Urinating into the Baltic Sea at night is not an administrative offense. The Lübeck district court came to this conclusion in a case from the summer of 2022. At that time, a patrol from the public order office caught a man urinating into the Baltic Sea under the cover of darkness – at the flushing seam of the sea and with your back to the beach.
The case came to court because the man refused to pay the fine of 60 euros imposed by the office – for “harassing the general public through a grossly improper act”. Several media outlets had previously reported on the verdict.
However, the district court was unable to recognize the nuisance to the general public cited by the public order office. The man was only vaguely visible in the darkness, according to the verdict. Nobody felt harassed either. At the sea, unlike in the mountains or at the edge of the forest, there is no other option for retreat than to turn your back on possible spectators.
Then the reasoning becomes almost poetic: “Under the vastness of the sky, people have no less rights than the deer in the forest, the hare in the field or the seal in the sea of the Baltic Sea.”
