LANZERATH v. GERMANY

ECLIECLI:CE:ECHR:2022:0705DEC000185422
CounselMEYERS C.
Date05 July 2022
Application Number1854/22
CourtThird Section Committee (European Court of Human Rights)
Respondent StateGermany
Applied Rules10;10-2;35

THIRD SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 1854/22
Rainer Edmund Maria LANZERATH
against Germany

The European Court of Human Rights (Third Section), sitting on 5 July 2022 as a Committee composed of:

Georgios A. Serghides, President,
Anja Seibert-Fohr,
Peeter Roosma, judges,
and Olga Chernishova, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 1854/22) against the Federal Republic of Germany lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 30 December 2021 by a German national, Mr Rainer Edmund Maria Lanzerath, who was born in 1959 and lives in Rheinbach (“the applicant”) and was represented by Mr C. Meyers, a lawyer practising in Cologne;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1. The present case concerns the applicant’s complaints under Article 10 of the Convention about his criminal conviction for comparing the treatment of the right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.

2. The applicant is a member of the AfD, which was founded in 2013. On 30 June 2018 he participated in a demonstration at the venue of the AfD party conference in Augsburg where he held up a home-made banner with the title “Hate campaigns in Germany”. The left side of the poster depicted a Judenstern (a yellow Star of David with the inscription “Jew” as used in Nazi Germany to identify Jews) with the caption “1933 to 1945”. The right side of the poster depicted the AfD party logo with the caption “2013 to ?”. At an unknown date shortly before 22 April 2017 the applicant had already posted an image identical to the...

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