Wearing a fluorescent uniform and armed with a cell phone, eighteen-year-old German Niclas Matthei hunts down illegal parking spaces in Saxony-Anhalt, but also in other states, in his free time. Spiegel dedicated an 18-minute video report to him which, published 4 days ago on the magazine’s YouTube channel, has already exceeded 2 million views. The weapon of Niclas, who calls himself Anzeigenhauptmeister, a term that does not exist but which could be translated as “chief complaints officer”, is his more than in-depth knowledge of the German highway code. The boy just needs to take a look at the vehicle and the situation to identify the infringement and establish the amount of the fine. Administrative sanction which obviously is not imposed by him himself who is not entitled to it, but by the relevant authorities.
The wild parking hunter “at the scene of the crime” takes a photo of the illegally parked vehicle and uploads it together with all the details of the case onto one of the specific apps for parking violations, then the individual offices in charge of public order they can decide whether to notify the fine or not. That’s not enough: the self-appointed Anzeigenhauptmeister who has ended up in all the German media and has become a social media star for better or for worse, often completes his mission by giving a lecture to the “culprits” who are caught in the act. To a man who tries to justify himself, he says dryly: “he could have parked in the church square.”
According to its own data, it filed over 4,000 complaints in 2023. He proudly says to the Spiegel camera: “the total fines that could have been sent to violators at a national level thanks to my reports is 140,995 euros.” Thanks to his “Deutschland-Ticket”, the 49 euro season ticket valid for all public transport in Germany, Niclas goes on missions everywhere, always accompanied by his personalized bicycle with the “Polizfi” sign, which sounds a bit like Polizei (police) but it isn’t, “it’s a word I invented” says the eighteen year old, therefore, as the police themselves confirmed, it cannot be considered a case of abuse of authority. On February 23 he went to take a look around Hildesheim, a city of 100,000 inhabitants in Lower Saxony. There his haul as a parking marshal was impressive: «what I usually capture in 3 weeks, here I captured it in just one day – he wrote on his Facebook page, adding – I took 331 photos of infringements of the parking ban stop, a record! When the Spiegel journalist asks him if he is a serial whistleblower, he denies it: no, he isn’t, a serial whistleblower denounces anything, he attacks everything, underlines Mr. Precicini who goes around carrying a tape measure with him to check if a vehicle is prohibited from parking even just a few centimeters because “the law is the law”, he only deals with irregular parking. So why does he do it? «To enforce the highway code – he explains – because people always think they can park as they want. Especially on weekends, everyone thinks the police will come and check. But then people like me arrive.” And he also adds a financial motivation: what he does benefits the community: “with the 15 euros of a fine you can buy two new light bulbs for the town hall.”