display
Karlsruhe (AP) - The artist Wolfram Kastner has to pay the descendants of the Nazi war criminal Alfred Jodl around 4,000 euros because of the damage to the family grave.
He had sued against his conviction by the Munich civil courts in Karlsruhe, but the Federal Constitutional Court did not accept his complaint for decision.
The Munich judgments did not violate Kastner's "right to freedom of artistic activity," according to the decision published on Friday.
(Az. 1 BvR 160/19)
As a former Wehrmacht general, Jodl was sentenced to death and executed after the Second World War.
There has been a dispute over the family grave on Fraueninsel in the Chiemsee for years.
Jodl himself is not buried there.
However, the name, rank and life dates are written on the grave inscription on a stone cross.
Kastner protested against it with several actions in 2015 and 2016.
Once he stuck a sign reading "No honor to the war criminal" to the cross, and once he broke a letter out of the name.
Twice he painted the cross with red paint.
Following a lawsuit by the family, the courts in Munich had sentenced him to pay the repair and cleaning costs.
display
Rightly so, decided the constitutional judges.
Kastner had repeatedly damaged the substance of the gravestone and did not explain convincingly why this "would have been necessary for its artistic expression".
There are other options.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210514-99-597553 / 3
Decision of March 30th
General information on constitutional complaints