They’re having a whole shouting match out in eastern Germany over who gets to jump in the water. The manager of Heidesee lake in the city of Halle decided to put a lock on the gate for anyone who doesn't speak German. He’s out here running a lido in an old flooded coal mine, and he claims people have been straight-up ignoring the lifeguards and the loudspeaker announcements. To keep folks from drowning, he started doing language checks at the front door.

The manager, Mathias Nobel, says he had to do it because if someone dies on his watch, it’s his neck on the line. "If anything happened, everyone would point the finger at me," Nobel told the local media. "You can't reverse death." He's keeping it real about the safety risks, but his solution has got a whole lot of people hot under the collar.

Critics are calling foul, saying Nobel is just using "safety" as a cheap excuse to keep entire groups of people out of the pool. The city of Halle isn't having it either. They stepped in and ordered Nobel to drop the ban immediately, telling him his house rules can't just block public access for whole populations. They also kept it real about their own concerns, saying anything that looks xenophobic is going to trash the city's reputation.

Then the national anti-discrimination agency got involved, and they are already talking about taking this man to court. Their spokesperson threw some major shade, asking how German tourists would feel if they went down to Mallorca or the Red Sea and had to pass a Spanish or Arabic test just to go for a swim. It’s a wild double standard when you look at it like that.

Even Germany’s official life-saving crew, the DLRG, turned their backs on him. They put out a quick statement saying they are completely separating themselves from whatever Nobel is trying to pull at the Heidesee lido.

This whole mess is blowing up right before the big state elections in Saxony-Anhalt this September. The far-right party, AfD, is currently leading the polls with a massive 42% support, and they immediately hopped on this situation to score some political points. They’re using the pool drama to tell their voters that the government has completely lost control of the streets and the public spaces.

On Facebook, the AfD wrote that public pools used to be safe places to chill, but now they're turning into "danger zones" because of weak government policies. They even posted up a campaign flyer on social media with the slogan: "Those who don't understand German, stay out."