Expressions such as “Lügenfritz” (“Lying Fritz”) about Friedrich Merz are not necessarily punishable in themselves, but they can be punished if they incite others to make further disparaging remarks – this is how the public prosecutor’s office in Heilbronn explained the matter to Die Welt in connection with a number of criminal cases brought over insults directed at the German Chancellor on Facebook.
It was in February that it became known that a Facebook post in which the police had announced a no-fly zone over Heilbronn in connection with a visit by Merz there in October had attracted the attention of prosecutors because of a number of derogatory comments about the Chancellor, including the nickname “Pinocchio” – a reference to the living wooden puppet in Carlo Collodi’s fairy tale whose nose grew longer every time he lied, immortalised in a Walt Disney animated film.
It recently emerged that one of the keyboard users had been fined 30 daily penalty units for calling Merz “Lügenfritz”, while another who called him a “Lackaffe” (“pompous idiot”) paid 100 euros to have the case against him discontinued. A number of other cases are still ongoing.
The German newspaper writes:
“As regards the statements you mention, the personal comments beneath a Facebook post escalated more and more,” a spokeswoman for the public prosecutor’s office in Heilbronn writes. “In the view of the public prosecutor’s office, the expressions ‘Lügenfritz’ and ‘Lackaffe’ were in any case capable of undermining confidence in the injured party’s integrity, because they were capable of provoking further negative reservations or aggression among like-minded persons.”
In short: it is not the expressions “Lügenfritz” and “Lackaffe” themselves that investigators regard as criminal, but rather the consequences that may arise if others feel affected and criticism of the Chancellor subsequently escalates within the group. “This,” the spokeswoman says, “fulfils the criterion of being capable of significantly impeding public activity.” She refers to Section 188, paragraph 1, of the Criminal Code. “For that reason, in the cases brought before the courts, a special public interest in prosecution was assumed to exist.”
The public prosecutor’s office had not investigated whether there was any basis to the accusations that Merz was a liar:
In connection with the statements accusing Merz of lying, Die Welt asked the public prosecutor’s office whether it had also examined the factual substance of the allegations; for example, Merz’s pre-election promise not to touch the constitutional debt brake, only then to secure approval of the “special fund” after the election. Die Welt also confronted the investigators with a “fact-check” by Tagesschau concerning a statement made by Merz in 2024 regarding the number of refugees from Afghanistan and Syria. At the time, the ARD editorial team had written: “At a press conference, CDU leader Merz claimed that Germany, relative to its size, had received more refugees from Syria and Afghanistan than any other country in the world. But that is not correct.”
The spokeswoman replied that the public prosecutor’s office assesses “any potential criminal liability solely on the basis of the wording of the law and the commentaries thereon”. The extent to which the accusations that Merz had lied might actually be correct, despite all the polemics surrounding the case, is therefore irrelevant to the investigation.
German legal experts who have commented on these cases doubt that the public prosecutor’s reasoning would have prevailed in court, but the individual fined for calling Merz “Lügenfritz” has not pursued the matter through the judicial system.
The censorship-industrial complex in Germany is far worse than what the Twitter Files documented in the United States, said the Australian researcher Andrew Lowenthal in December.