Article 189 of the Criminal Code: Defaming the Reputation of the Dead

Section 189 of the German Criminal Code, concerning disparagement of the memory of the dead, is invoked in the investigation and trial of the Auerhaus residents. Its role in the novel is sharply concrete: photographs the housemates have crossed out as part of their irreverent wall display become evidence, and an absurd domestic ritual acquires legal consequences.

The Charge Emerges

During a search of Auerhaus, civilian investigators and a prosecutor enter after the masked officers withdraw. The prosecutor presents an official document, and the residents learn that the investigation includes the drug law. As officers inspect papers connected with the other allegations, the prosecutor reads out several provisions, including Section 189.

The charge is tied to the residents’ wall display. They had put up a poster labeled for terrorists, adding photographs of housemates who failed to do the dishes; they also cut photographs of recently deceased public figures they disliked from newspapers, pasted them onto the poster, and crossed them out with large X marks. What the housemates treated as a joke is recast by the authorities as disparagement of the memory of the dead.

From Domestic Joke to Prosecution

The charges are read alongside allegations of theft, suppression and forgery of documents, damage to property, and promotion of a terrorist organization. This accumulation turns the household’s pranks and shared life into a catalogue of legal offenses. Section 189 is not presented in isolation: the prosecution’s formal naming of the crossed-out photographs makes the residents’ irreverent gesture legible as a distinct criminal matter.

At trial, the case against Cäcilia is dismissed on all counts. The narrator reports that Höppner, Vera, and Pauline are convicted of theft and of disparaging the memory of the dead, receiving 40 hours of community service each. The novel thus gives Section 189 a definite consequence: it is one basis for the three residents’ convictions, rather than merely a threat raised during the search.