When Lars H. drinks, his thoughts derail. Then the slogans from the schoolyard CDs from his Thuringian youth appear again, he claims. Then he bawls, then he rampages, then he insults incoming police officers in an anti-Semitic and racist manner in the worst possible way. What he also threw at the police officers in February of this year brought the 35-year-old before the Munich District Court in no time at all: These “wankers” should be shot just like the “bastards” in the last week, he yelled and meant by that the officials who had been shot dead during a traffic check in Kusel. Among other things, the court sentenced him to one year in prison – without parole.
It was the first time that hate speech in relation to the two homicides in Kusel was tried in Munich. After the two police officers checked two suspected poachers at the end of January 2022 and one of them opened fire, malicious and hateful comments hailed online. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the police installed a “Hatespeech” investigation group to prosecute derogatory comments. In Munich, Lars H. was now accused of, among other things, rewarding and approving crimes in conjunction with denigrating the memory of the deceased.
District judge Cornelia Wölk tried to find out what was going on in Lars H.’s head on February 4, 2022. H. himself says he got drunk with his sister after an argument via Skype. “One, two, three, four beers,” he says. In the end there were ten, plus Jägermeister, all of them over 2.2 per mille. Angered by the argument, he threw the glass table on the floor, which splintered loudly. H. thinks that the neighbors called the police because of the volume.
Senior public prosecutor Andreas Franck, on the other hand, has determined that H. is said to have hammered on the doors of his neighbors in the apartment building on Amalienstrasse in Maxvorstadt and threatened to “slit someone’s throat”. When the police knocked on his door and rang the bell, he probably didn’t hear it because he was wearing headphones, H. said in court. So the police officers entered his apartment through the patio door, saw the destroyed furniture and an open one-handed knife.
“I couldn’t figure it out at the moment,” says H.
As a police officer testifies in court, Lars H. took the knife and waved it around. And he constantly uttered the worst insults – and that the police officers should be shot just like their colleagues in the past week. H. only dropped the knife when threatened with pepper spray. H. continued to fight back with his hands and feet, threw his shoes and yelled that he would not be arrested by “Kanaken”, “but only by a German citizen”. The four police officers filed a criminal complaint, as did the relatives of one of the killed police officers from Kusel.
“He admits all allegations,” said attorney Nico Werning on behalf of his client. When the officers were in his apartment, he got angry, says H. “I couldn’t cope at the moment and talked about things,” he claims. He’s “very sorry”. When he was 13 or 14 years old, “the parties” appeared in the schoolyard with CDs, balloons and cookies. And he heard these CDs “over and over”. Anti-Jewish or anti-foreigner slogans stuck. “But I’m not in any party or association,” he says.
H. has a massive alcohol problem, “budding cirrhosis of the liver,” said his family doctor. He was dry for two and a half years and worked as a customer service representative for an automobile group. He had resigned shortly before the crime, H. says, “I couldn’t do it anymore with the home office”. And he says that when he’s sober he wouldn’t offend anyone, that he has nothing against Jews and foreigners. The Federal Central Register lists eleven entries, from hate speech to threats, insults and physical harm. On the evening of the OEZ attack, he got drunk with a colleague and bawled right-wing slogans in the taxi on the way home.
Judge Wölk stated that H. had been convicted in many relevant cases and that the insults were of “considerable quality”. In addition, she sees no positive social prognosis. Lars H. now has the opportunity to appeal the verdict.