In July of 1990, prominent Bavarian actor Walter Sedlmayr was found dead in his home in Munich. He had been tied up, stabbed, and beaten around the head with a hammer. Two of his former business associates, Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber, were found guilty of his murder and sentenced to life in prison. Werlé and Lauber, half-brothers, were released on parole in 2007 and 2008 respectively. They both continue to protest their innocence, so much in fact that they are suing Wikipedia in order to have their past erased.
In October 2009, lawyers for Werlé sent the Wikimedia Foundation paperwork requesting that Werlé's name be removed from the English language article on Wikipedia about Walter Sedlmayer. According to the New York Times, the legal battle pits German privacy law against the American First Amendment. German courts allow the suppression of a criminal’s name in news accounts once he has paid his debt to society. Werlé's lawyer issued a statement insisting that both Werlé and Lauber have the right to be reintegrated into society without being stigmatized.
While this argument may have held up in Germany (the killers' names have been erased from the German Wikipedia entry pertaining to Sedlmayer), Wikimedia is based in the United States, where the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press. As one could imagine, lawyers and free-speech advocates around the nation are standing behind Wikimedia's decision to keep the names in the article. To quote George Orwell, "he who controls the past, controls the future." The case filed by Werlé and his lawyer is still pending, meanwhile, plenty of information about the murder of Walter Sedlmayer is available through Wikipedia and other various online searches.
TrackBack URI for this entry
