The Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB) may continue to distribute a study entitled "Parliamentary Practice of the AfD in German State Parliaments" without restrictions. The AfD faction in the Thuringian state parliament has failed with the attempt to enforce a ban on publishing the text in front of the Berlin district court (the study can be downloaded here as a PDF file).
In the so-called "Discussion Paper", the authors explore the strategies and working methods of ten AFD parliamentary groups between 2014 and 2017. "A parliamentary professionalization is still very much in the beginning," it says in the investigation. "The parliamentary plenary session is (...) the backbone of the AfD and serves as a platform for the public media presentation on social media."
These are obviously assessments that the right-wing populists would like to have cashed. The AfD had the Berlin researchers, among other things, unscientific, tendentious interpretations and falsified statements accused.
The Berlin district court does not share this view and accuses the party for its part of a false representation: "The summary of the plaintiff is the remarks in the 'Discussion Paper' distorted again," it says in the judgment on a passage in the brief of the AFD.
On an alleged, quoted by the AfD excerpt from the study, the judges note: The WZB had "this statement neither made nor is the impression awakened." The whole action against the study, according to the judges, should therefore be dismissed (file reference: 27 0 207/18). Also, unlike allegations, the personal rights of the group would not be violated at any point.
"The first attempt by the AfD to take legal action against the work of a scientific institution has failed," said Jutta Allmendinger, President of the Science Center, the verdict. The court has confirmed that the study "is a scientific work based on the freedom of scholarship and freedom of expression". With the decision the backbone of science was strengthened.