YouTuber Frederik M. in court in Hamburg

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Defendant in the Hamburg district court: "Very exciting time we are currently living in"

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Martin Brinckmann

There are three types of defendants.

Those who are ashamed of having to answer in court.

Those who are indifferent to possible punishment.

And those who feel right, who don't want to put up with anything, who use the dock as a stage.

Frederik M. should actually belong to the third category.

But until the Hamburg YouTuber finds his usual self-confident, almost bold role, he allows himself a few hours of warm-up time in category one.

The 30-year-old entered the district court of Altona an hour before the scheduled appointment, wearing jeans, a woolen hat and neon-colored sneakers.

M. announced the time and place of the hearing through his channels and encouraged his followers to accompany him.

“Megaheftigdoll” he would be happy “if there were a lot of people at the start,” he said.

In fact, at this point in time none of his fans had found their way into the old walls.

Mask scandal in the cinema

Frederik M. is accused of trespassing in unity with violation of the confidentiality of the word and violation of the art copyright law in two cases.

Translated, this means: Together with his wife, M. is said to have entered a cinema last October without covering his mouth and nose and refused to put on a mask when asked.

According to the indictment, M. showed himself unreasonable, refused the visor that was offered to him and refused to leave the cinema.

Instead, M. filmed the employee and published the video on Instagram, where it was viewed more than 400,000 times, according to prosecutor Johannes Brockmann.

Two days later, M. is said to have made a similar appearance in a supermarket: he filmed the conflict again and posted the video on the Internet.

Anyone who knows M. from social media will experience an unusually meek man in court.

He shakes his head twice with a smile as the public prosecutor reads out the allegations.

He will "not comment on it," says M. in a restrained voice.

"Fucking flu"

His community, his fans, his target group should be alien to this side of the YouTuber.

For almost four years, M. has been letting her take part in his life, he films himself cycling to the Baltic Sea, moving into his new apartment and receiving a fine of 328.50 euros for walking without a mask.

Corona is »a fucking flu«, M. lets his viewers know.

M. sees himself as a free spirit.

In July 2017 he opened his YouTube channel with the aim of offering help or suggestions to those who want to make "even more" of their life, as he says.

Since the beginning of the pandemic he has been working on the subject of Corona: M. has been doing street surveys and on October 1st appealed to free yourself from the mask requirement: »My appeal to you: If you don’t feel like wearing this thing, then please don't wear this thing.

There's no need to wear this thing. "

M. also gave his followers tips on how to free themselves from the mask requirement and urged them that he was "not involved in discussions at all".

In front of the camera he speaks of the fear that security people and branch managers act out of, of a two-tier society and of the courage it takes to face the pressure.

"I'll sue you"

Now M. is sitting in room 245 and has to watch the videos again.

You can hear M. yelling at the supermarket security officer: “Are you kidding me, Digger?

Call the police!

I'll report you for assault! ”And you can hear the dialogue between him and the cinema employee after he and his wife were refused entry and snacks at the counter:“ Right, you don't sell popcorn to a pregnant woman? ”The clerk says he doesn't want to be filmed.

M. calls: "What a horrible person you are!" The clerk offers a visor, refers to the house rules.

M. shouts back: "Your house rules compel you not to give popcorn to a pregnant woman?

You are all pathetic people. "

Shortly afterwards, that cinema employee sits down on a chair in the courtroom, not two meters away from M.

He is called as a witness.

He says he had already had the dialogue with M. before he switched on the camera.

It sounds as if M. staged the debate especially in order to be able to record it.

“It got louder and louder, it bullyed more and more,” says the employee.

M. and his companion finally left the cinema before the police arrived.

The next morning he was surprised that he had inadvertently made it short-lived Internet celebrity, recalls the cinema employee.

The video went viral, with him in the lead role, unpixeled, the name tag on the lapel.

Prosecutor Brockmann wants to know what that did to him.

The 28-year-old describes uncomfortable days when he couldn't sleep, distracted himself with work and tried desperately to get this video off the net until he finally obtained an injunction.

He doesn't care about damages, he says.

"I just want to be left alone."

"How did you feel?" - "Bad."

This happened to the manager of the supermarket, who felt provoked by M. when he filmed her until she called the police.

Less than two hours later, she received messages from friends that she could be seen on a video on TikTok.

"How did you feel?" Asks Judge Birger Bischof.

"Bad."

The allegations sound like trifles, says Public Prosecutor Brockmann at the end of the hearing.

In truth, however, the situation in the cinema in particular had been "overdramatized": the situation had been clarified and only then did M. "deliberately" pull out the cell phone again to "show" others and "show them off".

"You can report on this topic, but you cannot involve bystanders," says Brockmann.

He also found it regrettable that M. did not want to comment on the allegations in court - unlike what he had done in advance on social media.

In his plea, Ms defense attorney speaks of "discrimination" if people like M are publicly asked to present a certificate that exempts them from the mask requirement.

In his last word, M. admits that he was in an "emotional state of emergency" during the confrontation in the cinema.

The insight his lawyer speaks of is not convincing.

But the message that M. still wants to get rid of remains in the memory: He thinks it is a "very exciting time we are currently living in" and everyone should know that "the Robert Koch Institute is kidding us all".

»Put in the digital pillory«

Judge Bishop sentenced M. in the end to 80 daily rates of 40 euros.

M. had not accepted the house rules in both cases, filmed the conflict and distributed the videos.

M. had "put people with feelings in the digital pillory".

Bishop refers to the peculiarity of the current situation, to the heated mood in the country due to the pandemic.

"It wears us all down," he says.

"Very few of us find it nice to wear a mask or to have to tell others to do it." It is important in a democracy to express one's opinion and get involved, but with all commitment the limits are then reached when the rights of others are violated.

Frederik M. nods as if he shares the judge's opinion.

The last of the few supporters who have come remain on the stairs in front of the court.

M. leaves the hall with a black mask over his mouth and nose.

When he came that morning he had hidden it under a scarf.