Magdeburg (dpa/sa) – The Higher Administrative Court of Saxony-Anhalt has denied the pension entitlements of a former civil servant due to a lack of loyalty to the constitution. The court thus confirmed a corresponding decision by the Magdeburg Administrative Court from 2021 and rejected the defendant’s appeal, as the OVG announced on Thursday.
According to the OVG, the retired civil servant, who was born in 1963, worked, among other things, as a career civil servant in the Federal Armed Forces Administration. In 2020 he was retired due to disability. In disciplinary proceedings under civil service law, the man was accused of running for the NPD in the 2016 state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and of having publicly posted posts on his Facebook profile “which clearly contained references to right-wing extremism”.
The Higher Administrative Court justified the decision to withdraw the pension by saying that the man had violated the core duty of civil servants to be faithful to the constitution by running for the NPD. “Officials who have a special public service and loyalty relationship with the state (…) would have to commit to the free, democratic, rule of law and welfare state basic order of the Basic Law and stand up for it,” it said in a statement. This is not the case with the defendant.
His public statements on Facebook are also intended to “defame and ridicule the Federal Republic of Germany, its constitutional organs and the current constitutional order”. The verdict is not yet legally binding.
