Leipzig (AP) – The peace activist Hermann Theisen has won a dispute with the Rottweil district office about the forwarding of letters. The Federal Administrative Court decided on Wednesday in Leipzig that the authority would have been obliged to pass on the letters with critical content on controversial weapons exports by the Heckler & Koch company to the district councils contacted. (Ref .: BVerwG 8 C 12.19) The Federal Supreme Court changed the judgments of the two lower courts, which either predominantly or wholly had given the district office right.
Theisen had addressed his “letter petitions” of the same name to all district councils. He called on them to use their influence as local politicians to prevent arms exports. But only a few district councils as well as the district administrator and the first state officials received the letters. The district office sent the rest back to Theisen unopened.
The Federal Administrative Court ruled that this practice of the authority of generally not passing on any submissions from individuals is incompatible with Articles 3 and 17 of the Basic Law. Article 17 grants everyone the right to petition the parliament. The court also classified the fact that individual letters had reached the addressees but not others as a violation of the principle of equality in Article 3.
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