bq. Nur gebürtige Bayern haben so viel Sprachgefühl, dass sie das abgewandelte Götz-Zitat Mich leckst am A… nicht nur als Beleidigung, sondern auch als Ausdruck des Erstaunens verwenden dürfen. Diese Erfahrung musste ein Bosnier machen, der sich in Landshut wegen Beleidigung vor Gericht verantworten musste. Er wurde zu einer Geldstrafe von 1000 Euro verurteilt.
A newspaper in Passau reports that a Bosnian was cycling in the pedestrian zone in Landshut. A man from the Sicherheitswacht , that is, a kind of Neighbourhood Watch figure authorized to supervise traffic, asked him to dismount, and, when he didn’t dismount, pulled the Bosnian off his bike by grabbing the handlebars. To avoid spammers, I have to rephrase the Bosnian’s words – he suggested that the man should apply his tongue to the Bosnian’s nether regions. Germans sometimes call this the Götz phrase, because the words were used by Götz von Berlichingen in Goethe’s play of the same name which I had the misfortune to study for A Level (I like a lot of Goethe a lot, but not this play).
The Bosnian was fined 1000 euros for insult. He said in court that he did not mean the words as an insult, but as an expression of astonishment at the speed with which he was grounded. I suspect this argument cooked his goose.
There was an academic discussion between the defence, the prosecution and the judge. The judgment stated inter alia that only a Bavarian, who had ‘imbibed the finer points of language with his mother’s milk’, could appreciate the nuances of this expression.
I got this from Udo Vetter, who says a Bavarian wouldn’t have been punished. I don’t know quite how to read this sentence of the court’s myself. The expression is not limited to Bavaria, nor is it only Bavarian breastfeeding mothers who use it. And of course, that might be all the more reason to treat a non-German more leniently (I’m thinking of all the Germans I’ve encountered who think certain English words are part of everyday British conversation).
