ORF reacts to Till Lindemann’s forced censorship with humor

Till Lindemann’s lawyers have been taking action against reporting about the Rammstein singer for weeks. The aim is to ensure that parts of the suspected reports can no longer be read. An interim injunction was obtained in this context before the court in Hamburg. This also applied to an article by Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), which can be found online.

The core is the statements of a woman who is not named in the text and who accuses Lindemann of criminal acts.

The broadcaster has now complied with the request, but reacted humorously to the request to tear down its own article and kept it online. However, with noticeable changes. Numerous passages, including in the headline and in the opening text, are obscured with individual large and small “Xs”. However, parts of sentences are still recognizable because punctuation marks have not been changed.

In a statement from the ORF it says: “The court justified its decision by saying that the time and place of the incident described had not been disclosed, which meant that Mr. Lindemann was not given the opportunity to adequately defend himself.” However, according to the ORF, the information was deliberately not disclosed in order to guarantee the woman’s anonymity.

Till Lindemann is legally defending himself against allegations

For months there have been allegations against Till Lindemann and Rammstein that they had set up a backstage procedure in order to attract very young women to the singer for sexual activities. In the statements of some witnesses who remained anonymous, there was talk, among other things, of how the musician is said to have persuaded her to have sex with him, allegedly against her own will. The 60-year-old defended himself against these and other allegations. Lindemann ultimately achieved partial success in court, according to which certain passages of the report could no longer be reproduced. Investigations by the public prosecutor’s office were ended early due to a lack of clues and evidence.

Till Lindemann, on the other hand, is trying to draw attention to himself for other reasons by releasing new music (which, however, was recorded long before the allegations became known). The new album “Zunge” will be released on November 3rd. Because the singer’s record company has currently stopped working for Rammstein and Lindemann for an indefinite period of time in view of the allegations, the LP will initially only be released for self-distribution via the Berlin group’s website.