Burger King Gets Taken To Court For Leaving Flyers Around Concentration Camp

Finding oneself in a legal battle with a holocaust museum is never a good sign, but one Burger King restaurant in Germany has been so aggressive in its marketing efforts that it has actually been taken to court by the memorial museum at the Dachau concentration camp, which says it has been trying for years to get the restaurant to stop handing out fliers in front of the site.

According to The Local, the local Burger King has been handing out promotional flyers in front of Dachau for years, despite the fact that the museum has asked it to stop. Dr. Gabriele Hammermann, the head of the memorial museum at Dachau, says uniformed Burger King employees are constantly sticking the flyers under the windshield wipers of cars in the parking lot.

Hammermann says advertising at Dachau is disrespectful, and pointed out to The Local that "for many, Dachau is not just a memorial but a cemetery."

Hammermann says the museum has tried to get the Burger King to stop flyering the concentration camp memorial, but the restaurant manager has refused. He does not seem to care if the museum thinks his flyers are tacky or upsetting, and he just keeps handing them out.

The Burger King franchise in question is not the first restaurant to court Dachau visitors. A local McDonald's reportedly put out flyers in the parking lot back in 1996, but Hammermann says that as soon as the museum objected, the McDonald's manager apologized profusely and it never happened again.

Burger King manager Ronny Otto has not stopped, however, and finally the museum got a court order instructing the Burger King to stop flyering. But the franchisee in charge of the restaurant would not even accept the court order, and he has reportedly appealed the decision.

If anybody hates this situation as much as the Dachau museum, it's Burger King Germany. A Burger King restaurant getting in a fight with a holocaust museum seems like it would be terrible publicity for the company, but they don't seem to be able to get Otto to stop, either.

A spokesperson for Burger King Germany told The Local that the company had repeatedly tried to get Otto to reach an agreement or solve the problem in some way that did not involve getting taken to court by the concentration camp memorial.

The court will hear the franchisee's appeal and decide whether or not the flyering can continue.