Justus Leicht 31 January 2023
“..It is incomprehensible to me that German politicians are again supporting the same Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German [Nazi] Reich found willing helpers in 1941, with whom they closely cooperated and jointly carried out murder…”.
The Berlin-Tiergarten District Court sentenced peace activist Heinrich Bücker in January for speaking out in public against Germany’s war policy in Ukraine. The verdict is a massive attack on the basic democratic rights of freedom of speech and assembly. It is reminiscent of the persecution of anti-militarists in the Weimar Republic who—like Carl von Ossietzky—opposed the rearmament of the Reichswehr (armed forces).
Bücker is a member of the Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime–League of Anti-Fascists (VVN-BdA) and the Left Party. He runs the COOP Anti-War Café in Berlin, where anti-militarist events are held regularly.
On June 22, 2022, he gave a speech at the Soviet Memorial in Berlin’s Treptow Park on the 81st anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, in which he condemned the cooperation of German politicians with former Nazi collaborators in Ukraine and expressed understanding for the views of the Russian president.
As a result, the judge at the local court, Tobias Pollmann, sentenced Bücker to a fine of €2,000, or 40 days imprisonment.
çHis criminal offence under Section 140 of the Criminal Code had consisted of “publicly approving a crime of aggression (Section 13 of the International Criminal Code) in a manner likely to disturb the public peace at a meeting.”
The verdict was issued as a summary penalty order, which does not provide for an oral hearing of the defendant and examination of witnesses. The defendant can appeal within two weeks of the issuance of the penalty order, which Bücker reportedly did. If he had not done so, the penalty order is considered a final judgment, and appeals against it are then no longer possible.
The penalty order states that Bücker, in his speech, approved “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in violation of international law, the illegality of which you knew.” To prove this, a longer paragraph from the speech is quoted, the entire wording of which is documented here (in German).
In the quoted paragraph, Bücker opposes cooperation with far-right forces in Ukraine:
It is incomprehensible to me that German politicians are again supporting the same Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German [Nazi] Reich found willing helpers in 1941, with whom they closely cooperated and jointly carried out murder. All decent Germans should reject any cooperation with these forces in Ukraine against the background of German history, the history of millions of murdered Jews and millions and millions of murdered Soviet citizens in World War II. We must also vehemently reject the war rhetoric emanating from these forces in Ukraine. Never again must we as Germans be involved in any form of war against Russia. We must unite and oppose this madness together.
In this context, he called for understanding for the Russian point of view:
We must openly and honestly try to understand the Russian reasons for the special military operation in Ukraine and why the vast majority of people in Russia support their government and their president in it. Personally, I very much want to and can understand the view in Russia and that of Russian President Vladimir Putin. I have no distrust of Russia, because the renunciation of revenge against Germans and Germany determined Soviet and then also Russian policy since 1945.
How and why Bücker thus “agrees” to the invasion of Russia, the Berlin District Court did not elaborate with a single syllable. The request to understand and comprehend the reasons for something is quite different from consent.
Otherwise, the work of psychiatric evaluators would be as impossible as that of historians, sociologists, mediators or even police investigators. Any effort to understand the actions of others would be deemed complicity.
Because Section 140 of the Criminal Code severely impinges upon the fundamental right to freedom of expression under Article 5 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has set high standards in its case law.
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