Austrian newspaper Der Standard has been ordered to pay €11,750 in damages to Johann Gudenus, a former MP with the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ).
On April 28, a court in Vienna found the left-wing publication had violated Gudenus’ rights by publicly claiming he and several other FPÖ members had sung a Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) song at the funeral of a colleague in September 2024.
The accusations were published online the day before the Austrian general election on September 29, 2024.
Der Standard had claimed that Gudenus – as well as FPÖ politicians Martin Graf, Norbert Nemeth, and Harald Stefan – had sung “an SS loyalty song” at the cemetery to fulfil the last wish of the late Walter Sucher, a former FPÖ local councillor in Vienna.
Gudenus’ lawyer Niki Haas claimed the newspaper’s reporting of the event was part of a political campaign it operated as it had been critical of the FPÖ for years.
The song in question, Wenn alle untreu werden (When everybody becomes unfaithful), was based on a political rhyme by German poet Max von Schenkendorf, written in 1814.
Judge Stefan Romstorfer based his ruling on the “minute detail” that Der Standard had gone into when claiming the FPÖ representatives sang the SS version of the song – when in fact on a video recording of the funeral the claimants could be heard singing all four stanzas, instead of only three as customary in the SS version.
“There was no need to write this,” Romstorfer added of the newspaper’s coverage.
In a previous suit brought by Graf, Nemeth, and Stefan, Der Standard had already been ordered to pay €20,250 in damages for defamation in January 2025.
After the latest ruling, the news group announced it was appealing all sentences.
