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Schertz said that the Hamburg court’s ruling failed to take into account the way in which Boehmermann had framed his poem as deliberate satire, interspersing his reading of it with several remarks noting that the verse was an example of what would be impermissible.

Boehmermann read the poem, which contained extremely crude language, on his television show on March 31. By the next day, it had become a litmus test of artistic freedom in Germany, after the public broadcaster ZDF first pulled the show from its digital archive then restored it minus the reading of the poem.

In what she has since conceded was a mistake, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said through her spokesman on April 4 that she found the poem offensive. Erdogan went on to sue Boehmermann for insulting him under an obscure German law that requires the government to give consent in cases of insulting a head of state.

Merkel’s coalition government split over how to proceed, with the chancellor eventually giving the go-ahead to Erdogan but also announcing that the relevant law, which dates from 1871, would be repealed.

The city-state of Hamburg said this month that it would try to push the repeal through the upper house of Parliament, with the intention of getting the law off the books and thus rendering action against Boehmermann moot.

The Turkish leader has also filed a private suit against Boehmermann that would proceed through the courts under a different law governing such individual action. That suit is currently under scrutiny by state prosecutors in Mainz, which is where ZDF has its headquarters and thus where Erdogan is pursuing the private suit.

The Mainz prosecutors said in a brief statement Wednesday that they did not yet know whether or when their case would proceed.