German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has reportedly filed hundreds of criminal complaints against members of the public for insulting him during his tenure as a politician. Die Welt’s Sunday paper reported that during his time as a member of parliament, Merz filed criminal complaints against citizens for calling him names such as “little Nazi”, “asshole,” and “filthy drunk”, among others. The paper said that documents from a law firm commissioned by Merz to file such complaints revealed that the “little Nazi” and “filthy drunken” comments resulted in police searches, with the later ultimately being found to have been an unlawful search. In the “little Nazi” case, police seized the phone of an elderly and physically disabled woman, who is bound to a wheelchair. The paper noted that by doing so, police hindered her ability to communicate with her doctors.
Merz is said to have partnered with the internet monitoring agency ‘So Done:’, a firm founded by a former Free Democrat politician Alex Brockmeier. The agency is said to monitor social media sites for so-called hate speech free of charge for political figures in Germany in exchange for recouping 50 per cent of any fines levied against members of the public. In total, Welt reported that there were 4,999 individual cases collected by the law firm.
