Üble Nachrede in Austria: Defamation and the Honour Offences Explained

Someone who tells another person's friends, colleagues or an online audience that they are a thief, a fraud, or otherwise contemptible, without proof, is potentially committing üble Nachrede, Austria's core reputational defamation offence under § 111 of the Strafgesetzbuch (StGB). This is the offence most English speakers actually mean when they search for defamation in Austria, even though the German word that sounds closest, Verleumdung, names a different crime entirely.

§ 111 StGB sits inside a small group of honour offences, §§ 111 to 117 StGB, that together cover factual accusations, public insults, reproaching a spent conviction, and harm to someone's economic standing. Each has its own elements, its own penalty range and its own rule on who has to bring the case. A newspaper or website that repeats the accusation carries a further, separate liability under the Mediengesetz.

This page works through § 111 üble Nachrede in full: its elements, the aggravated tier for internet and print publication, the truth defence, and the private prosecution rule that makes it different from ordinary crime. It then sets the related honour offences alongside it, and closes with the media compensation claim and its current caps.

Information last verified on 22 July 2026. This page provides general legal information about Austrian law and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case.

§ 111 StGB Üble Nachrede: The Core Elements

§ 111 Abs 1 StGB punishes someone who, in a way a third party can perceive, accuses another person of a contemptible trait or attitude, or of dishonourable conduct or conduct contrary to good morals, where that accusation is apt to make the person contemptible or lower them in public opinion. The base penalty is up to 6 months in prison or up to 360 Tagessätze.

Three elements matter here. First, the statement has to impute something contemptible, dishonourable, or immoral, not merely unflattering or critical. Second, it has to be perceivable by a third party.

A private remark made only to the person concerned, with nobody else able to hear or read it, falls outside § 111 and may instead be a § 115 Beleidigung issue. Third, the statement has to be capable of damaging the person's standing in public opinion, an objective test applied to the statement itself, not to whether anyone actually believed it.

Because üble Nachrede targets a factual accusation, it is distinguished from a pure value judgment or insult, which is handled instead by § 115 Beleidigung, discussed further below. Calling someone's professional work poor quality is a judgment. Falsely stating that they were dismissed from their last job for theft is a factual accusation capable of triggering § 111.

The Internet and Media Aggravation Under § 111 Abs 2

§ 111 Abs 2 StGB raises the penalty where the offence is committed through a printed work, a broadcast, or in another way that makes the üble Nachrede accessible to a broad public. The aggravated penalty is up to 1 year in prison or up to 720 Tagessätze, double the base tier.

The statute's wording covers a printed work or broadcast expressly, then adds a catch-all for any other way the statement reaches a broad public. A post on a public social media account, a comment left on a widely read forum, or a message forwarded into a large group chat can fall under that catch-all, since the trigger is how widely the statement actually becomes accessible, not the specific medium used to spread it.

Worked example. Austrian fines are set in Tagessätze, daily units whose value a court fixes according to the convicted person's net income, not a flat euro figure. If a court set the daily rate at 60 euros in a base tier case, the maximum fine under the 360 Tagessatz ceiling would be 21,600 euros. If the same statement had instead been posted publicly online and triggered the Abs 2 aggravation, the 720 Tagessatz ceiling at the same daily rate would double that maximum to 43,200 euros, or the court could impose up to a year in prison instead.

The Truth Defence and Good Faith Under § 111 Abs 3

§ 111 Abs 3 StGB gives the accused a full defence where the statement is proven true. This Wahrheitsbeweis applies to both the base case and the aggravated media case: proving the accusation was factually accurate removes liability either way.

A second, narrower defence applies only to the base case under Abs 1. The accused is also not punished if circumstances are proven that gave them sufficient grounds to believe the statement was true, even if it later turns out to be false. This good faith fallback is textually limited to the Abs 1 case. A defendant facing the Abs 2 aggravated, broad public tier who cannot actually prove the statement true cannot fall back on this good faith route under § 111 itself. For a media defendant, the comparable good faith and journalistic diligence protection instead lives in § 6 Abs 2 Mediengesetz, covered below.

This split matters in practice. Someone who repeats an accusation privately, based on what seemed at the time like solid grounds, has a real defence even if the accusation turns out to be wrong. The same person repeating the same accusation to a wide online audience has a narrower set of defences available, and needs to be able to prove the statement true rather than merely reasonable.

A Private Prosecution Offence: Üble Nachrede and the Privatanklage Rule

§ 117 Abs 1 StGB states that the honour offences are prosecuted only at the request of the person whose honour was violated. Üble Nachrede, along with § 113 and § 115, is a Privatanklagedelikt. The injured person has to bring and carry the prosecution themselves, rather than reporting the matter to the police and having the public prosecutor take it from there as with most crimes.

