Hamburg’s Senator for the Interior, Grote, does not want to be called “dick” on Twitter and has therefore filed a criminal complaint. A house search later, #Pimmelgate is born and the Social Democrat is faced with a full blown shit storm.
[Hamburg -] He must have imagined it differently. When Hamburg’s Senator for the Interior, Andy Grote, filed a criminal complaint because of the tweet “You are 1 dick”, he saw himself as a role model in the fight against insults and agitation on the Internet.
But in fact, an unparalleled shit storm has broken down on him. #Pimmelgate took first place on Thursday within a few hours of Twitter’s own German trends – and almost all tweets did not save on scorn and ridicule about the “pecky” interior senator of the SPD. And the police and the public prosecutor’s office can listen to thousands of accusations of having acted completely disproportionately and excessively.
What happened? At the end of May, Grote himself tweeted with a view of the hustle and bustle of Hamburg’s party during the corona pandemic: “Ignorance celebrates in the Schanze! Some people can’t wait for us to all have to go back into lockdown … What a stupid action! “.
Ignorance celebrates in the #schanze! Some people can’t wait for us all to go back into lockdown … What a stupid move! Thank you @PolizeiHamburg, who once again turn their heads so that the pandemic doesn’t get out of hand. https://t.co/gmDz34P0oi
– Andy Grote (@AndyGrote) May 30, 2021
Even for this Grote had to take harsh criticism. After all, it was he himself who celebrated his own appointment as senator in June 2020 in disregard of the Corona rules in a pub and, according to media reports, ultimately had to pay a fine of 1000 euros for this.
One of the critics therefore told Grote via Twitter that “You’re so 1 dick”, whereupon the senator, according to the Hamburg public prosecutor, filed a criminal complaint – and the matter took its course. Around three months later, six police officers stormed a private apartment in the St. Pauli district on Wednesday at six o’clock in the morning, as the person concerned tweeted: “The search was for the device with which“ you are so 1 dick ”was written under a tweet by Andy Grote . You know there are two young children living in this household. Good morning Germany.”
There was a house search at 6:00 this morning. 6 officers in the apartment. We were looking for the device with which “you are so 1 dick” was written under a tweet from Andy Grote. You know there are two young children living in this household. Good morning Germany. pic.twitter.com/G9boAWl63s
– ZooStPauli (@pauli_zoo) September 8, 2021
The search decision of the Hamburg District Court requested by the public prosecutor’s office reads: “It can be assumed that the search will lead to the discovery of evidence (Sections 102, 105 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), in particular of storage media by means of which the message in question was sent . ”The problem: The operator of the account – Marlon P. – no longer lives in the apartment, as he says to the daily newspaper“ taz ”. His ex-girlfriend Mara K. opened it oversleptly. “A policewoman immediately rammed a foot into the gap and asked how many people were in the apartment,” she told the newspaper. Then they would have searched all the rooms.
From the point of view of Marlon P., this would not have been necessary at all. He had received a summons from the police three weeks earlier, which he followed. He admitted that he ran the “Zoo St. Pauli” account, from which the tweet was posted, he told the “taz”. “Zoo St. Pauli” belongs to the fan bar of the same name that Marlon P. and Mara K. run not far from the FC St. Pauli Stadium.
“It is inexplicable why such a serious intervention was possible, although the authorship of the tweet had already been clarified,” criticizes the left-wing interior expert Deniz Celik. The procedure corresponds to “what we are used to from the Hamburg police: authoritarian, harassing power politics at the expense of basic rights!” For the AfD, Grote simply makes himself ridiculous.
The police reject allegations of excess. Insults or hate speech in social media are fundamentally a great danger to peaceful coexistence and affect human dignity, says police spokesman Holger Vehren. The Internet is not a legal vacuum. Accordingly, ask the police to report any hate postings. A spokeswoman also points out: “This year alone, a mid-double-digit number of search warrants in this area of crime have been carried out.”
Many Twitter users do not think this is credible. Some refer to Renate Künast, a member of the Green Parliament, who was insulted in the worst possible way on the Internet without any searches ever taking place. TV presenter Ruth Moschner tweeted: “Wow. If that means saying “dick” now, you will be prosecuted more blatantly than sending “dick” as pictures. So far there has been no response to my criminal charges. ”Others, on the other hand, take a look at the election posters of the right-wing extremist III. Paths on which it says “Hang the Greens” and which, despite this obvious call for violence, are still not being removed in Saxony.
Nevertheless, Grote sees himself in the right. “The fact that the public prosecutor’s office initiated a search in this case is their autonomous decision, which no one can influence from outside.” But despite all the justification for even hard, verbal arguments, nobody needs to be insulted, not even on the Internet. Ultimately, everyone wanted everyone to be respectful of each other on the Internet.
Has he succeeded? In any case, he has increased his level of awareness significantly, even if not in the way the Senator of the Interior would like. Grote doesn’t want to be called Pimmel because he sees it as an insult, tweeted a user under the name Tim Hoesmann. “I didn’t know Grote before and now the hashtags #PimmelAndy and the #Pimmelgate are firmly anchored in my brain – was this the goal of the house search?”
