The Hamburg Landgericht has partially corrected its own search warrants in the high-profile criminal case against corporate heiress Christina Block, declaring the seizure of specific journalistic audio recordings to be unlawful, BILD reported.
Partial Revocation of Seizure Orders Over Podcast Material
Isabel Hildebrandt issued the initial search and seizure orders on October 12 concerning research material tied to the ZEIT Verbrechen: House of Block podcast. The podcast examined the New Year’s Eve 2023 abduction of Christina Block’s two youngest children from their father, Stephan Hensel, in Denmark. Prosecutors accuse Block of commissioning the abduction, a charge she denies alongside several co-accused individuals including sports moderator Gerhard Delling.
In a new 23-circuit resolution issued on Tuesday afternoon, the court reversed parts of its own directive. The chamber explicitly stated that upon the application of the eldest daughter, Johanna Hensel, the preliminary seizure of data backup files for audio track recordings was unlawful. Furthermore, the court dropped demands for contractual documents between the ZEIT publishing house and members of the Hensel victim family after lawyer Anne Kunze explained through counsel that no such written contracts or monetary agreements existed. These statements regarding the lack of contracts are not doubted by the court.
With the new resolution, the court responded to complaints filed by both ZEIT and Kunze following the data seizure. The court had ordered a search of Kunze’s apartment in mid-October, which she was only able to avert by handing over 80 hours of audio material containing conversations from various points in time to investigators. The court noted that should the higher instance classify the procedure as lawful, ZEIT and Kunze could show the corresponding files from the secured material to the court or make the January 15 and 16, 2024 conversations available to investigators once more, meaning the entire 80 hours of material would then not be screened by the state.
The Battle Over Raw Audio and Witness Testimony
Despite scaling back parts of its mandate, the court refused a total retreat. Judges maintained that access to conversations involving Klara Hensel, Stephan Hensel, and his wife Astrid Have remains fundamentally permissible. According to the Legal Tribune Online (LTO.de), the chamber argued that the ZEIT journalists essentially placed themselves in direct competition with criminal courts by producing a true-crime entertainment podcast.
The court maintains a sharp focus on interviews conducted with then-13-year-old Klara Hensel on January 15 and 16, 2024, roughly two weeks after the abduction. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) noted that the bench felt driven by its official duty to investigate potential foreign suggestive influences on the child witness before comprehensive police questioning took place in the presence of other authority figures.
The institutional functionality of the press is not endangered, and due to numerous special features, the securing of the podcast raw recordings is an individual case where there is no fear that comparable information sources will dry up in the future, according to the chamber. However, the chamber also recorded that if it should turn out during review that this evaluation must be made differently, a right to refuse testimony and thus a seizure ban must be assumed immediately.
Strict Boundaries on Press Freedom and Next Legal Steps
Simultaneously, the new ruling establishes tighter boundaries on state access. Unpublished confidential background conversations and material from anonymous informants remain subject to an unrestricted seizure ban.
The dispute now moves to the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court, as reported by NDR (NDR.de). Before the Oberlandesgericht makes its decision, the General Prosecutor’s Office can first comment on the matter, as the Hamburg Landgericht announced on Thursday. Until that final judicial determination is reached, the approximately 80 hours of seized audio material will remain untouched and unavailable for state evaluation. Meanwhile, the trial scheduling proceeds as the court coordinates new dates with defense counsel running through the end of February.
