Mask-exemption certificates: 73-year-old doctor rejects a reduced sentence and faces the trial
Before the Freiburg Regional Court, the general practitioner Dr. med. Thomas Külken rejected an offer of a reduced sentence on 15 June 2026 – and instead read out his full statement. He had been convicted for exempting patients from the mask requirement.
Dr. Thomas Külken, 73, has practised as a doctor for 46 years and as a specialist in general medicine for 39 years. During the coronavirus period he issued 13 patients certificates exempting them from the mask requirement. On 27 June 2022 the Staufen Local Court sentenced him to a fine of 18,000 euros, or 180 days in prison in default.
A charge that shifted
The public prosecutor’s office originally claimed that Külken had issued the certificates without any prior patient contact. After this proved untrue, the charge became that the patients had not had “sufficiently serious” illnesses.
This is precisely where Külken’s defence begins: the Baden-Württemberg Coronavirus Regulation (Section 3(2) no. 2) refers only to “health reasons” – not to illnesses and not to any particular degree of severity. He concludes:
Consequently every doctor was obliged, with every patient, to take note of that patient’s complaints.
According to his own account, Külken documented mask-induced symptoms – including respiratory strain, headaches and nosebleeds in children – and regarded these as legitimate health reasons. He invokes the professional code of conduct for physicians: “Physicians practise their profession according to their conscience.” By his account, the judgment had been preceded by three searches of his practice.
Appeal in Freiburg – and a rejected offer
On 15 June 2026 the appeal hearing began before the Freiburg Regional Court; four days of proceedings are scheduled. The public prosecutor’s office withdrew its own appeal. The presiding judge offered to limit the proceedings to a mere reduction of the sentence.
Külken declined. Instead of shortening the proceedings, he read out his full statement before the court – a step with which he deliberately frames the case not as a question of the level of punishment, but as a matter of principle.
His criticism
In his statement, Külken goes beyond his own case. He criticises what he sees as a propagandistic narrowing of public discourse, the division of society into supposedly “good” (compliant) and “bad” (critical) citizens, and the institutional proximity of the Robert Koch Institute and the public prosecutor’s offices to the respective ministries. He expressly presents these assessments as his personal view.
