Conclusion

In 1951, protests against the return of the antisemitic film director Veit Harlan led to violence against the protestors and a case against Erich Lüth for calling for a boycott of Harlan’s films. The Federal Constitutional Court decided at the end of the 1950s that the constitutional right to free speech was more important in a "hierarchy of values" than the civil code’s protections against libel. The Lüth decision supported the freedom of speech of a critical journalist to call for a boycott of a famous Nazi director’s return to cinematic success. Despite numerous lower court injunctions banning the journalist’s calls for boycotts using Germany’s strong libel laws, the Federal Constitutional Court upheld the right to speak freely about the Nazi past as an unalterable legal good paving the way for the democratic changes to West German society in the 1960s.