4
NIX v. GERMANY DECISION
every effort to make it difficult for adolescents to continue their education.
The applicant ended by stating that he would deal in a future blog post with
another sentence in the above-mentioned email from the employment office
offering remedial lessons, “if required”. Parts of the post were written in
vulgar and offensive language.
9. On 25 March 2014 the applicant wrote another post entitled “Does
[name of the staff member] offer personalised remedial lessons for my
daughter?”, in which he stated, inter alia, that he had the impression that the
staff member of the employment office was acting on the basis of racial
profiling and that a person’s origin was associated with doubts as to his or
her prospects of success, which he found shameful. He wrote two more
posts on 27 March 2014 and on 13 May 2014, in the latter referring to the
staff member as “slimy staff member” (“schleimender Mitarbeiter”).
10. While all six posts have in common that they start with different
pictures under the respective heading, only the third post featured Nazi
symbols (see paragraph 7 above). None of the blog posts contained a clearly
visible link to the other five posts. The applicant did not state in any of the
six posts that his daughter was of German-Nepalese origin and that he was
receiving social welfare benefits.
11. Shortly before the events in question, various German media
reported on complaints made by parents who received social welfare
benefits that their children were unduly pushed towards vocational training
by the employment offices and that children with a migrant background
were discriminated against in school and by employment offices.
12. In a letter of 17 December 2014 the Federal Commissioner for Data
Protection and Freedom of Information informed the applicant’s daughter
that the employment office’s request regarding the submission of her latest
school report had been unlawful, given that her father had submitted to the
employment office a certificate of her enrolment in the school, that the
completion of her schooling was not imminent and that the employment
office had not substantiated any suspicion that she would not complete her
schooling.
2. The proceedings at issue
13. On 21 October 2014 the Munich prosecution authorities instituted
criminal proceedings against the applicant, charging him with the offence of
using symbols of unconstitutional organisations in his third blog post of
23 March 2014 (see paragraphs 7 and 8 above). The indictment also
contained the information that the Munich District Court convicted the
applicant, on 10 February 2014, of, inter alia, using symbols of
unconstitutional organisations for having published a picture of
Angela Merkel in Nazi uniform with a swastika armband and a painted
Hitler-moustache. That conviction had not yet become final at the time of
the indictment.