He accused me of "imprudent extortions", "unjustified demands", numerous "audacities", and "mumbo jumbo". He called me "cunning", "fresh", "audacious", "slandering", "pathologically provoking untruthfulness", "liar", "lying May", "show-off", "Münchhausen", "boaster", "fraud", "scoundrel", "swindler", "commonplace swindler", "burglar", "imposter", "convict", etc. etc. I am asking you: Are these kinds of offensive statements, even if there was some truth in them, permitted in everyday life? Would a truly well-educated man want to move in the same circles as someone who has made them? Well, in the circles of the court they are permitted, for I have sued this lawyer on account of them for gross insult and have been rejected. But there is even more: In response to this complaint of mine, he filed counter-charges against me, and this was not rejected. The judge is perfectly innocent in this; he could not act any other way; the law proscribes it like this! One day, when the testimonies of the witnesses had turned out to be unfavourable for the Münchmeyers' party, this lawyer said to the judge: "But in any case, it is entirely impossible that a person with prior convictions, like May, could win this trial!" "You'll just have to wait and see," the judge answered to him. I was right there and had to put up with this insult, because the law allowed him to make it. For almost ten years, this has been going on like this and is still going on up to this day in the same tone and in the same manner. A very high-ranking judge said, regarding this, to my lawyer: "Never in all of my long time on the bench, a case has touched me so deeply like the that of Karl May. How much must this poor, old man have suffered!" He might very well have added: "How much is he still suffering, and how much more will he suffer!" This judge knew my prison record very well; he had studied the files which existed on it. Nevertheless and in spite of the verbal abuse of my opponents, I won the trial and all appeals, surely an expressive proof that German judges are not influenced by invectives on the lawyers' part; but nevertheless, I had to listen to them without being able to speak up and I still have to do so up to this day. And they work their effect, though not on the verdict, but definitely into another direction. They introduce a cruel rudeness into the way the parties interact with each other and extent beyond the courtroom, out into the public and even into the private life. All those insulting expressions about me, which I have listed above, one would already have read in the newspapers and would likewise also have come across them in private conversations. This is the necessary consequence of those liberties which every malicious, unscrupulous lawyer is allowed to take, once he sees that crude rudeness will get him further than humaneness. He writes these rude statements into his legal documents, and from there, he arranges it for them to appear as