A German politician who once led the government’s IT security agency won a court victory against star comedian Jan Böhmermann’s TV programme over a segment that ridiculed him for alleged ties to Russia.
A court in Munich took issue with four specific statements Böhmermann made during a segment about Arne Schönbohm, the then-head of Germany’s Office for Information Security (BSI), in a 2022 episode of his widely watched satirical programme ZDF Magazin Royale.
But the court denied Schönbohm’s demand for €100,000 ($104,000) in monetary compensation from public broadcaster ZDF, instead only ordering the broadcaster to cease disseminating the claims.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser dismissed Schönbohm as BSI president in November 2022, only shortly after Böhmermann ridiculed him for supposedly being too close to a trade group that had alleged contacts to Russian intelligence services.
Schönbohm fought back against his dismissal, and he is now the president of the Federal Academy of Public Administration, an agency in the Interior Ministry which trains public administrators.
The Interior Ministry declined to comment on the verdict, but said that Schönbohm was removed from his post because of a “lack of trust” in his leadership caused by several different factors, and that Thursday’s verdict offered no reason to reconsider.
The court ruled that two statements made during the programme in particular could be “understood to mean that the plaintiff had deliberate contacts with Russian intelligence services,” which constituted “an untrue statement of fact that violated the plaintiff’s general right of personality.”
A satirical statement must also be measured against the standards of freedom of expression if it concerns the factual core of the statement, the court said.
A “generous standard should be applied, which, however, reaches its limit where the statement constitutes an untrue factual allegation that violates personal rights,” according to the court, which found that four of the five statements at issue in the case crossed that line.
In comments distributed by his lawyer, Markus Hennig, Schönbohm called for personnel consequences at ZDF.
“With completely unfounded accusations, Jan Böhmermann has destroyed my integrity and irreparably destroyed my career,” Schönbohm said in the statement, which also described the segment and its fallout as a “media execution.”
Hennig said he would consider appealing the decision not to award compensation, but nonetheless called the verdict a “great success” for his client.
Schönbohm’s primary goal with the lawsuit was to “expose the lying journalism,” Hennig said. He now expects “a public apology from the director” of ZDF.
ZDF said in a statement that the broadcaster “will carefully evaluate the reasons for the decision and decide on how to proceed on this basis.”
But the broadcaster again asserted that no allegations were made “directly or indirectly” during the programme that Schönbohm had deliberate contacts with Russian intelligence.
The ruling is not yet legally binding and may still be appealed.
