression of the press and literature to an unprecedented extent. Today's anti-Semites, like Alsatians, always referred to Jewish friends and their Nazi hatred and only criticized Israel. If someone advocates conspiracy theories about Jews or moves in the vicinity of representatives of such theories, he must be able to be called an anti-Semite.

Deniz Yücel (then taz ) criticized that, measured by the definition of the court, the last anti-Semite was seen in Jerusalem around 1960 (see Eichmann trial ). Neo-Nazis did not welcome the Holocaust but denied it. The ordinary anti-Semite condemns the Holocaust and then declares the Israelis to be today's Nazis. Israel has taken the place of “world Jewry” in today's anti-Semitism. Elsässer himself described the 'left' anti-Zionism in his book Antisemitism - the old face of the new Germany in 1992 , which demagogically spoke of the 'final solution to the Palestinian question' or Israeli ' concentration camps ' and cheered attacks on Israelis. Today he is a conspiracy theorist, cross-front strategist and speaker at the right-wing extremist " Legida " demonstration.

Michael Miersch called for a donation for Ditfurth on the political weblog The Axis of the Good and commented: “The zeitgeist (one must not say at the moment) à la Alsatians are a much worse threat to liberal society than costumed neo-Nazi dumbbells of the old school. Unfortunately, most of the anti-Nazi initiatives have still not noticed. ”The young world and the Jungle World also reported on the district court ruling.

Benjamin Weinthal ( The Jerusalem Post ) reported on critical German media reactions to the district court ruling and concluded that the case concerned the core of the modern understanding of anti-Semitism in Germany. He recalled that Elsässer had portrayed an annual German demonstration on al-Quds Day in 2009 as non-anti-Semitic, although Hezbollah activists, supporters of the Iran regime and neo-Nazis there jointly called for the destruction of Israel.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 3sat media library: The new right Monday demos . Conversation with Jutta Ditfurth
  2. ^ Elke Wittich: Manic Monday. Vigils attract anti-Semites. In: Jüdische Allgemeine, No. 26, June 26, 2014 (not archived; PDF  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ).@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.juedische-Allgemeine-manischer-Montag-20140626.pdf  
  3. ↑ Ulrich Schmid : Against Jews, Kiev and contrails . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , No. 141, June 21, 2014.
  4. ^ Danijel Majic: Elsässer's pseudo-triumph . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , June 10, 2014.
  5. ↑ Martin Niewendick: Anti-Semite Trial: Ditfurth wins against Elsässer . In: Ruhrbarone , August 1, 2014.
  6. ↑ Carolin Gasteiger: Michael-Hubertus von Sprenger: The man who wants to go to the last instance for Erdoğan . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 13, 2016.
  7. ↑ a b c d Munich Regional Court I - Az. 25 O 14197/14: judgment of December 10, 2014, pdf ; html
  8. ↑ a b Deniz Yücel: Anti-Semitism? Is abolished . In: taz, February 17, 2015, p. 14.
  9. ^ Marcus Hammerschmitt : Ditfurths works . In: Friday 16/15, 29 April 2015.
  10. ↑ a b OLG Munich: Decision of September 28, 2015, Az. 18 U 169/15 Pre - Glowing Antisemite , accessed May 20, 2020
  11. ↑ Martin Krauss : Ditfurth moves to the constitutional court . In: Jüdische Allgemeine, November 9, 2015.
  12. ↑ Alexander Nabert, Jungle World, December 15, 2016: The Secret Truth About the Jews
  13. ↑ Ditfurth referred to: Priska Daphi, Dieter Rucht , Wolfgang Stuppert, Simon Teune, Peter Ullrich: Occupy Peace - A survey of participants in the “Monday vigils for peace”. Research report from the Technical University of Berlin in cooperation with the Association for Protest and Movement Research, June 19, 2014
  14. ↑ Felix Sowa: Can Jürgen Elsässer be called a “glowing anti-Semite”? (Interview with Jutta Ditfurth). Radio Z, October 10, 2014.
  15. ^ Jutta Ditfurth: Völkischer Lobbyist des Mittelstandsischen Deutschen Kapital , publikative.org, December 9, 2014; This: Declaration on the Elsässer v Ditfurth trial , haGalil, December 9, 2014.
  16. ↑ Laura Meschede : Elsässer celebrates “final victory” against Ditfurth . In: taz , December 11, 2014, p. 6.
  17. ↑ Jutta Ditfurth: Why I go before the Federal Constitutional Court . In: haGalil, November 17, 2015.
  18. ^ Henryk M. Broder: How to legally abolish anti-Semitism , in: Welt Online , October 15, 2014; ders .: Abolish anti-Semitism! , in: Welt Online, October 16, 2014.
  19. ↑ Nathan Gelbart: Justice: License for Anti-Semites. How a Munich judge simply defined hatred of Jews before and after the Shoah . In: Jüdische Allgemeine, No. 42, October 15, 2014.
  20. ↑ Michael Miersch: Jürgen Elsässer is a {can't say right now} . In: The Axis of Good , December 11, 2014.
  21. ↑ Dietmar Koschmieder : Until the final victory . In: Junge Welt, December 13, 2014.
  22. ↑ Felix Sowa: The transverse axis of anti-Semitism . In: Jungle World, No. 42, October 16, 2014.
  23. ↑ Benjamin Weinthal: German judge sparks outrage, says anti-Semitism which only limited to the Nazi period . In: The Jerusalem Post, October 17, 2014.