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Controversial German professor ‘hounded by commissars’

The University of Bremen's student union has the right to call Berlin Professor of History Jörg Baberowski a ‘right-wing radical’, according to a ruling by Cologne District Court, but not to take his controversial statements about refugees out of context.

A legal dispute had ensued over allegations following Baberowski's address at a political event in Bremen.

Baberowski, who teaches history at the Humboldt University of Berlin, has repeatedly roused controversy over his critical views on federal Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ‘welcome culture’ for refugees.

After the Bremen event, he was accused by the local student union of glorifying violence and playing down arson attacks on refugee hostels as a natural response by outraged citizens. The union also claimed that he advocated racism, confronted people with sheer hatred and represented right-wing radical positions.

Baberowski obtained an interim order against these claims at Cologne District Court forbidding the student union to uphold its claims. Plaintiffs are free to choose the place of jurisdiction for such orders, and Cologne’s Press Court has a reputation of readily issuing them.

The student union lodged an objection against the court’s action, which resulted in oral proceedings attended by the two sides of the dispute. The court retained its verdict on most counts, arguing that the student union had based its claims on statements by Baberowski that were taken out of context and had therefore violated his right of publicity.

For instance, the student union had quoted Baberowski claiming that it was “only natural for aggression to build up” wherever citizens had not been consulted on accommodating refugees but had failed to refer to his remark that “thank heavens no-one has been killed in Germany so far”.

The arson attacks were bad enough, Baberowski added in this context, but given Germany’s problems with immigration, “what we now have would rather appear to be harmless”. The court argues that the full quotation demonstrates that Baberowski condemns violence.

However, the court does concede that the student union may continue to claim that Baberowski holds “right-wing radical positions”, irrespective of whether this assessment is right or wrong. Here, the court argues, the student union can substantiate its claim with a statement that could be interpreted as an indication of Baberowski regarding the integration of refugees as a threat to Germany, even if this is not what he intends to express.

A one-time Maoist, Baberowski has been portrayed by some of the German media as the victim of a witch-hunt targeting outspoken academics. For instance, taz, a daily publication with Green Party leanings, claims under the heading “People’s commissars for science” that Bremen University student union representatives have rallied “Trotskyite support” for their battle against Baberowski.

Heike Schmoll of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s leading conservative newspaper, refers to the “creeping poison of character assassination”, maintaining that a small group of Trotskyites at Humboldt University are organising a campaign against Baberowski and other academics.

Switzerland’s Basler Zeitung, part of right-wing media mogul Christoph Blocher’s empire, asked Baberowski in 2015 whether people in east Germany, where tensions over refugees are running particularly high, felt that Merkel was lying to them when saying “We can do it”, referring to handling the refugee crisis.

“They feel they aren’t being told the truth because they can see every day that we can’t do it,” he replied. “They can see that problems are being hushed up and critics are being stigmatised. They’re familiar with that – it’s what the Communist bigwigs did. And that’s why they got so aggressive. They are using a language that doesn’t bother about political correctness. Ms Merkel ought to know this, but she’s out of touch with what’s happening.”

In the United States, Baberowski was praised for his outspokenness on immigrants and Merkel’s handling of the refugee crisis by alt-right platform Breitbart News.

An article he wrote for the Basler Zeitung in the wake of the December terrorist attack in Berlin, when a lorry charged into a Christmas market killing 14 people, heavily criticises the response by government officials to the tragedy.

Expressing his outrage over the “arrogance and conceit of MPs proclaiming on a day like this that it is level-headedness that counts and that the citizens’ first duty is to shut up”, he noted with regard to the refugees that “if law and order were the yardstick of government action, most of the men who entered the country would not have been allowed to stay here in the first place”.

Baberowski said it was vital to utter the truth and “break the silence so that people can free themselves from political correctness and self-imposed immaturity”.

Michael Gardner Email: michael.gardner@uw-news.com