German tourist sued for complaints about hotel's Nazi portraits [View all]

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

German tourist sued for complaints about hotel's Nazi portraits

Visitor posted on Booking.com and Tripadvisor about disgust at pictures in Austria

Philip Oltermann in Berlin
@philipoltermann
Fri 6 Sep 2019 05.00 BST

A German man is being sued by the owners of a four-star hotel in Austria after posting online reviews in which he criticised them for decorating their lobby with a portrait of a “Nazi grandpa” in a uniform adorned with a swastika.

The man, named in court documents as Thomas K, and his wife visited the hotel in the village of Gerlos in the Tyrolean Alps last August. After check-in, they noticed two framed pictures on a wall near the hotel’s entrance, hung above a flower arrangement. One showed a young man wearing a uniform with an eagle and swastika badge, the other an older man.

Using a pseudonym, K posted reviews on Booking.com and TripAdvisor about a week after his visit, one in German and one in English, under the subject header: “At the entrance they display a picture of a Nazi grandpa.”

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The owners of the Gerlos contacted both sites and asked for the reviews to be removed on the grounds that the description “Nazi grandpa” was libellous and defamatory because the people in the pictures – one a grandfather, the other an uncle of one of the owners – had only been members of the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945.

Booking.com, which is based in the Netherlands, deleted the post, but the US-based TripAdvisor declined to comply with the request. Matching the Booking.com booking number to the pseudonymous review, the hotel owner then contacted K and filed a lawsuit against him with a regional court in Innsbruck.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/06/german-tourist-sued-complaints-hotel-nazi-portraits-austria

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The guests later proved that the two men in the photos were indeed members of the Nazi Party, but the hotel still got its injunction.