There are narrow ex officio exceptions. Where an honour offence is directed at the Federal President, the National Council, Federal Council or Federal Assembly, a state parliament, the armed forces, or a public authority, the state prosecutes with authorisation. A further ex officio route exists for group membership insults connected to § 283 Abs 1 StGB. Outside those categories, a person defamed under § 111 needs to initiate and fund a private prosecution to pursue a criminal remedy, a meaningfully different process from reporting a crime to the police.

This is also the sharpest practical contrast with Verleumdung. § 297 StGB sits outside the honour chapter entirely, protecting the administration of justice rather than personal honour, so § 117's private prosecution rule does not reach it. The state prosecutes a knowingly false criminal report on its own initiative. See false accusation and Verleumdung in Austria for the full comparison.

The Related Honour and Economic Reputation Offences

Three further offences sit close to üble Nachrede in everyday use, and are worth distinguishing clearly, since each turns on a different kind of conduct.

§ 115 Beleidigung differs from § 111 in kind, not just severity. It covers value judgments, insults, mockery, and threats of physical mistreatment, made publicly or in front of more than two other people besides the offender and the victim, rather than a factual accusation. Where § 111 asks whether a specific claim about someone's conduct was true or false, § 115 asks whether the manner of the statement or conduct was insulting.

§ 113 protects a narrower interest. Someone who has already served, or been conditionally excused from, a sentence should not have that old, settled matter thrown back at them by a third party in a way others can perceive.

§ 152 Kreditschädigung is different again in what it protects. It requires the assertion of untrue facts, and the harm is economic: damage or danger to someone's credit, earnings or professional advancement.

Unlike the honour offences, § 152 is understood in Austrian legal practice to extend to businesses and other legal persons, not only individuals, since a company's financial standing can be attacked by false claims about its solvency or its products in the same way a person's honour can be attacked by a false personal accusation. Kreditschädigung is prosecuted only at the injured party's request rather than by full private prosecution.

Civil Compensation From the Media: § 6 Mediengesetz

Where üble Nachrede, Beschimpfung, Verspottung or Verleumdung is committed through a medium, such as a newspaper, broadcast or website, § 6 Mediengesetz (MedienG) gives the person affected a direct civil compensation claim against the Medieninhaber, the media owner, rather than only against the individual author. Only the objective elements of the offence need to be established for this claim, not the personal guilt of whoever wrote the piece, which is what makes it a workable route against a media company as such.

§ 6 Abs 2 sets out exclusions: a truthful report of a public parliamentary session, a publication that is true, and cases involving an overriding public interest where journalistic diligence gave sufficient grounds to believe the statement true, among others. § 6 Abs 3 narrows these further for matters touching someone's most intimate personal sphere.

The compensation amount itself is set by § 8 Abs 1 MedienG, in force since 1 January 2021, applying a single cap schedule shared across §§ 6, 7, 7a, 7b and 7c. The amount must be at least 100 euros, and generally may not exceed 40,000 euros. Under §§ 6, 7 or 7c specifically, the ceiling rises to 100,000 euros where the publication had particularly serious effects and the media owner or its staff acted with gross negligence or intent. Older material citing caps of 20,000 or 50,000 euros reflects the pre-2021 version of the Mediengesetz and is no longer current law.

Worked example. A website publishes a false factual accusation against a named private individual that meets the objective elements of üble Nachrede under § 6. If the effects on that person are not found to be particularly serious, and gross negligence or intent by the site's operator is not established, the claim is capped at 40,000 euros. If the publication caused particularly serious harm and the operator acted with gross negligence or intent, the ceiling instead rises to 100,000 euros. Either figure is a ceiling a court may award up to, not a fixed or guaranteed sum, and an award becomes an enforcement title with a 14 day payment deadline once it takes effect.

Üble Nachrede vs Verleumdung: Do Not Confuse the Two

The German word Verleumdung is often assumed to be the general term for defamation, and in Germany's own criminal code it broadly is a reputational offence. In Austria, § 297 StGB Verleumdung means something narrower and different: knowingly making a false accusation that someone committed a crime prosecuted ex officio, or breached an official or professional duty, exposing them to the danger of a state investigation. It requires proof that the accuser actually knew the accusation was false, and it is prosecuted by the state rather than the person defamed.

Üble Nachrede, by contrast, is Austria's actual reputational defamation offence. It does not require proof that the accuser knew the statement was false, it carries a full truth defence, and the injured person generally has to prosecute it themselves. Anyone searching for Austrian defamation law in the reputational sense, rather than a false criminal report, should start with § 111 StGB, not § 297.