The public prosecutor's office in Hamburg is not pursuing an investigation initiated by interior senator Andy Grote (SPD) into allegations of hate speech on the Internet. The public prosecutor's office in Hamburg announced on Saturday that the investigation had already been discontinued in March due to a lack of public interest in criminal prosecution. The "Hamburger Abendblatt" had previously reported.
The controversy, which has become known as "Pimmelgate," originated in a tweet directed to Grote back in May 2021 that read, "You're such a dick." It came in response to a tweet from Grote, in which he described people as "ignorant" who had celebrated in the Schanzenviertel despite Corona. At the beginning of the pandemic, Grote himself had celebrated his renewed appointment as Senator for the Interior in violation of the Corona rules in a pub and had to pay a fine for it.
The interior senator felt offended by the choice of words and filed a criminal complaint, whereupon the apartment of the alleged author was searched in September. Thousands of people criticized the action online under the hashtag "Pimmelgate" as completely disproportionate and exaggerated. The incident boiled over and even the Washington Post reported on the matter.
For a few days, the police and left-wing activists around the Rote Flora center engaged in a picturesque exchange of blows, the corresponding slogan was repeatedly painted on a poster and then painted over by the officials as quickly as possible - but at some point this spectacle also came to an end. In addition, strangers distributed around 40 yellow stickers with the slogan "Andy, you're such a dick" around the senator's apartment in St. Pauli. The police also removed them, on the one hand, to avert danger, since there was a suspicion of insult, and on the other hand to preserve evidence, the police said. The police state protection determined in the matter against unknown.
