A police raid targeting retired media professor and conservative commentator Norbert Bolz has ignited discussion in Germany about how far the state is going in policing speech online.
Officers entered Bolz’s Berlin home on Thursday morning and questioned him about a social media post from early 2024 that included the phrase “Deutschland erwache!” a slogan once used by the Nazi Party.
Bolz told POLITICO he acknowledged writing the post himself, which prevented police from taking his computer. After the visit, he posted a sardonic comment on X: “The friendly police officers gave me the good advice to be more careful in the future. I’ll do that and only talk about trees from now on.”
Bolz is a regular contributor to WELT, part of the Axel Springer media group, and is known for his strong defense of open discussion.
Berlin prosecutors confirmed the search took place as part of an investigation under Section 86a of Germany’s criminal code, which prohibits the “use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations.”
The disputed post was a sarcastic reaction to an article from the newspaper taz that read, “Ban of the AfD and a petition against Höcke: Germany awakens.” Bolz added his own remark: “A good translation for ‘woke’: Germany awake!”
The issue first came to authorities’ attention after it was reported by “Hessen gegen Hetze,” a portal run by the Hessian Interior Ministry’s Cyber Competence Center.
The post was forwarded to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and then to the Central Reporting Office for Criminal Content on the Internet (ZMI), which passed the case to Berlin prosecutors because Bolz resides in the capital.
The ZMI, short for Zentrale Meldestelle für strafbare Inhalte im Internet (Central Reporting Office for Criminal Content on the Internet), is a unit within Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA).
A spokesperson for the Berlin prosecutor’s office told Apollo News that “the reporting office had passed the matter on to the ZMI.
“The ZMI reported the matter to Berlin because of where they live in Berlin. The investigation was then carried out by the Berlin public prosecutor’s office and the Berlin police, as this is where the responsibility lies.”
The BKA confirmed that the case originated from a report filed by “Hessen gegen Hetze” in November 2024.
The case has raised wider concerns about Germany’s increasingly restrictive approach to online expression. What Bolz intended as irony has become the basis for a criminal probe and a police search.
Bolz, who retired from the Technical University of Berlin in 2018 after a long academic career, continues to write and appear on television.
