Amid the growing polarization of society, the boundaries of permissible criticism toward public officials are undergoing severe testing. The District Court in Osnabrück has issued a landmark ruling that establishes crucial legal benchmarks: the protection of politicians’ personal rights takes a back seat to the right of citizens to express a harsh stance. The subject of the litigation was the criminal prosecution of a citizen for using a derogatory expression directed at the Prime Minister of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, and applying the term “Nazis” to functionaries of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
This verdict clearly demonstrates that the German judicial system continues to consistently protect the right to political discussion, even when conducted in an extremely sharp and provocative manner. The court concluded that public figures who voluntarily choose the path of state activity must be prepared for heightened scrutiny and tough evaluation from society. Thus, the boundaries of what is permissible regarding them are significantly broader than in disputes between private individuals, a fact derived directly from the task of maintaining an open democratic process.
The judicial incident confirmed that value judgments with a factual basis or a link to a real political agenda cannot automatically be equated to a criminally punishable insult. The acquittal of the Osnabrück resident caused a wide resonance in expert circles, as it explains in detail where the line is drawn between personal offense and the expression of justified civic protest in the digital space.
Case Context and the Balance Between Free Speech and Personal Rights
The litigation was prompted by 5 posts on the social network X (formerly Twitter), published between July 2023 and April 2024. The author of the posts was Gerhard Torges, a 57-year-old resident of Osnabrück. His personal profile was subjected to thorough analysis by third parties, who subsequently filed a complaint with a specialized monitoring center. It is worth noting that such mass campaigns of filing reports with law enforcement agencies are actively practiced today by both right-wing and left-wing political associations in Germany, turning into an instrument of ideological confrontation.
The justification of the court’s decision, a copy of which is at the disposal of the t-online editorial office, analyzes in detail why Torges’s sharp definitions cannot be classified under criminal articles. The key stage of the review was balancing the fundamental freedom of speech against the constitutional right of an individual to the protection of honor and dignity. Judge Kevin Poppen stated that the defendant’s statements were directly conditioned by the actions and statements of the politicians themselves within their professional activities, rather than a desire to inflict a purely personal, isolated insult.
Initially, the Göttingen Prosecutor’s Office, having received materials from the monitoring center, saw a criminal offense in Torges’s actions. An official penalty order imposing a monetary fine was sent to the man. Notably, the supervisory authority chose not to use the special Paragraph 188 of the Criminal Code of the Federal Republic of Germany (StGB), which stiffens liability for defamation and slander specifically against political figures. The case was heard on the basis of general Paragraph 185 of the German Criminal Code, which provides punishment for a “simple” insult. Torges categorically refused to pay the fine, leading the proceedings to enter the stage of an open main trial.
Manifestation of a Substantive Position in the Publication Text
During the hearings, Judge Poppen emphasized that Torges, by using the controversial derogatory terminology, aimed to criticize specific political directions of Kretschmer and Höcke. In particular, the author of the posts expressed indignation that these politicians “consequent to alleged Russian influence supposedly made certain state decisions and came forward with controversial statements.” The court recognized that the author’s substantive intent to point out this problem was sufficiently traceable in the text of the posts, which excludes the elements of an intentional, blind insult.
An important piece of evidence was the fact that in the publication dedicated to the Prime Minister of Saxony, Torges included a direct hyperlink to a journalistic investigation by the t-online portal. This article detailed the long-standing lobbying efforts of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline operating company, aimed at getting Michael Kretschmer to unconditionally support the completion of the energy project and speak publicly against the introduction of European economic sanctions.
Such a context has real political facts behind it. Kretschmer, representing the CDU party, has repeatedly sparked internal party polemics with his calls for the swift resumption of Russian gas purchases and the phased easing of the sanctions regime. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the Saxon premier made a high-profile visit to Moscow. Although a personal meeting with the leadership of the Russian Federation did not take place, Kretschmer held phone talks with Vladimir Putin and officially distributed a press photograph of this process. Moreover, on May 9, 2020, he took part in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Soviet memorial in Treptow Park alongside Russian Ambassador Sergey Nechaev. In Saxony, such steps find understanding among a significant portion of the electorate, and according to the politician’s entourage, reproaches of excessive ties with Moscow are rarely recorded at the regional level.
Höcke Proceedings Concerned the Mention of a Castle
The official reaction from the State Chancellery of Saxony was restrained. Government spokesperson Ralph Schreiber, in a comment for t-online, explained that the Prime Minister traditionally does not give personal evaluations of decisions by independent judicial bodies. Nevertheless, Schreiber specified that Kretschmer regularly signs applications for criminal prosecution if the prosecutor’s office sees signs of an offense in internet users’ actions. According to him, behind this decision stands a principled intention to consistently counteract hate crimes in the digital environment. According to official statistics, 57 cases of online aggression against the Saxon premier were recorded in 2025, and in 2024 this figure stood at 53 cases, while the political affiliation of the comment authors is not tracked by the department.
The second part of the accusations against Torges concerned the leader of the AfD branch in Thuringia, Björn Höcke. In his posts, the accused mentioned a castle in the locality of Schnellroda, which is the official residence of Götz Kubitschek — a close associate of Höcke and one of the main ideologues of the German “New Right.” Closed lectures, seminars, and training camps for representatives of the right-wing extremist movement are regularly organized on the grounds of this estate.
Having reviewed the context, the judge recognized the use of the term “Nazi” against Höcke, as well as the federal leader of the AfD Tino Chrupalla and the mayor of Raguhn-Jeßnitz Hannes Loth, as a fully permissible expression of opinion. All the indicated politicians had previously turned to law enforcement agencies with applications demanding protection from such labels. The justification of the verdict states that these publications are directly linked to the plaintiffs’ party affiliation. The court noted that based on the systemic public speeches of AfD functionaries, citizens “may very well arrive at the conclusion that right-wing extremist tendencies exist within the party.” Objective confirmation of this thesis is also provided by the official decision of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which classified the AfD as an organization suspected of right-wing extremism.
Personal Convictions of AfD Politicians Regarding National Socialism are Not Decisive
An important legal aspect of the verdict was the court’s clarification that the personal convictions of specific AfD politicians do not play a decisive role when assessing the permissibility of criticism. Judge Poppen pointed out that the personal rights of Höcke, Chrupalla, and Loth carry less legal weight in this context than the “sufficiently justified interest” of a citizen. This interest lies in the public’s right to place contemporary political figures in the context of the Third Reich era, criticize them for radical rhetoric, and draw the attention of the general public to the risks that, in the author’s opinion, this ideology carries.
Regarding Björn Höcke, the court additionally took into account the fact that the politician already has an official criminal record for the intentional public use of a prohibited slogan of the NSDAP Sturmabteilung (SA). Judge Poppen, who possesses significant experience working in the central unit for combating cybercrime of the Osnabrück Prosecutor’s Office, emphasized that the question of whether Höcke considers himself a National Socialist in a purely personal sense is not a determining factor for classifying Torges’s statement.
At the same time, the judicial decision does not mean the complete decriminalization of any harsh attacks in the future. Gerhard Torges himself had previously received a warning from the judicial authorities for publications using crude historical analogies regarding AfD co-chair Alice Weidel, which resulted in a conditional monetary fine. Remarkably, Torges himself frequently resorts to legal protection mechanisms, filing reports against opponents when online discussions cross legal boundaries. Summarizing his position, the Osnabrück resident noted that he supports civilized dialogue, but the right to make oneself heard through a sharp opinion remains a fundamental pillar of the democratic order. The acquittal by the Osnabrück court confirms that a provocative form of criticism remains a legitimate tool of civic control over government institutions.
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