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Burger King in court for refusing to stop flyering at Dachau concentration camp

Julius Haswell
Julius Haswell - [email protected]
Burger King in court for refusing to stop flyering at Dachau concentration camp
Photo: DPA

The museum at the concentration camp in Dachau and the local branch of Burger King have on Wednesday gone to court over a row regarding flyers on the museum premises.

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The memorial museum at Dachau has accused the Burger King branch of handing out flyers in the car park to visitors of the concentration camp.

Dr. Gabriele Hammermann, head of the memorial site, told The Local that despite attempts to ask the restaurant to stop, employees dressed in the Burger King uniform have kept flyering the car park.

Hammermann said that the practice was “disrespectful”, adding that “for many, Dachau is not just a memorial but a cemetery.”

Having tolerated the flyering of their visitors for years, the camp memorial museum decided to act after Burger King employees were caught handing out flyers on the same day that the famous “Arbeit macht frei” gate was returned to the camp in late February.

Dachau had reportedly tried to get in touch with the manager of the branch, Ronny Otto, to ask that he stop the flyering, but Otto declined their requests.

Following this, they contacted Burger King Germany to help change the situation. A spokesman for Burger King Germany told The Local “we repeatedly asked [Mr Otto] to reach an out-of-court agreement with the concentration camp memorial.”

After that attempt failed, Dachau got a court order against Otto in early March.

Otto’s appeal opened on Wednesday in court. Burger King Germany remarked that they “very much regret that it has come to today's Court of Justice session.”

This is not the first time that the camp at Dachau has experienced problems with fast food restaurants flyering on their premises.

In 1996, Burger King’s rival McDonald's had been caught putting flyers for their restaurant under the windscreen wipers of people’s parked cars, according to Hammermann.

But when Dachau got in touch with McDonald’s to ask them to stop, the manager wrote them a full letter of apology, promising not to do it again. The feud with Burger King has proved to be less easy.

Hammermann said that they had “assumed that Burger King would do the same and stop flyering, but they never did stop.”

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