A video shared online of young Germans chanting racist anti-immigrant slogans outside a pub on the North Sea island of Sylt has sparked outrage in the country.
The group chanted "foreigners out!" and "Germany for Germans" as the hit party song "L'amour Toujours" by Gigi D'Agostino played at a pub in the resort town of Kampen, a destination popular with wealthy German holidaymakers.
In the recording, which is only a few seconds long and has been going viral on social media since Thursday, young men and women shout the racist slogans while laughing. One man appears to indicate a Hitler moustache with his fingers on his upper lip.
Local police announced an investigation. The use of Nazi slogans or symbols, as well as other types of hate speech, is illegal under German law.
"A video of people celebrating on Sylt is currently circulating on social media. We are aware of this video and are examining it for criminally relevant content," police said in a post to X on Friday. "We would like to thank you for the numerous tips, which we have forwarded to the relevant authorities."
It is not the first incident of this kind involving the song in Germany. Authorities in several German states are investigating similar incidents of racist chanting to the song.
The operators of the pub, Pony, distanced themselves from the incident in a post to Instagram and said they were "deeply shocked" by the video.
"We distance ourselves from any kind of racism and discrimination," the pub operators wrote in the post. "If we had known about the incident, we would of course have expelled the guests in question. There is no place for racism!!!"
Every guest, regardless of ethnicity, is welcome and the people recorded in the video will be banned from the premises, they said.
In another post, the operators wrote that they had now received the names of "these Nazis" and would "report this disgusting behaviour and use all criminal law options!!!"