Police in Berlin on Thursday searched the home of prominent conservative political commentator and former university professor Norbert Bolz over a social media post he wrote in 2024 that contained a Nazi-era slogan.

On Thursday morning, officers arrived at Bolz’s home and questioned him about a post on X that featured the Nazi-affiliated expression, “Deutschland erwache!” (“Germany, awake!”). Bolz confirmed his authorship of the post, avoiding the seizure of his laptop, he told POLITICO. 

“The friendly police officers gave me the good advice to be more careful in the future. I’ll do that and only talk about trees from now on,” Bolz sarcastically commented in a separate post on X. Bolz is a regular commentator for WELT, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group.

A Berlin public prosecutor confirmed that police carried out a search in connection with an investigation into the “use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations.”

Bolz had shared a post from the left-wing newspaper taz that read, “Ban of the AfD and a petition against Höcke: Germany awakens,” and added ironically: “A good translation for “woke”: Germany awake!”

The German case comes after U.K. authorities arrested “Father Ted” co-creator Graham Linehan on suspicion of inciting violence with a series of social media posts about transgender people, amid a wider debate over hate speech laws and free expression in the U.K. and other European countries.

In February at the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President JD Vance lambasted European leaders, arguing that free speech was increasingly under threat on the continent, though the Trump administration has itself also clamped down on some commentary posted on social media.