FIFTH SECTION

Application no. 43481/09
by PETA DEUTSCHLAND
against Germany
lodged on 12 August 2009

STATEMENT OF FACTS

THE FACTS

The applicant, PETA Deutschland, is a private association registered in Hamburg. It is represented before the Court by Mr K. Leondarakis, a lawyer practising in Göttingen.

A. The circumstances of the case

The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.

B. Background to the case

The applicant association is the German branch of the animal rights organisation PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). It pursues, inter alia, the aims of preventing animal suffering and of encouraging the public to abstain from using animal products.

In March 2004 the applicant association planned to start an advertising campaign under the head “The Holocaust on your plate”. The intended campaign, which had been carried out in a similar way in the United States of America, consisted of a number of posters, each of which bore a photograph of concentration camp inmates along with a picture of animals kept in mass stocks, accompanied by a short text. One of the posters showed a photograph of emaciated, naked concentration camp inmates alongside a photograph of starving cattle under the heading “walking skeletons”. Other posters showed a photograph of piled up human dead bodies alongside a photograph of a pile of slaughtered pigs under the heading “final humiliation” and of rows of inmates lying on stock beds alongside rows of chicken in laying batteries under the heading “if animals are concerned, everybody becomes a Nazi”. Another poster depicting a starving, naked male inmate alongside a starving cattle bore the title “The Holocaust on your plate” and the text “Between 1938 and 1945 12 million human beings were killed in the Holocaust. As many animals are killed every hour in Europe for the purpose of human consumption”.

In March 2004 three individual persons, P.S., C.K. and S.K., filed a request with the Berlin Regional Court to be granted an injunction ordering the applicant association to desist from publishing or from allowing the publication of seven specified posters via the internet, in a public exhibition or in any other form. The plaintiffs were at the time the president and the two vice-presidents of the Central Jewish Council in Germany. All of them had survived the Holocaust when they were children; C.K. lost her family through the Holocaust. They submitted that the intended campaign was offensive and violated their human dignity as well as the personality rights of C.K.’s dead family members.

On 18 March 2004 the Berlin Regional Court granted the injunction. By judgment of 22 April 2004 that same court confirmed the interim injunction. The court considered that the plaintiffs had a claim to be granted injunctive relief under section 823 §§ 1 and 2 in conjunction with section 1004 of the Civil Code, sections 185 et seq. of the Criminal Code and Article 1 § 1 and 2 of the German Basic Law (see relevant domestic law, below). According to the Regional Court, the plaintiffs were concerned by the impugned statements in their capacity as former victims of the Holocaust.

The Regional Court further considered that the impugned representations constituted expressions of opinion and where thus protected under Article 5 of the Basic Law. This right protected expressions of opinion even if they were formulated in a polemic or offensive way. The depictions were particularly disturbing and drew a high degree of media attention because the pictures combined on the posters showed seemingly similar situations, which could only be discerned by the fact that one side showed coloured photographs of animals and the other black-and-white photos of humans, both alive and dead. Seen from the point of view of an ordinary spectator, the impugned posters had to be interpreted as putting the fate of the depicted animals and of the depicted humans on the same level.

There was no indication that the applicant association’s primary aim was to debase the victims of the Holocaust, as the posters obviously intended to criticise the conditions under which animals were kept and to encourage the spectator to reflect upon these conditions. It followed that the expression of opinion related to questions of public interest and would thus generally enjoy a higher degree of protection when weighing the competing interests. However, in the instant case it had to be taken into account that concentration camp inmates and Holocaust victims had been put on the same level as animals. In the light of the image of man conveyed by the Basic Law, which put the human dignity in its centre and only marginally referred to the protection of animals, this comparison appeared arbitrary because the Holocaust victims were confronted with their suffering and their fate of prosecution in the interest of animal protection. The debasement of concentration camp inmates was thus exploited in order to militate for better accommodations of laying hens and other animals.

The Regional Court finally considered that the decision of the instant case did not depend on a weighing of competing interests, as the expression of opinion violated the plaintiffs’ human dignity. As a consequence, the right to freedom of expression had to cede. The comparison offended the plaintiffs in their capacity as Holocaust victims by violating the respect for their human dignity. This violation was aggravated by the fact that the depicted persons were shown in