Everything requires balance. At one time, in America, ones exercise of free speech could, and sometimes did, result in a duel. Today, such matters are supposed to be settled by the courts but obtaining justice is slow and expensive.
The result is that things have evolved to the point where even our media seems to feel free to say just about anything it wishes.
Such abuses present a greater threat to the freedom of speech than the action of the German court, in this case.
The real problem is what comes AFTER.
After these holocaust deniers nuts ... who else is going to be put in jail?
I'm thinking about accusations of 'xenophobia' or 'islamophobia', for example.
A political culture that is in denial about a serious social problem will condemn those who seek to discuss it, and try its best to silence them. For a long time now the European political class has been in denial about the problems posed by the large-scale immigration of people who do not enter into the European way of life. It has turned angrily on those who have warned against the disruption that might follow, or who have affirmed the right of indigenous communities to refuse admission to people who cannot or will not assimilate. And one of the weapons that the élite has used, in order to ensure that it is never troubled by the truths that it denies, is to accuse those who wish to discuss the problem of ‘racism and xenophobia’. That is the problem.