Talk:Censorship in the Federal Republic of Germany

"Streitbare Demokratie"
is the translation of the expression "militant democracy," which was brought into post-war discussions by Karl Mannheim's "Diagnosis of Our Times," which he had published during the war in exile in England. Mannheim was a prominent intellectual figure in the Weimar period. He died in early 1947, but it seems likely that his term was valued because of its politically impeccable credentials, especially as the doctrine was increasingly applied to suppression of Leftist media and organizations. This aspect of the BRD "censorship" policy (in the wider sense of exclusions on political grounds) is sorely neglected in this article.

Banning anything ...
Banning anything does not stop it's use. Trying to stop people from having private opinions is as bad as anything that happened in the 3rd Reich. The Swastika is a symbol. In modern times it represents the events 1933-45 but it is an ancient symbol of good and must not be tainted by paranoia and hysteria. So, it's used by the neo-nazis - big deal, they are a tiny minority who are unlikely ever to gain the slightest political power and if they wish to wrap themselves in nazi flags - who cares. As for the holocaust, the words "Arbeit macht Frei" are a whole lot more chilling than the sight of the swastika.

There is a large number of people - most of whom where not even born during the war - who have a vested interest in constant protest. and who profess outrage at this or that, purely to keep their names in the public eye (and presumably make a little money on the side). As an example, see the hysterical reaction to anything that David Irving says or writes and which inevitably focuses attention on his works (all of which I've read). The past is immutable, ignoring it, sanitizing it or banning it is dangerous.

Excerpt from Wikepedia = "On the other hand, millions of people of Indian origin live in the West, e.g. including over 2 million Indian-Americans in the United States, and Jain, Hindu and other Indian religions, festivals, marriages and ceremonies continue to use the swastika as their main religious and cultural symbol". Therefore banning one of their religious symbols is clearly racial prejudice ...

The message to Germany is - it all happened - deal with it and move on.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chastity99 (talk • contribs) 15:18, 7 June 2007


 * We don't judge politics in wikipedia. We only state the known facts. As far as I know no Hindu has complained that he could not have his swastika in Germany. There is only a ban on the swastika as a political symbol else it is quite evidently in use. Wandalstouring (talk) 14:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
 * "Trying to stop people from having private opinions is as bad as anything that happened in the 3rd Reich." Um, do you think hate speech laws are as bad as the mass murder of millions? Also, there are two versions of the swastika. Only one is nazi-connected. I also disagree on that "Work Makes You Free" is more chilling than the swastika, as one was the symbol of the nazi regime while the other was a pseudo-motto of concentration camps. I'm a little confused here. Who are these people? Why are you making assumptions and attacking people's motives instead of refuting them? The Holocaust is not sanitised in Germany and the Nazi regime is extensively taught about in schools. The "hysterical response" to historical fiction writer David Irving is because he uses his academic credentials and minor historical background to peddle Holocaust denial. Anyways, why is this even here??? The page explicitly states "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Censorship in the Federal Republic of Germany article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject." No matter your opinion, it's totally irrelevant. Ardenter (talk) 08:46, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

What does the National Democratic Party of Germany have to do with cencorship?
What does the attempted prohibition of the National Democratic Party of Germany have to do with censorship? The party was seen to be anti-constitutional as their main goal is to abolish the current state.

So, how does this relate to the article? What am I missing? I propose a removal.. -- Johnny w  talk  12:02, 28 June 2007 (UTC)


 * "Censorship is defined as the removal and/or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body" - censorship
 * Because the party is illegal, distributing information promoting the group's membership and goals is also illegal. I think the link is quite clear from there. - Revolving Bugbear  (formerly Che Nuevara) 15:03, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The party isn't illegal (it was an attempt at prohibiting the party). But I get your point. Nevertheless, the legal process was initiated not because of the right wing or fascist background of parts of the NPD, but their alleged intents to incite a violent revolt against the state. This was due to several assaults, a bombing incident etc. in the months prior. To cite a dossier of the German newspaper Die Welt that describes the main views of the Verfassungsschutz: "Dabei geht es um Belege für zwei Kernthesen. Erstens, dass die NPD in ,,aggressiv-kämpferischer Weise" gegen den Staat vorgeht. Und zweitens, dass die NPD in direkter Form Funktionäre und Mitglieder anweist, Straf- und Gewalttaten zu begehen." which translates to "It is about proof for two central hypothesis. First of all, that the NPD acts in 'an aggressive-militant way' against the state. And secondly, that the NPD directly instructs members and functionaries to commit acts of violence and crime." Johnny w   talk  21:03, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Er, yes, that was a dumb typo / oversight on my part ... I meant to say "If a party is illegal ..." You are, of course, correct that the party is not illegal.
 * However, whatever evidential theatrics were played out before the court, the movement (if not the actual legal arguments) to ban the NPD revolve around the claim that they are a National Socialist party. See the quote from Otto Schily, Minister of the Interior: "on the basis of recognizable circumstances, it is to be expected that National Socialist tyranny or despotic rule will be glorified or downplayed" (which is of course a crime pursuant to StgB S130). (Unfortunately, I don't have that source in Germany.) The objection to this party is related to the banning of National Socialism and thus related to its censorship.
 * If, however, you feel that it would be better outside the National Socialism section, giving it its own 3-level header would be alright with me. In any case, an attempt to ban a political platform is an attempt at censorship, whether or not it's tied to Nazism. - Revolving Bugbear  (formerly Che Nuevara) 21:42, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Confusing Sentence
The opening sentence of the Constitution and the Index of Harmful Materials section reads: 'In May of 1949, the German Grundgesetz, the new constitution, was passed and control of West Germany passed officially into German hands.'. East and west Germany reformed in 1990. If anyone knows what this is supposed to mean, please clarify it. --142.68.189.28 (talk) 04:06, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Communists
Several publications by communist parties, especially by the unlawful KPD, are also censored. Should be mentioned together with other party publications, e.g. by the NPD.--Beliar (talk) 22:17, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Internet freedom?!
Maybe it's worth noting that Germans are forced by law under severe penalty to publicly disclose their real names and addresses on websites and blogs ("Impressumspflicht"). There were/are(?) plans to force forum users too to do the same. This already has a severe chilling effect, writing about topics like illness, homosexuality, or for example the story of recovering from suicidal thoughts and finding new life goals (which could potentially save others from attempting suicide!) can expose someone to negative consequences in the future, including violence. (Contrary what the police says, beatings or death threats by small neo-nazi groups are still rather common in some areas, I personally was almost beaten by a group of skinheads in Munich directly after talking by phone in a foreign language... In fact, racism and extremism are somewhat popular even among German cops... Google for Oury Jalloh if you want an example...)

