A German court has ordered a business magazine here to print a correction to an article that described VW supervisory board chief Ferdinand Piech's taste in ties as garish and questioned whether he knew how many children he had.
The regional court in Duesseldorf ordered the weekly WirtschaftsWoche to print a correction to an article that claimed Piech wore "garish ties with hunting motifs" and did not know the exact number of his children from various marriages, a court spokesman said.
The magazine, owned by the Handelsblatt group, had published a picture of Piech wearing a tie with a picture of a man with a gun and an elephant.
It quoted Piech as saying in an interview that he had sired "about a dozen children. The exact number is not known".
The court accepted Piech's argument that his comment had been meant ironically and that the motif on his tie was not a hunting motif.
The magazine said it would appeal the ruling.
The French version of the article contained a few more details. We flexed our French muscles to discover that the offending article appeared in the October 13 issue of the magazine. Also, the court decreed that Piech would have a "right of reply" of 11 lines in the magazine, which seems a bit different from a correction. But perhaps that means he gets to approve the content of the correction. We'd love to hear from any German speakers out there who know more details. UPDATE (10/02): A German speaker heard our call and sent in more information regarding the "11 lines" mentioned in the AFP story. This is interesting stuff. Here's what the reader wrote:
Ferdinand Piech was given the right to a "Gegendarstellung" by court which is technically not a correction (written by the paper) but a statement by Piech's lawyers about their side of the story. This german equivalent to a correction has to be printed by the paper in a comparable manner to the original disputed text regarding space usage and design...
Ferdinand Piech can now correct eleven POINTS he disagreed with and could prove in court to be wrong. He might use eleven lines but he doesn't have to. He can ask the paper to print it so that it fills the same amount of space and has a simillar look that the disputed passage had.
The paper has the right to comment [on] the correction and most do only by adding something like "This is correct - The Editor" while sometimes they give a comment which sends them right back to court.
So, there's one person's take on the matter.
