Court ruling on “Inner City Death”: Freedom of Art weighs more heavily
This means that the novel remains freely available for sale. However, an immediate appeal can still be lodged against this decision. It remains unclear whether the plaintiffs will do so.
The case has been a major focus of the feature pages in recent days. One of the characters in the novel is the fictional gallery owner Konrad Raspe, against whom MeToo allegations are made in the book.
According to observers of the trial, the court assumes that Johann and Lena König are recognizable to at least some of the readership due to the similarities between them and the fictional characters Konrad and Eva-Kristin Raspe. However, according to the Hamburg lawyers, this alone is not enough to assume a violation of personal rights. The court had to weigh up the applicants' personal rights against the constitutionally protected freedom of art. The decision was in favor of freedom of art.
The reason behind the decision is that the novel draws on real-life models but then uses them as the basis for a fictional portrayal of particular social problems.
In fact, Konrad Raspe is just one character among many in the novel. Conceptually more important is that Christoph Peters brings together the characters and partly the plot from Wolfgang Koeppen's novel "Death in Rome" with present-day Berlin. There is the figure of an ageing AfD functionary who mourns Prussia's classicism. Christoph Peters convincingly touches on neo-right narratives.
A ban on the novel would have had serious consequences for the writing of current political novels in general. Any allusion to real backgrounds could have resulted in ban proceedings by people who felt they had been portrayed in an unfavorable light. In this respect, the court's decision is very welcome.
taz