But even people not wanting to talk about "hot" topics think twice before making a website, because in Germany it's extremely easy to force someone into cash settlements ("Abmahnung") even for hilariously small and totally harmless missteps, and many lawyers are specialized to do exactly this on a mass scale to extract money with little work. This is made even more easier by the formerly mentioned Impressumspflicht. Ignoring such a demand can have severe consequences, and the deadline is usually very short (a few days), so people often pay up automatically, without asking a lawyer first. One must also sign a cease-and-desist agreement ("Unterlassungserklärung"), which is also formulated so that the target must agree to pay an additional penalty (tens of thousands of Euros) if anything similar happens in the future. See the article on VirtualDub for a perfect example (it's quite vaguely mentioned as sending cease-and-desist letters, in fact they demanded money the way described here - read the linked articles too). They usually demand 2-4 thousand Euros as legal fees+compensation, but it can range from a few hundred (as in the VD case) to tens of thousands Euros.

Web2.0? Forget it, unless you can pre-verify everything your users post, or if you have deep pockets and good lawyers, because you will be liable for any user-added content - even if you removed it immediately after being informed about it. In the recent yeras, many small forums closed and sites and blogs removed the ability to comment articles or entries.

To see how serious these things get: a few months ago such a settlement-wave started against business Facebook users and fanpages because of the lacking the mentioned Impressum. Currently, there are concerns that even private profiles could be targeted (prudent people already post the Impressum, or if they don't want to disclose their addresses, delete their profile), and that other services where users put up content but posting the Impressum is not possible in the way described in the law might be illegal to use for Germans. Yes, there are draconian data-protection laws, you are prohibited to collect personal data, but users are forced to disclose the most sensitive one themselves. Funny, isn't is?

An additional, but in comparison rather small problem: just try to open a YouTube video link in Germany you received from a foreign friend... If it has a background music represented by the local royalty-collecting agency GEMA, you simply see a message that it's not available for viewing in Germany. This affects about one-third of the videos. At least, here you don't have to pay a sum twice your monthly income...

Foreign services are affected too, if they "target German users" (which is interpreted in a flexible way). For example, see the flickr controversy. Some foreign sites even ban users from German IP addresses altogether, to avoid possible legal problems and international lawsuits.

Free speech is boasted everywhere in Germany, but people think not twice, but at least five times before writing down anything. Is that freedom??? North Korea calls itself democratic too... The facts are somewhat different...

I think we can safely say that Internet freedom is de facto very limited in Germany - to say at least.

This should be definitely mentioned in the article - by someone with better English.

89.132.213.29 (talk) 10:17, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Needs to be merged with "Censorship in Germany"
... or change title to reflect the era to which this article applies. Having 2 articles that appear to be about the same subject is quite confusing. See Censorship in Germany; Peteruetz (talk) 17:45, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

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Religion
There was a sentence here that "Scientology is regarded unconstitutional". There are many organisations, including parts of a party represented in the federal parliament (AfD), whose activities are observed by Verfassungsschutz due to concerns that they are undermining constitutional values. Censorship would be suppressing legal information that these organisations try to share, there was no reference for this. Currently there is just a reference to the 2018 report of Verfassungsschutz. For this article I would say it would be important to have the information in which years Scientology was mentioned in these reports and to what kind of what could be seen as censorship this has led. At Censorship_in_Germany a case is mentioned in which a TV ad was prohibited due to German and EU laws forbidding to advertise a worldview or religion on TV. If this had a good source with a discussion on in how far this could be seen as censorship it would be valuable in my eyes. Coronawirrkopf (talk) 11:10, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Censorship of press reporting not in line with NATO or government guidelines
On 28 January 2023, an anonymous user changed the article's introduction to say that "press freedom is considerably restricted if the press reports news and articles which is not online [sic, probably means: in line] with NATO or German Government guidelines", giving this Politico article about the shutdown of Russia Today's German language TV channel as source:.

However, the article clearly states that RT DE was banned for its failure to obtain (or even apply for) a broadcasting license. TV and radio stations need to obtain a Sendezulassung to operate in Germany, which RT DE has never applied for and therefore does not own. They have a license in Serbia, but since RT DE explicitly targets the German audience, the European Convention on Transfrontier Television does not allow them to use their Serbian license in Germany. This LTO article summarizes the legal situation quite well:

The sources provided by the anonymous user do not justify their claim that RT DE (or any other station) was banned for not being in line with NATO's or the German government's political agenda. If no convincing counterarguments are provided, I will undo this edit. Hamilkar Trondersen (talk) 19:03, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

soldiers
Being a soldier also restricts your freedom of speech in Germany. You'd get punished by the state if you tell others that your superior is an asshole. This goes beyond mere defamation. Lastdingo (talk) 10:08, 28 September 2023 (UTC)