Must be punished who shows the Z in this country? German criminal law should not fall into the Russian error and punish attitudes – not even those that we find hideous.
column by
Heribert Prantl
A few years ago, a film called “The White Ribbon” caused a sensation. The film is about implacable morality and the insidious involvement in an authoritarian system. The bitter story takes place shortly before the First World War in a northern German village. It is set at a time when “parental authority” was still to be understood in the literal sense, when children had to use their first names and thank them for their beatings. It is about a hypocritical pastor who mistreats his children and ties the “white ribbon” around their upper arm as a warning against sin, as an admonition to virtue and as a symbol of innocence.