In connection with threats against the doctor Lisa-Maria Kellermayr, suspects are apparently being investigated in Germany.

The Munich II public prosecutor's office confirmed on Wednesday that a man from Upper Bavaria was being investigated on suspicion of insult and threats.

The authorities did not provide information on the man's age or whether he was accused of writing torture and death threats.

According to media reports, a suspect has also been reported to the public prosecutor's office in Berlin.

Stephen Lowenstein

Political correspondent based in Vienna.

  • Follow I follow

Karen Truscheit

Editor in the “Germany and the World” department.

  • Follow I follow

The body of the doctor, who was found dead in her practice on July 29, was autopsied at the request of the relatives, as the Wels public prosecutor announced on Wednesday.

A spokesman said nothing had changed about the "suspicion" of suicide.

According to the preliminary autopsy results, no external influence was found.

The toxicological results are still pending.

Brutal fantasies of violence and death threats

The 36-year-old doctor had closed her practice in Seewalchen, Upper Austria, a few weeks before her death.

The reason she gave was the countless threats that had been made via social media because of her public commitment to corona vaccinations and other measures against the pandemic - including brutal fantasies of violence and death threats against herself and the people in her practice.

According to her, the police had told her that she could not do anything promising against anonymous perpetrators on the Internet and could not provide permanent personal protection.

The media, on the other hand, reported easy-to-find traces, such as a neo-Nazi known to the police in the Berlin area and a person in Upper Bavaria.

Kellermayr hired a private company to protect the practice,

of her employees and patients, which she claims cost more than 100,000 euros and thus ruined her economy.

She commented on all of this regularly on Twitter and in interviews.

On Monday evening, thousands of people gathered in Vienna, Wels, the Upper Austrian state capital Linz and other cities to commemorate them.

Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen laid flowers in Seewalchen, the Medical Association called for participation in the "sign of solidarity and against violence and hatred".

The medical association and the police have been criticized in recent days for not providing sufficient support for Kellermayr.

For example, a spokesman for the Upper Austrian police had alleged on ORF radio at the end of June that the doctor had pushed herself into the public eye and wanted to promote "the media's own advancement" with a very dramatic presentation of her case.

The medical association also advised her to hold back in public.

Many people who publicly advocate vaccinations and corona measures are exposed to hate messages and death threats sent via the Internet by anonymous opponents of vaccination.

The German-born Innsbruck virologist Dorothee von Laer, who has often been interviewed in the past two and a half years, reported on Wednesday on ORF radio, for example.

As a result, she suffered burnout.

"It also weighed heavily on me, especially because some of these hate emails were really hurtful.

I then learned to express myself a little more cautiously, to always present it as my subjective opinion.

As a result, I was perhaps no longer such a point of attack. ”At times she only went out on the street with a wig.

Most threats came via email.

The medical association said it had set up a course on de-escalation measures with a self-defense unit.

The courses are "always fully booked".

A chamber representative now called for stricter laws, higher penalties and a change in awareness among the authorities that "threats and hatred on the Internet should no longer be taken lightly as a minor offence".