Regional Court of Hamburg

The Hamburg Regional Court is also responsible for legal disputes over technical property rights for the territory of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and the states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein.

The district courts of Hamburg, Altona, Barmbek, Bergedorf, Blankenese, Harburg, St. Georg and Wandsbek are subordinate.

Civil Chamber 24 of the Hamburg Regional Court, which is responsible for disputes arising from violation of personal rights, violation of protection of honour or interference with the right to an established and practised business directly through publications in the press, film, radio, television or other mass media or through reports from press agencies, was headed by Judge Andreas Buske until 2011 and has been headed by presiding judge Simone Käfer since then, has become known nationwide since around the year 2000 through case law which, to a degree that is controversial even among experts, emphasises the priority of personal rights over the interests of freedom of the press and freedom of expression and sets very strict copyright requirements for Internet publications.

[6] In May 2016, lawyer Udo Vetter criticized the alleged “Hamburg monopoly” in his law blog[7] as a “strange concentration of interpretive sovereignty in the right of expression“.

In other words, in effect, it goes against freedom of expression.”[7] He hoped that the Böhmermann affair, in the course of which Recep Tayyip Erdoğan applied for an interim injunction at the Hamburg Regional Court, would provide "enough impetus to vigorously question this strange floating jurisdiction.