The owners of an Austrian hotel are suing a German tourist who complained they had decorated the lobby of their hotel with a “Nazi Grandpa” – a picture of their relative in a uniform which contained a swastika.

The German man, named in court documents as “Thomas K”, had stayed in the hotel in the town of Gerlos, in the Tyrolean Alps in Austria, during August 2018, according to The Guardian.

The man later left reviews on the TripAdvisor and Booking.com sites, under a pseudonym, in both German and English. He described how near the entrance of the hotel, two pictures had been hung of men wearing Nazi uniforms featuring the German eagle and swastika. There were flowers beneath the portraits.  

"This made us wonder what the hotel owners are trying to tell us with this image,” the tourist wrote.

“This incident speaks volumes about the current state of affairs in this region of Austria. Sadly, our desire to visit this mountain region has disappeared completely."

The hotel managed to identify the customer in question by matching his booking number to the review. It asked both booking.com and TripAdvisor to remove the review – the former assented, while the latter initially declined but later removed the post.

The owners also filed a defamation lawsuit against “Thomas K” at a regional court in Austria.

In July, the court allowed a preliminary injunction against the defendant, stating that the review had implied that the hotel’s owner either shared or had sympathy for Nazi views.

The owners of the hotel, which has not been named, have reportedly removed the pictures of their relatives from the lobby.

They defended themselves by saying that it was customary to honour relatives in such a fashion in the local district and that these photographs – of a grandfather and uncle of one of the owners - were the only photographs of the relatives they had.

They also claimed that because their relatives had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht, they could not accurately be described as Nazis – a claim which fell flat after “Thomas K” was reportedly able to use the German national archives in Berlin to prove that both men had actively joined the Nazi party, in 1941 and 1943 respectively.

The hotel owners said they had not been aware of their relatives’ membership of the party.

The trial will continue until later this year along with a separate case in Germany in which “Thomas K” accused a member of the hotelier’s family of harassing him via phone in an attempt to pressure him to take down his review.