A piece of fabric, barely larger than a dish towel, could land a man behind bars for up to five years. This fateful piece of fabric is a banner. It shows a police helmet, cracks running across its visor. From the visor drips a red liquid.
An HSV fan allegedly attached it more than two years ago during a game of his team to the fence of the North Stand. Now he was to be tried before the Hamburg-Altona District Court for public incitement to criminal offenses. He faces up to five years in prison or a fine.
At the start of the trial at noon, at 1 p.m., almost everyone is present: the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, and the Hamburg press. Only the accused is missing. The judge uses the waiting time for a bit of small talk with the interested public.
It is a pity that the accused has not yet arrived. He has prepared so well, the judge jokes. And besides, this concerns an exciting legal question. The defense agrees with him.
The prosecution sees in the image on the banner material for fantasies of violence, while the defense desires another interpretation.
The prosecution regards the banner as material for fantasies of violence: it is meant to motivate violent hooligans to attack police officers. By contrast, the defense will plead for more room for interpretation. Is the banner protected by freedom of expression?
The question of interpretive leeway is also seen as crucial by Dr. Till Pörner. He is a lawyer specialized in sports and criminal law and, as a Mainz 05 fan, looks on the Hamburg trial with impartial eyes. According to Pörner, the concrete question now is whether the banner must be understood as a serious call to commit a crime. Which one that could be—shooting, beating, throwing paint-filled objects—remains completely unclear in connection with the banner.
An equally important question might be to whom the banner is addressed, i.e., who it is meant to incite to violence. If there are violent HSV fans, Pörner notes, most of them are themselves in the North Stand. From there they would not have been able to see the banner, since it hung at the very bottom in the same stand.
“If the banner is to be understood symbolically as a critique of police operations, then it is not an invitation to an unlawful act,” says Pörner. In the overall context, the banner could then become a legal opinion.
The Fans’ Hatred as a Backstory
In what context should the banner be understood? The backstory includes that Hamburg and Dortmund fans do not particularly get along. This holds at least for parts of the active fan scenes of HSV and BVB. Some of them collided at a train station in September 2023 and fought.
In February 2024, the federal police then halted a train with over 800 HSV fans to search for 60 alleged attackers. For six hours, the officers took down the personal details of all travelers. They remained on the train well into the night, without food and without functioning toilets. The then head of the Left Party faction in the Hamburg Parliament, Cansu Özdemir, spoke of “collective liability.”
A few days later, the HSV fans themselves took the police into collective liability. At a home game, part of the North Stand disappeared behind an “ACAB” choreography. On banners, it read “Never friend, never helper” and also “All Hamburg hates the police.” At the same game, a banner appeared in the stands—this very piece of fabric around which the trial at the Altona district court revolves.
The Accused Remains Absent
In the courtroom, the accused has still not appeared. The man has a prior criminal record, a prison sentence for other offenses is suspended on probation. His defense attorney says he had contact with him beforehand but also hints that such contact has proven difficult. He intends to try to reach his client through third parties. The defense counsel leaves the courtroom with a phone in hand.
That such a case even reaches a courtroom is rare. It is not an isolated incident, says sports-law expert Pörner. But a number of such cases cannot be pursued due to the lack of an identifiable perpetrator.
The problem is that fans from the active scene operate anonymously within the group and are often masked. How the accused HSV fan was identified and located, Hamburg prosecutors do not want to disclose. Doing so would pre-empt the evidence proceedings, said a spokeswoman for .
From Chatting to an Arrest Warrant
The evidentiary hearing will not take place at the Altona District Court that day. The judge now asks in the round if anyone could report internal information about HSV or FC St. Pauli. In response to a journalist’s question about which side he belongs to, the judge smiles and says he is completely independent.
After 15 minutes of waiting, it is over. The defense attorney returns to the hall with a shake of his head. The judge has now issued an arrest warrant against his client.
