The Higher Regional Court in Braunschweig received a judgment from Göttingen and made it clear: Posting a swastika on Facebook is always punishable, the context is irrelevant. The aim is to ban the license plates from public life.
According to a judgement, a swastika in a Facebook post is also punishable if it does not express support for the Nazi ideology overall. The ban on the signs of unconstitutional organizations is intended to ban them from political life, the Higher Regional Court (OLG) Braunschweig emphasized in a judgment.
The accused had posted a sample of an “EU health passport” with a negative corona test on her private Facebook account. Next to it she placed the image of a health card from the Nazi era, provided with a swastika. She wrote: "History repeats itself, the script is getting cheaper and cheaper."
The district court of Göttingen acquitted the woman of the accusation of using symbols of unconstitutional organizations. This is only punishable if identification with the goals of National Socialism is expressed. This is not the case here, the focus is on the criticism of health policy.
The Higher Regional Court of Braunschweig reversed this judgment and referred the dispute back to the Regional Court of Göttingen for further clarification. As justification, the Higher Regional Court referred to the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court on the prohibition of the signs of unconstitutional organizations. According to this, the penal norm aims to "banish the indicator from political life and make it taboo".
The judges in Braunschweig emphasized that impunity is generally not compatible with this. The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe only assumed impunity if a crossed-out or destroyed number plate was used to make clear a distancing. Such distancing cannot be inferred from the Facebook post.
