The widow of former Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl demanded at least five million euros plus interest from Kohl’s ghostwriter and former confidante Heribert Schwan, among others.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin It was the highest compensation in German legal history, but it is not paid out now. Just a few weeks before Helmut Kohl’s death, the Cologne district court had awarded the former chancellor one million euros for violating personal rights.
But the judgment was no longer legally binding before Kohl’s death. In principle, however, the claim is not inheritable, as the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe found on Monday.
Kohl’s widow and sole heir Maike Kohl-Richter does not receive the compensation and comes away empty-handed. A constitutional complaint is still possible. Kohl-Richter’s legal representative, Matthias Siegmann, had not ruled out the possibility that his client would take legal action before the Federal Constitutional Court.
Kohl-Richter did not appear in Karlsruhe for the judgment of the BGH. Probably the defendant: the former Kohl confidante and author Heribert Schwan.
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The specific dispute concerned the publication of the book “Legacy: The Kohl Protocols”. Schwan published the work together with the author Tilman Jens in 2014. Jens passed away last year. The legal dispute with his heirs is interrupted. The BGH was only concerned with the monetary claim against Schwan and the publisher (file number VI ZR 248/18 and VI ZR 258/18).
The “Kohl Protocols” and the break between Kohl and the author
The author was once Kohl’s ghostwriter. He conducted interviews with Kohl for over 600 hours and recorded them on tape. This resulted in authorized memoirs in three volumes. Then the two of them broke up.
The author of the Kohl Protocols traveled to Karlsruhe to announce the judgment of the Federal Court of Justice.
(Photo: dpa)
The “Kohl Protocols” then appeared without the consent of the former CDU Chancellor. The book contained controversial and piquant remarks by Kohl about numerous well-known personalities from Angela Merkel to Princess Diana – and became a bestseller.
There were several legal disputes over this. In April 2017, the Cologne district court awarded the 87-year-old one million euros for violating personal rights. The judges followed Kohl in that his statements were confidential.
Kohl and later Kohl-Richter even asked for at least five million euros plus interest. In the appellate instance, the Cologne Higher Regional Court decided in May 2018 that the claim was not inheritable.
Rightly so, as the BGH has now decided. “The fundamental inheritance of such a claim corresponds to the established supreme court jurisprudence,” said a statement by the court. It is justified with the function of the claim to monetary compensation, in which the idea of satisfaction is in the foreground – but a deceased person can no longer be satisfied.
The VI saw strong reasons to give up this case law. Civil Senate not. Finally, in the case of dispute, there were no special circumstances that – as an exception – led to heredity. “In particular, the claim to monetary compensation is not hereditary because it is awarded to the testator while the deceased is still alive, if the corresponding judgment at the time of death – as here – is not yet legally binding,” it said.
BGH remains true to its line
The BGH thus remained true to its previous line. As early as 2014, with the so-called Peter Alexander judgment, he had established that the son of the singer and entertainer, who died in 2011, could not sue the rainbow press for his dead father. Already at this point the judges determined that it was inevitably only possible to provide the injured party with satisfaction as long as he was still alive (file number VI ZR 246/12).
In 2017, too, the BGH ruled that the right to monetary compensation for violations of personal rights was not inherited in principle. Here the judges made it clear that a prevention concept alone cannot support the granting of monetary compensation (file number VI ZR 261/16).
Behind this is the argument that punishment is necessary so that the press and publishers do not drag out legal proceedings about personal rights until all claims expire with the death of the injured party.
The BGH, however, partially overturned a second decision, which concerns 116 text passages that are currently forbidden. The judges declared some of the quotations admissible. The OLG Cologne has to re-examine other passages.
The question here is whether the quotations may be disseminated literally or analogously. The author Schwan is already legally prohibited from doing this. There is still a dispute about what the Penguin Random House publisher is allowed to do. The book is currently only on the market as an e-book – with a number of omissions.
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