this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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I've heard of like one single case of anyone being prosecuted because of an insult in my 25 years being here. And there wasn't even any punishment as far as I remember.
There were and are quite a lot of cases. Not all are reported by media as it's not a big thing if a driver shows another driver the middle finger again. You would need to go through the archives of courts. (Or talk to people who work in attorney's offices.)
Edit: just found accidentally that in 2016 over 200.000 cases were registered and prosecuted.
I'm sure there are plenty if you take all 80 million people in Germany into account. My point is that it's not super common for it to happen, so uncommon that I don't personally know anyone involved in such a court case. I just know of the whole "du bist so 1 pimmel" debacle. It really only happens if you happen to find someone super petty.
Yeah, it's not very common that someone gets sued for insulting someone else. Still, about 235.000 in the last year, cases is still a higher number than one would expect. (Source: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/157630/umfrage/polizeilich-erfasste-faelle-von-beleidigungen-seit-1995/ ) As insults are an "Antragsdelikt" they are only prosecuted if someone files a police report and sues.
I tend to disagree with the notion of "being super petty" for suing someone over insults. Sure, there are quite a lot of them, I agree with you so far. But I think about a lot of worse cases, where people can even suffer from psychological damages, e.g., if they are being bullied that way. Or if such insults are coming in regularily and/or are very intense in their expression.
Oh yeah, that number is in fact much larger than I would have expected.
I'm not trying to say that anyone who sues for that reason is super petty. I'm saying that if someone shows you the middle finger because you cut them off and you end up suing them, you are super petty. I just assumed those are the majority, but maybe my assumptions are just incorrect again.