A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

As a German I have to emphasize that this has no support at all in Germany. The uproar was huge today and its seen as a misuse of power by the politician. Especially as he is not acting as a politician but as representative of the public office of interior. The search warrant needs to be issued by a judge and I'm sure there will be formal investigations how this happened. I would not be surprised if he will be forced to resign. There are also elections happening and misuse of power is seen very badly throughout the people.

Broken title. Should be "A Twitter user insulted a German politician. Police then raided his house." I.e., s/,/. Police/

For some reason the title was altered to say something bizarre. The Twitter user did not raid the politician’s house.

The German basic law protects people&#x27;s personal honour (article 5, freedom of expression), and this goes back hundreds of years. (<i>strafrechtlicher Ehrschutz</i>).<p>&gt;<i>&quot;These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons and in the right to personal honour.</i>&quot;<p>This is reflected in the German criminal code <i>Beleidigung</i>(Insult), unchanged for about 150 years.<p>&gt;<i>&quot;The penalty for insult is imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or a fine and, if the insult is committed by means of an assault, imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or a fine.&quot;</i><p>This extends to everyone, not just politicians. For example, flipping someone off is not legal, and you&#x27;ll be fined if someone were to take legal action. The headline of the article and the general tone of is misleading.

What I don‘t understand is how they differentiate this sort of „insult“ from “satire”. There are some protections around artistic freedom and you should be allowed to make fun of someone. There was a well-known [“Böhmermann vs. Erdogan”](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Böhmermann-Affäre" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Böhmermann-Affäre</a>) case, where more serious insults than “Pimmel” were used, but the prosecution was terminated - probably due to a huge amount of public pressure - but it’s still strange and feels arbitrary.

I would like a balanced perspective on this. What do our German&#x2F;European think about this? Is this expected or a random event? Does this have public support?

i dunno pick your poison:<p>1st amendment but militarized police and huge sentences and awful prison conditions<p>or ppl summoned for making jokes but justice system better in every other respect

And as an American, Germans&#x2F;Australians&#x2F;etc. will still insist they&#x27;re more free than me because of something arbitrary like free healthcare. I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s anywhere I&#x27;d feel particularly more &quot;free&quot; all things considered aside from maybe Mars.

The title and article are wrong. They raided his ex&#x27;s apartment (a household with 2 small kids; he was still registered as living there but had moved out) even after the offender presented himself to police and admitted sending that Tweet.

To be fair, in the last 4 years especially, the US has set its own precedent of raiding the homes of political opponents, supporters and even lawyers.<p>In one case last year, a person was even visited by officers for simply saying a politician’s rhetoric was “underwhelming”.<p>To say nothing of the peaceful protestors who have been detained, in some cases without charges or even access to lawyers.<p>We may like to think we’re still the bastion of freedom we want to see, but the trend certainly doesn’t point that way.

Should be noted that this is a pretty strange case. The case came originally from the police, the politician was just asked later to report it too, because law demands it. And that insult is really, really weak, even by German standards. The raid was also unnecessary, as they already had the culprits&#x27; statement of guilty. And on top they even raided the wrong house.<p>On the side, looking up the culprit, he seems to be a political activist, from the left spectrum which has many bad blood in the city where this happened. So my guess is, this case has a political background, and the insult was just a pretext to justify the means.

This title is missing an important word that completely reverses its meaning! Argh.<p>The twitter user did, in fact, not raid the house of the politician.

I know this shouldn&#x27;t be made fun of, and as a German I am very upset about it. But: &quot;Pimmelgate&quot; is an awesome name.<p>Also, don&#x27;t politicians know about the Streisand effect? If they hadn&#x27;t raided this guy, nobody would know about the Tweet, and nobody would care one bit. Ethics and law aside, this was just a very dumb move.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;EiMIA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;EiMIA</a>

Title is broken.<p>&gt; A Twitter user insulted a German politician. Police then raided his house.

&gt; The Hamburg police confirmed to The Post that it had searched the house of the Twitter user behind the @pauli_zoo handle early Wednesday to “gather evidence&quot;<p>I wonder what kind of evidence they were looking for?

I didn&#x27;t want to editorialize the original title, but to add to it:<p>1) The insult used was &quot;pimmel&quot;, german for &quot;dick&quot;.<p>2) According to netzpolitik.org, the offender was summoned by the police before that, did show up, and did confirm there that it was his account. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;netzpolitik.org&#x2F;2021&#x2F;andy-grote-was-fuer-eine-pimmelei&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;netzpolitik.org&#x2F;2021&#x2F;andy-grote-was-fuer-eine-pimmel...</a> [german]

Before the coup that happened a few days ago, my country was casually known as a dictatorship. You don&#x27;t insult politicians, not especially on a public place. When you are home, you check if the coast is clear before you call the president names. Otherwise you get an armed and humiliating response, if not tragic.<p>Looks like lots of democratic countries are looking at us with envy and for inspiration these days.

Reading things like these in other (even developed, Western) nations:<p>- UK surveillance state powers, anti-porn laws<p>- Australian laws to detain you, break encryption<p>- This German incident<p>I sure am glad to live in a country where freedoms are explicitly guaranteed by a constitutional decree.