“Mei, the Oktoberfest is the Oktoberfest,” throws lawyer Walter Lechner into the courtroom. Not every buttocks is necessarily a sexual object in the sense of the relevant paragraph of the law. Holger K. only wanted to make room on the beer bench in the Paulaner marquee at the Oktoberfest 2022 and therefore pinched the lady behind him in the buttocks. For this, the foreman received a fine of 6,000 euros for sexual harassment.
Holger K. is visibly nervous when he tells his version of the story in front of the district court. He had lodged an objection to the penalty order and is now sitting before Judge Sebastian Schmitt. He had about a measure and a half in the early evening of September 28th – and felt “a little funny”. He sat with his three friends in the Paulaner marquee box, which was a bit cramped. Especially because the lady behind him, who was sitting back to back with him, almost landed on his bench with her buttocks.
“Look where she’s sitting,” the friend is said to have called out. “I put my hand down and the boyfriend pressed it against her buttocks,” the accused claims. The woman then jumped up and shouted something, “but I can’t speak English”. Then a man jumped over the table and wanted to hit him, but his friend fought him off. Finally, the security service came, plus the police, and three hours followed at the Oktoberfest police station.
The injured party did not come to the hearing, she lives in Florida. Judge Schmitt confronts the accused with what she said to the police shortly after the crime: namely that the man grabbed her under her skirt and grabbed her bottom. No pinching or pinching. “No, I didn’t do that,” says the indignant foreman.
The prosecutor wants to know why he didn’t talk to the lady if it was just a matter of space? Or tapped on the shoulder? Why the buttocks? Since Holger K. remains silent.
“We’re not downplaying that,” said his defender. Sexual harassment is the last thing on his client’s mind. It was a pinch, “if anything, then an injury at the bottom”. His client immediately apologized and also wrote two letters to the United States in which he offered 1,000 euros in compensation for pain and suffering. But the lady did not respond.
Lechner suggests stopping the matter for money. His client could donate the 1,000 euros to a non-profit association. But the prosecutor doesn’t go along with that. “It wasn’t a short streak. If you go upskirt, you can’t shut that down for pettiness.” And Judge Schmitt also thinks that without the woman’s testimony, no conclusions will be reached: “Then we must try to summon the witness.”