Art freedom in Thuringia: Police accuse Poetry Slammer of “denigrating the state”.

Damien Arnold will appear on September 7th as one of three poetry slammers at “Gutes für Gera”. After he has finished his program, he wants to rush to the train with another artist - his last connection to Erfurt is leaving soon.

But then he is intercepted by the police. They question him about his texts and look through his notebook. Officials explain that there is suspicion that he denigrated the national anthem. They take down Arnold's personal details and he has to describe his version of the story several times.

Meanwhile, participants in the event also noticed that one of the artists was being held. As he has to give his personal details, the crowd shouts: “You are not alone.” The next day, Die Linke asked the Thuringian state parliament about the issue.

Arnold believes that the whole thing was over: “I really thought the whole thing was just to intimidate,” he says. Nine days later he received mail from the Thuringian police. In the letter she accuses him of denigrating the state. This carries a fine or up to three years in prison. “So far I haven’t been able to understand the entire authoritarian development of the Federal Republic directly,” says Arnold. “Now I was prosecuted for a poetry slam text.”

The organizers of “Good things for Gera” are also shocked by the police’s behavior and would like to file a supervisory complaint. The “Good for Gera” Monday rally was created as a counter-event to the right-wing and conspiracy ideological Monday demonstrations in Gera that have been taking place regularly since December 2021. At the 109th rally, Damien Arnold read the following text:

"Unity and justice and unity for the German rogue state, which has never done anything wrong in the world since its founding. Genocides, Hartz 4 and Frontex, weapons in the back. Broil in the light and perish, oh, you German fatherland."

Could the artist really have committed a criminal offense with these lines? “In my view, it is a political expression of opinion that cannot be prosecuted,” says Christoph Möllers. The professor of constitutional law at the Humboldt University in Berlin has dealt a lot with artistic freedom. His assessment: “Nothing happens there: no calls for violence, no insults.”

This is not necessary for the crime that Arnold is accused of. But to restrict the basic right to freedom of art or freedom of expression, yes. According to Möllers, the denigration of the state is “a strange law that is unconstitutional.” But at least it must be interpreted in the spirit of freedom of expression, i.e. cautiously. An exception would be if the artist had called for violence or insulted someone. That didn't happen, and anyway: you can only insult people, not the state.

“The state is not entitled to any protection of honor based on fundamental rights,” the Federal Constitutional Court also declared in a decision. According to Karlsruhe, state institutions should definitely be protected from verbal attacks.

Marcus Schladebach, professor of media law at the University of Potsdam, speaks of a “quasi-honor” that the state has and is therefore “quite capable of being insulted”. Arnold's case reminds him of the case of Jan Böhmermann, who took on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in his infamous poem. It was about artistic freedom, the distinction between abusive criticism and satire, when a statement still falls under freedom of expression and when it is an insult.

In this case, the media lawyer highlights two words that could cross the line from opinion to insult: “rogue state” and “genocide”. “The terms go too far.” He explains why: “You have to take the context into account.”

The term rogue state emerged in the USA in the 1990s to refer to countries that disrupt international peace. The US placed countries on this list that it accused of terrorism. These included Iraq and Libya, among others. The artist puts Germany on the same level as them. The term genocide, in turn, is a term from international law. “Genocide is more of a factual term here; the artist doesn’t provide enough context for a value judgment,” says the legal scholar. But that is merely his own legal assessment, emphasizes Schladebach.

It is unclear how a court would evaluate the case. As of now, Arnold is supposed to make a written statement. “I hope that the prosecution will drop the matter because it is unimportant,” he says. In the past, courts have been reprimanded by the Federal Constitutional Court when applying the section on defamation of the state because freedom of expression was not sufficiently taken into account.