City coat of arms on AfD election campaign posters-Dortmund moves to court

In the dispute over posters of the Dortmund AfD for the local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in about one month, the city now wants to achieve an injunction. The city of Dortmund will submit an application against the AfD district association at the Dortmund Regional Court, a spokesman said when asked about the DPA.

The party should be banned to use and publish and publish the city coat of arms of the city of Dortmund “in election advertising, on election posters as well as on the Internet and on social media” without express written approval. This also applies to “a mistake similar to this”. Existing posters with these characters should be destroyed or the sign “permanently and completely unrecognizable”, the speaker described.

So far, the AfD refuses to remove the city coat of arms from its posters, as the AfD district association had announced. According to the city spokesman, the party had rejected a request for omission.

The AfD sticks posters in the local election campaign, which, according to the city, show the more than 1000 -year -old Dortmund coat of arms in a slightly modified form. That is illegal. “For reasons of neutrality, no party is approved for the use of the city coat of arms for campaign purposes,” the city had justified its attitude.

The AfD replied that the city had allowed other parties to use a modified coat of arms in the past, such as the CDU and the free voters in the 2014 local election campaign. The AfD had used the city coat of arms on publications for years – so far without complaint.