Cabaret Artist Uwe Steimle Signs Cease and Desist Over Stauffenberg Comment

Cabaret artist Uwe Steimle has signed a cease and desist declaration following comments he made during an AfD event in Dessau-Roßlau. During the event, Steimle stated, "When I see Friedrich Merz, I sometimes wonder, where is Stauffenberg when you actually need him," referring to Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the leader of the military resistance who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. Karl Graf von Stauffenberg, the grandson of the plotter, criticized the remark as "historical distortion" and stated that his grandfather was being dragged through the mud. While Karl Graf von Stauffenberg accepted the cease and desist, he told Bild that a public apology would have been appropriate because Steimle threatened the elected Chancellor. Steimle's lawyer, Peter-Michael Diestel, stated that Steimle signed the declaration not because it was correct, but because he felt that something legally permissible in his role as a political cabaret artist had hurt others, which was not his intention. The public prosecutor's office in Dessau-Roßlau has launched an investigation into Steimle under Paragraph 126 of the Criminal Code, which penalizes the disturbance of public peace through the threat of criminal offenses. A center-right source framed the incident as fantasies of violence and an indirect call for violence against the Chancellor, while a center-left source described the incident as fantasies of violence and focused on the legal proceedings regarding the disturbance of public peace.