GERMAN socialist daily Junge Welt will be seeking leave to appeal against a judgement confirming its status as a named extremist organisation in domestic intelligence agency reports.

The Morning Star’s sister paper in Germany said at the weekend the Berlin administrative court’s judgement, delivered three months ago, had finally been published.

Managing director Dietmar Koschmieder warned that “the grounds for the judgement go far beyond anything the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has previously accused the newspaper of.”

In a nakedly political judgement, the Berlin court ruled that Junge Welt could be considered hostile to Germany’s Basic Law — the country’s constitution — because it seeks to “establish an anti-constitutional socialist-communist social order according to a classical Marxist understanding.”

The newspaper’s inclusion on the extremism list does not ban it but causes problems such as restrictions on its ability to advertise and denial of access on computers in some libraries and universities.

While acknowledging there was no evidence Junge Welt is trying to overthrow the Federal Republic of Germany by force, the judgement states that this can be inferred because of its “endorsement of Lenin and his theory.” 

Its basis for Junge Welt’s perceived endorsement of Leninism included reference to the newspaper “publishing three books by and about Lenin,” “having run a ‘Lenin bar’ at the UZ [Unsere Zeit, the communist weekly] press festival” and “illustrated a column entitled ‘Red Light’ with the heads of Marx, Engels and Lenin.”

The judgement also cited Junge Welt “repeatedly giving the opportunity” to German Communist Party (DKP) leader Patrick Kobele to “promote his political views in a media-effective way” as evidence of its anti-constitutional attitude, though the DKP is legal.

The judge denied the right to appeal on the grounds that the case was not of “fundamental importance,” but Junge Welt will be seeking to overturn this at the higher administrative court.

Editor-in-chief Nick Brauns said the verdict was “an infringement of freedom of expression and freedom of the press.”