BLASPHEMY IN GERMANY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5375, 16 January 1929, Page 3

BLASPHEMY IN GERMANY.

, • WPEWNATING A MLNISITEB. COMMUNIST GETS TWO MONTHS. Because he had impersonated: a Christian minister, in a sjtreet parade o£ members of the German Young Communist Society during an election campaign, a Communist youth was recently sentenced by a court in Koennigsberg to serve two months in gaol and' pay a fine of 30 marks for Plasphemy. I,t appears that a woman, watching the parade, had taken offence at the mummer dressed as a preacher, who had chanted' “Vote, little brother, vote,” to. the air, of “Drink, little brother, drink!” In reporting this c,ase the radical German press avers that trials for “blasphemy” are booming a regular, scandal in Germany, and that it ill becomes German newspapers to poke fun at the United States on account of its “monkey trials” and anti-'qvlolu-tion, laws, as long as such things, can happen in the Fatherland ten years after the political revolution that overthrew Kaiserism. It is also pointed out that while the offence of blasphemy per, se has been di, opped from the new pqnal code now under consideration by the Legal Committee of the Reichstag, a Clause for gaol for terms up to. two years for anyone found guilty of doing anything in public calculated to hurt the feelings of a member of any recognised religious organisation is likely to be productive of plenty of malicious persecutions.