A German man has gone to court to try to win back his ‘Heil Hitler’ personalised licence plate after the local authorities banned it for referring to the Nazi leader.
The unnamed man from the district of Viersen, located in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, had opted for a personalised number plate which in Germany is possible for just 10.20 EUR (8.7 GBP).
While the first letters of a German number plate refer to a person’s home district and are obligatory, which in the case of the Viersen man can either be VIE or KK, German laws allow for people to choose the rest of the letters on their plate if they like.
The man chose ‘HH 1933’ to fill up the rest of his number plate – which was legally issued by the district authorities.
However, someone filed a complaint with the district’s road traffic department after seeing the man drive his car with the plate, saying that the number plate was offensive as its a clear reference to Nazi Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, with ‘HH’ being used as abbreviation for ‘Heil Hitler’ and 1933 being the year when Hitler came to power in Germany.
When the road traffic department wrote to the man that his licence plate had been retracted, he immediately went to court to demand his plates back.
The district court in Dusseldorf has now sided with the road traffic department saying that it is immoral and reminiscent of the Nazi’s rule of injustice.
Viersen district spokesman Benedikt Giesbers said: “There is a state decree that in North Rhine-Westphalia the number plates NS, KZ, SS, SA and HJ cannot be awarded.
“In combination with the year 1933, however, HH also appeared offensive to us.”
Germany has outlawed number plates being issued which refer to Nazi history for years, with ‘NS’ being banned because it refers to ‘National-Socialism’, ‘KZ’ being the German abbreviation of Konzentrationslager (concentration camp), ‘SS’ being the abbreviation of the feared Nazi paramilitary organisation ‘Schutzstaffel’ and ‘SA’ standing for ‘Sturmabteilung’, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi party in its early days.
The number combination of ’88’ is forbidden as it is also used by neo-Nazis to refer to the Nazi greeting ‘Heil Hitler’, with the letter ‘H’ being the eighth letter in the alphabet.
There are notable exceptions though as citizens in Hamburg have number plates starting with ‘HH’ – which refers to the Hanseatic city of Hamburg.
It is not known why the Viersen man chose ‘HH 1933’ as his number plate or whether he has neo-Nazi sympathies. It is unclear if the combination might have an alternative meaning for him.
In Austria, a man driving around with a ‘HH 88’ number plate voluntarily gave it up two years ago after running into problems with it.
The man, Hannes Hettegger from the town of Bischofshofen, said that he had chosen the HH 88 personalised number plate because his initials are HH and his son was born in 1988.
The man had been legally driving with the number plate since 2008, but had had enough of it after dozens of other drivers insulted him and called him a neo-Nazi.
Hettegger said: “The previous combination is made up of the initial letters of my name and the year of birth of my first child. In the meantime, I got to know about the other meaning of it through various acts of hostility.”
The Austrian businessman said that his company premises were once even visited by cops looking for neo-Nazi clues.
Hettegger said: “These feelings are absolutely remote to me, these are simply personal circumstances that have led to this particular situation.”
Until the amendment of the Austrian Motor Vehicles Act in 2015, only “ridiculous” or “offensive” combinations were prohibited, which explains why Hettegger managed to get his unusual number plate from the Austrian authorities.Â
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Story By: Koen Berghuis, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
