Enlarge image
Nikolai Nerling (right) in court: hate speech in front of the camera
Photo: Annette Riedl / dpa
Nikolai Nerling is playing with the provocation, says the judge.
In doing so, he puts himself "on the razor blade of criminal liability."
That often went well for Nerling, "not today".
The district court in Berlin-Tiergarten sentenced the 42-year-old right-wing extremist to nine months in prison, suspended for three years, on two counts of incitement to hatred and trespassing.
He also has to pay 3,000 euros to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation – a foundation that works against right-wing extremism, racism and anti-Semitism.
"People's teacher" calls himself Nerling.
As a primary school teacher in Berlin, he has not been allowed to work for years.
According to his own statements, the right-wing extremist video blogger is only a part-time activist.
He now works full-time for an online mail order company, but he does not want to go into further detail.
He is rarely taciturn.
Nerling likes to lecture.
He is self-confident, eloquent.
The list of allegations against him is long.
He now has to answer in court for six counts.
In a photo that Nerling incorporated into one of his videos, he shows the Nazi salute.
In June 2018 he published it on his then YouTube channel.
In the picture, Nerling is standing next to a poster showing a ballet dancer stretching her right leg in the air.
“Stepping out of line.
Because it's possible in Berlin«, it says below.
The poster advertises Berlin as a tolerant, free, cosmopolitan city.
Nerling stood next to it, stretched out his right arm and had the whole thing photographed.
Interview with Ursula Haverbeck
"You can't step out of line worse in Germany," he said in court.
It's not meant to be remorseful.
With this action he wanted to make it clear that Berlin was not at all tolerant and cosmopolitan.
"And this trial proves me right."
The judge doesn't say much about this point of the indictment in his verdict.
Not everything is allowed in Berlin.
Showing the Hitler salute, for example, is a criminal offence.
Nerling's attempts at an explanation didn't change that.
The accused seems to have found his match in the notorious Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck.
He calls the 93-year-old “the grande dame of the freedom movement and truth movement” in an interview he conducted with her in 2018 and published on the Internet.
In it, Haverbeck denies the Shoa.
Nerling doesn't contradict the old woman, he nods and lets her talk.
He pretends to be ignorant in court.
He didn't even know that Haverbeck's words were punishable.
Haverbeck brought the video another conviction for incitement to hatred, Nerling now too.
more on the subject
Imprisonment for 93-year-olds: Judgment against Ursula Haverbeck is final by Wiebke Ramm
Verdict against Holocaust denier Haverbeck: "What you say is poison" by Wiebke Ramm
Start of the process in Berlin: The 93-year-old who denies the Holocaust and learns nothing by Hannes Schrader, Berlin
In another video from May 2018, he insults a Jew.
The man had informed a bank that the “public teacher” was their customer.
The bank blocked Nerling's account.
He retaliated with a video in which he called the man by his name and mocked him as a Jew.
Internet users commented on the video with anti-Semitic hate speech.
"Whoever hands it out has to take it," Nerling tries to justify his actions.
"Cynical," the judge calls it. The accused deliberately wanted to belittle the man's Jewish identity.
It is clearly a criminal offense.
In December 2017, Nerling and a cameraman used a false name to gain access to a panel event by Lea Rosh, the initiator of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin.
The event was called: "How do we deal with the AfD?" On the podium, Renate Künast from the Greens, a journalist and a CDU politician, who in his constituency in Frankfurt (Oder) had the direct mandate against Alexander Gauland from the AfD had won.
The court plays the video apparently made by Nerling's cameraman.
"Then at some point I was lying on the floor"
It can be seen that Nerling initially pretends that he wants to take part in the discussion.
This is Germany, he then says.
And that hardly anyone »steps into the breach« for the Germans.
Loudly he calls for the "orientation towards the nation" and the closing of the borders.
Leah Rosh intervenes.
She lets the audience vote on whether the disruptor should go.
He should.
But Nerling doesn't want to go.
"I'm asking you to leave the room," says Lea Rosh.
She repeats the request several times.
Nerling makes no move to leave.
Eventually he is pushed out.
There was a scuffle, says Nerling.
This is also what a visitor to the event said as a witness in court.
The 78-year-old speaks of a "physical encounter" with Nerling, "not intensive".
He no longer has a precise memory of the incident.
The witness says he must have reached in the direction of the camera to stop the filming.
"Then at some point I was lying on the ground." He was not injured.
The court acquitted Nerling of the charge of bodily harm.
In this case, trespassing remains.
He pasted over an information board about the crimes of a Wehrmacht division with duct tape
The court was convinced that Nerling's videos were about attracting the attention of the right-wing scene.
His aim is to practice historical revisionism by trying to reinterpret the National Socialist era.
This is also the case in another video that shows him at a memorial stone in Lüneburg.
A board informs there about the crimes of a Wehrmacht division.
Nerling comments smugly on the inscription and, according to the court, questions the crimes of the division.
For the court, he has thus made himself guilty in another case of incitement to hatred.
Nerling covered the information board with black duct tape.
On it he wrote in white letters: »Germany is alive!
Come on!” At least that wasn’t damage to property, the court ruled.
The tape came off.
Nerling remained true to his line and unapologetic to the end.
"I ask myself all the time where the victims are," he says in his last word.
"I don't see the injured party." The judge urged him to take the probation period seriously.
If he commits another offense within three years, he faces imprisonment if the verdict becomes final.
The public prosecutor's office had eleven months' imprisonment on probation, the defense only demanded a fine.
