It seems as if it's all about provocation, once again. After the AfD has announced in several federal states to proceed with digital reporting platforms against AfD-critical teachers, sets up a member of parliament in Baden-Württemberg.
In Stuttgart, AfD politician Stefan Räpple released two portals on Thursday, where students should report their teachers and students to their professors. And: Räpple announced that he would even publish the names of teachers or professors. "These are public persons with sovereign tasks," he told the news agency dpa.
There would have to be evidence, such as teaching materials or exams where the questions were aimed at depicting the AfD negatively, said Räpple. On his portals, he calls students to upload files, "screenshots, audio, etc.". The form has the polemical headline "My teacher hetz!", Or "My Prof. hetzt".
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CommentHow the AfD teachers put pressure
The planned or - as in Hamburg - already released platforms triggered violent outrage. Federal Minister of Justice Katarina Barley, in addition to the President of the Conference of Ministers of Education, Helmut Holter, and other politicians, sharply criticized the procedure. "Organized denunciation is a means of dictatorship," she told the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung."
AfD Vice-President Georg Pazderski said, however, that the online portals are "absolutely necessary" because in many schools of teachers only a "one-sided left-green world view" spread and tolerated.
The Ministers of Education want to position themselves against the AfD portals at their meeting in Berlin, which will last until Friday. Holter said the countries were considering legal action. A ban on the reporting portals was legally difficult.
In theory, the AfD makes itself legally vulnerable to such portals, especially if it aims at a publication of submissions. This also applies to students who participate there. "It is the duty of pupils to respect the personal rights of all people united in school life," said Alexander Münch, an expert on school law in Hamburg, SPIEGEL.
If a pupil contributes to the name of a teacher being published on the net without his consent, this could justify the adoption of a regulatory measure. These include, for example, a written reference, exclusion or even dismissal from school. "It is also conceivable the fulfillment of the offenses of insult, the slander and slander," said Münch.
In addition, students are not allowed to secretly film or otherwise record their teachers' lessons because they also violate their personal rights and may be punishable under certain circumstances.
Goal: To intimidate teachers
However, the platforms are considered legally problematic even if the reports received there are not published. The Hamburg AfD had announced, for example, alleged or genuine violations of the neutrality requirement to the school board forward. "Such systematic data collection, in which the parties have not consented, but is not allowed under the new General Data Protection Regulation," said the Cologne lawyer Christian Birnbaum the SPIEGEL.
However, it is tedious and sometimes expensive to act against the actions of the AfD. For example, anyone wishing to obtain an injunction against the collection of personal data or publishing it, or even to sue for compensation, bears the full burden of proof and must first hire a lawyer at his own expense, says Birnbaum.
His advice: "I would try as a teacher to live with it, if anything appears on any website." In spite of the principle of neutrality, teachers are free to express an opinion, even to their students, as long as they do not impose any opinions on them. And actually it is the AfD's primary goal: to intimidate teachers.