Hertha Berlin files for injunction to force party to delete photograph featuring top scorer with one of its politicians

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Berlin’s top football club is suing the populist rightwing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) after it tweeted a photograph of one of the team’s star players with an AfD politician.

Hertha Berlin said it had filed for a court injunction to force the anti-immigration AfD to delete the picture showing its defender Marvin Plattenhardt with Frank Scheermesser, a lawmaker in the city-state’s parliament.

Plattenhardt, who scored the winning goal to beat Borussia Dortmund 2-1 on Saturday, told reporters he had been signing autographs for fans after the game and was not aware that the man next to him was an AfD politician.

Germany's rightwing AfD wants to jettison postwar safeguards Read more

Hertha’s lawyer, Christian-Oliver Moser, said the tweet – which has the caption: “Our lawmaker with the winning scorer” – breached Plattenhardt’s rights, and the AfD’s Berlin branch that posted it could be fined up to €250,000 (£218,000).

AfD was founded in 2003 as a platform to oppose financial bailouts to indebted countries in the eurozone and has since morphed into an anti-immigrant party that is forecast to enter parliament for the first time in a federal election on 24 September.

Some Germans who view the arrival of more than a million mainly Muslim refugees over the past two years as a threat to their culture have helped the party enter 10 of Germany’s 16 state parliaments.

It is expected to be the third largest party in the Bundestag lower house after the September general election. Hertha Berlin are fifth in Bundesliga.