Germany’s Federal Court of Justice has upheld a criminal conviction and an €11,600 fine against an Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician over an election poster (Picture above, middle poster) that judges ruled depicted a gesture unlawfully resembling the Nazi salute.
This decision, first reported by Legal Tribune Online (LTO), finalises an earlier ruling by the Regional Court in Frankfurt (Oder), eastern Germany, on the Polish border, against Wilko Möller, a member of the state parliament in Brandenburg.
The court’s Third Criminal Senate, which deals with State-security cases, rejected Möller’s appeal on October 13, 2026, finding no legal error in the regional court judgment of February 17, 2026.
The court found that Möller had violated Section 86a of the German Criminal Code, which prohibits the public display or dissemination of symbols and gestures associated with unconstitutional and terrorist organisations, including gestures confusingly similar to them. The offence carries up to three years in prison or a fine.
The case centred on an election campaign poster used during the Brandenburg state elections in the summer of 2024, ahead of the vote on September 22 that year.
Anja Kreisel, then district chairwoman of Die Linke (The Left) in Frankfurt (Oder), reported it to prosecutors in late July 2024, and the police and fire department took down the posters in the first week of August. Möller himself removed several of them at the request of officers.
The graphic, which used a digitally modified stock photograph, depicted a man and a woman raising their outstretched arms above three seated children to form a protective “roof”.
The poster bore the AfD party logo alongside the campaign slogan: “Wir schützen Eure Kinder” (“We protect your children”).
Möller was able to win his constituency with 33.6 per cent, ahead of the Social Democrat candidate on 32.5 per cent. His party took 29.2 per cent across Brandenburg, finishing second behind the Social Democrats.
Prosecutors argued that because the image had been horizontally mirrored during design, the adult male figure on the left appeared to extend his right arm upwards at an angle that closely resembled the banned Hitler salute. In the original stock image the man raises his left arm.
During the initial trial, the defence rejected any deliberate extremist messaging, maintaining that the imagery simply illustrated traditional family protection. Möller said at the time of the complaint that the photograph had been bought through the advertising agency that produced the posters and that any association with the Hitler salute was absurd.
Similar motifs of adults shielding children beneath arched arms have historically appeared on informational material and political posters across various European parties.
The regional court determined, though, that Möller had noticed the visual similarity prior to distribution but proceeded to authorise the printing and public display of roughly 50 copies across the border city of Frankfurt (Oder).
Under German statute, criminal liability attaches not only to the use of genuine National Socialist emblems, but also to modified imagery that carries clear potential for public conflation.
Möller received a fine comprising 100 daily penalty units of €116, a threshold that, under German legal procedures, enters his official record as a formal criminal conviction. Fines above 90 daily units appear on the certificate of conduct that German employers may request.
The AfD’s leadership in Brandenburg criticised the ruling, describing the prosecution as politically motivated.
The party’s state chairman René Springer questioned the neutrality of the legal proceedings, arguing that the judicial focus was targeted at the AfD rather than genuine extremist displays. He said the case was not about a poster but about his party.
Conservative media in Germany reported that other political parties have used similar election posters, where parents are raising their arms to create a depiction of a house over the head of their children.
One such poster was used by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Datteln, western Germany, in 2021. No charges were brought in that case (Picture above, poster on the right).
With the Federal Court of Justice finding no procedural or legal errors in the regional court’s judgment, all regular domestic avenues of appeal have now been exhausted. A constitutional complaint to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe remains available.