The press chamber of the German court “Landgericht Berlin” presided by jugde Michael Mauck has in several sentences forbidden the German author Roman Grafe and several major German newspapers to publish the name of a polit officer serving in German Democratic Republics border troops. A polit officer’s responsibility at the border troops was giving soldiers political instruction and propaganda in favour of soviet style communism.
Morally backgrounded in such a way, border troop soldiers were able to shoot people trying to flee from communism and protect in this way the Inner German border as part of the Iron Curtain.
Roman Grafe is of the opinion, that the polit officerhe outlined in his book “German justice - lawsuits against GDR border troop snipers and their commanders” (In German: “Deutsche Gerechtigkeit - Prozesse gegen DDR-Grenzschützen und ihre Befehlsgeber.“) has a moral responsibility for his unit killing the fugitive Chris Gueffroy on Februry, 6th, 1989.
The 1964 born polit officer, who nowadays acts as chairman of the main personnel council of the German Federal Police, fears complications for his career in police forces of united Germany, insists on that he is not responsible in any way for any of the killed people at the Berlin Wall and successfully filed a lawsuit against Roman Grafe and his book on the reason of libel.
Roman Grafe and a number of highly profiled German newspapers like FAZ and SZ have reported about the lawsuit and a number of German prominent people have published an appell not to make historical incidents nameless and faceless. The former polit officer has with the help of judge Michael Mauck from Landgericht Berlin managed to forbid all these reports, to censor corresponding German internet pages and furthermore to interdict Roman Grefe to identifyingly report about the lawsuits from the former polit officer and nowadays police officer at all.
On 8th of March 2007 German telecast “kontraste” has outlined the scandal of censorship and misjustice in Landgericht Berlin. On March, 19th, 2007 an appeal is hold at the “Kammergericht Berlin”. As publicly noticed opposition to interdictions of identifyingly reporting on public court hearings grows, the decision could become a watershed in German court roulings towords a higher level of freedom of speech in matters of reporting about censorship in Germany.
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Par·tei·buch n. German: Booklet with personal data and number to prove membership in a party
Hello “A Cat”,
Yes, this is the freedom of press in Germany. I have read some articles in the famous Wikipedia, and found out the real name of the person whose name should not be published. But I promise, I won’t publish the real name, and I won’t give any advice how to find it.
Even I am a German citizen, I think I have to read English sources in future, because I want to know something about the history of my country.
Greetings
how bad is the censorship in Deutscland? Do they teach history in scohools? I think america will be in the same boat soon..
Schools…..Entschuldigung